How eco-efficient are electric vehicles across Europe? A regionalized life cycle assessment-based eco-efficiency analysis

Abstract

Sustainable transportation is at the hearth of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is directly linked to many SDGs including SDG3 (good health and well-being), SDG11 (sustainable cities and societies), SDG 7 (clean energy), SDG13 (climate), and SDG 12 (sustainable production and consumption). European countries have been promoting a widespread adoption of electric vehicles to achieve SDGs through resilient, technology-driven, and human-centric mobility. However, potential environmental benefits of electric vehicles depend on various regional factors such as the fuel efficiency and source of electricity generation. At the same time, the economic benefits of mobility to the economy are an important factor for evaluating the relative performance of electric vehicles. To this end, this research paper presents the first empirical analysis of the regionalized eco-efficiency assessment of electric vehicles across Europe. We developed an integrated regionalized eco-efficiency performance score, by employing life cycle assessment and principal component analysis techniques to assess the eco-efficiency performance of electric vehicles in Europe. Considering the energy mix for electricity generation, three environmental indicators (carbon footprint, water consumption, and energy use) and one economic (contribution to national gross domestic product) indicator were used to compute the eco-efficiency scores for 28 European countries. The eco-efficiency scores for each corresponding country were calculated, compared, and clustered in as high, medium, and low eco-efficiency score countries. The clvalid package of R software's archive network is used to determine the optimal number of clusters for the EES dataset. The results of the comparative study show that Denmark, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have a competitive advantage in eco-efficiency performance compared to the other European countries. The regionalized distribution of the eco-efficiency performance shows that the countries with the highest ecoefficiency score are located on the west side of Europe. Researches and policymakers can benefit from the applied methodology as well as the results to provide country-specific investment policies to achieve higher benefits towards a transition to electric mobility in Europe.