Winter Performance of Electric Vehicles in Canada: A Life Cycle Assessment of GHG Emissions Under Canadian Climate Conditions

Abstract

Although Battery Electric Vehicles (EVs) will be a part of the reduction plan for transport emissions in Canada, their cold-weather driving performance has raised questions about whether they are still more environmentally friendly than traditional gasoline and diesel cars in Canada's colder regions. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of cumulative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for a representative mid-sized electric vehicle (EV) and a mid-sized gasoline internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle is presented here, which considers both embodied manufacturing emissions and operational emissions under a winter efficiency penalty calibrated using real-world Canadian data. Three typical provinces have been selected for analysis to represent the full range of grid carbon intensity in Canada (Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta). The two seasonal scenarios are an all-winter worst-case and a four-season blended case. The ecological breakeven distances in Quebec and Ontario are about 46,100-51,900 km, and in Alberta, due to different emission factors of the provincial grids, they reach as high as 166,100-212,900 km. The EV's ecological advantage is available in all three provinces but is not yet realised in the high-carbon grid areas. A ±30% sensitivity analysis shows that the provincial electricity emission factor and battery carbon intensity are the main uncertainty drivers. The results support the deployment of electric vehicles as a national climate strategy and indicate that grid decarbonisation in high-carbon grid provinces, such as Alberta, is also required to complement this.