“Faced with the climate emergency, electrification will not be enough” – L’Express

Rémi Bastien: The climate is the symptom. Disease comes from the way our human societies develop, which draw on non-renewable resources more than the earth can provide. Environmental issues are not limited to greenhouse gases and the question of raw materials is becoming essential with an increasingly critical time lag. Take the example of copper production, the peak of production of which is expected to occur around 2030, according to the UN International Resources Panel. However, if new deposits were found, it would take around fifteen years to set up a mine in order to exploit them. The same goes for conventional oil, the same peak of which was reached in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency. It can be renewable… but every 150 million years! Shale gas only provides some relief. And certain regions of the world suffer from severe water stress such as California, India and many Chinese provinces, not forgetting Taiwan, the home of semiconductors, which are particularly water-intensive. For critical materials, strategic countries have pre-empted extraction zones, such as China in Africa. Our industrial system, including the automotive sector, will therefore quickly find itself under pressure due to a shortage of resources.

Has the automobile industry taken stock of this and is it preparing for it?

It adapts year after year according to the successive regulatory layers. But current laws only consider “exhaust” emissions during vehicle use. It will become necessary to take into account CO2 emissions over the entire life cycle of an automobile, from its manufacture to its destruction, and to integrate the more or less carbon-based origin of the energy used: electricity. produced in a coal, renewable or nuclear power plant. From this point of view, the “arms race” which leads to increasingly bulky and heavy models, with the fashion for SUVs enhancing social status, is not sustainable in the long term.

Does the circular economy provide a solution?

Nature has been practicing the circular economy for billions of years… successfully. It therefore represents an essential axis. Its five rules are to refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and give back to the earth. It is therefore not limited to recycling alone, but involves, for the automobile industry, moving towards fewer vehicles, of more limited size, used for longer – because they are updated – and built with recycled materials. This circular model will require practicing ecodesign which allows the vehicle to be easily disassembled for recycling (bodywork, interior elements, etc.). Which involves overturning the usual principles of cost optimization. Switching from a linear economy to a circular system requires organizing sobriety, with a transition neither too long, to avoid shortages of materials, nor too rapid for the new frugality to be accepted.

Why does the use of recycled materials remain so low?

Because in our field, to gain productivity, the same part integrates many functions and disassembly becomes complicated. The metal parts are made of differentiated alloys that are difficult to reuse. The same goes for plastic, only 3% of which is recycled in Europe because the standards of robustness and rigidity, guarantees of durability, remain very demanding. Few buyers would appreciate seeing the color of their dashboard fade from the sun. On the other hand, many non-visible parts could contain more recycled plastic by agreeing to replace them during the life of the vehicle, such as wearing parts.

Do electric cars help meet environmental challenges?

Political leaders would like to hold the magic wand and thought they had found it with the electric car. It constitutes real progress. In Europe, taking the entire life cycle, it makes it possible to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 to 70% compared to the thermal equivalent. It travels, on average, less than forty kilometers per day, and does not require recharging every evening. In addition, since a car is immobilized 90% of the time, it is possible to stagger charging throughout the day, offering preferential rates to drivers who plug it in when the network becomes overcapacity. It could even participate in the electricity network by returning part of the energy it has stored. However, faced with the climate emergency, electrification will not be enough. The European Commission is wrong to focus exclusively on new vehicles. The vehicle fleet remains twenty times larger than the annual market because the replacement rate is slow: a household keeps its car for more than eleven years. It will therefore take more than twenty years to renew these 250 million automobiles. We must therefore also act on the existing stock.

How to act quickly?

Several levers remain possible in terms of uses. If the driver travels fewer kilometers, carries more passengers, and uses his vehicle better, the CO2 reductions are considerable with existing technologies. Likewise, teleworking presents a good source of sobriety since 60% of emissions are linked to long daily journeys, such as commuting. On a European scale, it appears compatible with 25% of jobs. Generalizing it on this scale, even if only at a rate of two days per week, would result in a 5% reduction in carbon dioxide. To which we could add 9% with the development of carpooling provided that the vehicle occupancy rate is increased from 1.3 to 1.5 people. Then, economical driving which consists of shifting into the right gears, anticipating stops at red lights, etc. represents an additional potential of more than 10%. Same observation when using new generation tires which offer less rolling resistance or even latest generation engine oils. Finally, increasing the proportion of biofuels from waste in gasoline-powered vehicles as well as in diesel represents a potential reduction in CO2 emissions of around 9%. We see that adapting our behavior through small gestures will take the automobile onto a more virtuous slope. A recent note from Fisita estimates that all of these cumulative measures would make it possible to reduce CO2 emissions by around 35%, equivalent to converting 110 million thermal vehicles into electric versions out of the 250 million in the European fleet.