Written on: February 24, 2025
The extraordinary project of addressing climate change cuts across virtually every part of human life, from the way we power our buildings to how we generate our electricity and travel our roadways.
That piece of the puzzle — the transportation sector — is one of the biggest issues that needs to be addressed. Transportation accounts for roughly 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. How do we deal with something so fundamental to modern life as driving?
Depending on how closely you’re following the discussion around decarbonizing our roadways, you may think that electric vehicles (EVs) are the one silver bullet. The bad news is that there is no one solution to this problem, and EVs have huge environmental issues that limit their potential to lower overall carbon emissions. The good news is that there are many other options for lowering the climate impact of our vehicles, including conventional and renewable propane autogas. An “all of the above” strategy for transportation decarbonization begins by thinking critically about the problems of an all-electric path.
Research done by at the University of Cambridge has found that building an EV produces 30% to 40% more emissions than building a conventional, gas-powered car. The main reason involves the batteries in these vehicles.
Lithium-ion batteries require rare earth minerals like lithium, cobalt and nickel. The mining and heating of these minerals is a carbon-intensive process. MIT’s Climate Portal ran the numbers on how intensive:
One popular argument in favor of EVs is that most of their carbon emissions impact is concentrated in the vehicle production process. After that, the logic goes, they have a minimal carbon intensity.
The reality isn’t quite so black and white. Electric vehicles need grid power to recharge, and electricity generation accounts for roughly one-quarter of our country’s GHG emissions. Many of these grids are still heavily dependent on coal for generation, and the average U.S. grid power has a higher carbon intensity (the amount of CO2 emitted to produce a given amount of energy) than gasoline or diesel!
Countless businesses and municipalities are recognizing the need to come up with more innovative decarbonization strategies for their fleets. Often, this is guided by the high cost of electrifying vehicles or their well-documented operational problems, especially in cold weather.
Propane autogas offers immediate carbon emissions reductions at a fraction of the cost of an EV. Conventional propane autogas offers an instant 14% drop in a vehicle’s carbon intensity compared to gasoline or diesel. It also slashes emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter.
Renewable propane autogas derived from recycled and organic feedstocks — which is becoming increasingly prevalent in U.S. and Canadian fleets — provides exceptional carbon emissions reductions. This fuel can lower a vehicle’s carbon intensity by 77% — and further advances in low-carbon feedstocks promise to further shrink this carbon impact.
Simply put, actionable decarbonization solutions like renewable propane autogas need to be more widely available, in addition to finding more ways to lower the carbon impact of EV battery production and U.S. grid electricity.
If you want to keep up with the developments in renewable propane and other renewable liquid gases, please join the Renewable Propane Alliance.