Do you know the greenwashing or climate greenwashing? It’s when any entity (company, government) falsely makes you believe that its services, products or policies have beneficial environmental attributes. In fact, it is a marketing technique using ecology in a misleading way.
We are in the century of greenwashing. It has become profitable to drape yourself in Mother Nature. We deceive you with labels like: “made with recycled plastic”, “carbon neutral”, “eco-responsible”, “green”, verbiage. And you buy, because you care about the future of this planet.
In reality, many of these labels are false. Some entities buy carbon credits, supposedly plant trees, but do nothing concrete to reduce their impact. In fact, they buy the right to pollute.
In this market of good conscience, the worst are those who give themselves the “zero carbon” or “zero emissions” label. For what? Because it doesn’t exist!
Do you really believe that a vehicle, even an electric one, or any other product can carry this “zero emissions” label? From manufacturing to use to disposal, there is no vehicle in this world that does not have a carbon footprint.
So, this “controlled designation”, if I may say so (better to laugh about it this holiday season), is climate greenwashing.
So-called zero-emission vehicle (ZEV)
In Canada, therefore in Quebec, ZEVs come in three types of vehicles: battery electric (BEV) which runs only on electricity; those with fuel cells which run on hydrogen and plug-in hybrids (VHR).
In production, a ZEV generates more tonnes of CO2, or twice as much, as a gasoline vehicle, largely because of the batteries. In addition, their manufacture requires several metals, including lithium and cobalt. Although consideration remains regarding the potential exhaustion of these resources in the event of a dramatic increase in ZEV production, recycling remains a solution.
In use, an electric vehicle with a small battery produces fewer GHGs than its gasoline counterpart. However, this observation is only valid for provinces and countries where hydroelectricity is the source of energy. The analysis is quite different for those that operate on nuclear and coal.
All this to say… please, stop taking us for suitcases!
Let’s call a spade a spade
While our governments use the term “zero emissions”, the UN prefers “net zero emissions” to define a GOAL of reducing GHGs “to a level as close to zero as possible”.
There is, all the same, a difference between saying that we want to achieve a target close to zero and giving products, namely electric, hydrogen or hybrid vehicles, a name (VEZ), or even a gasoline ( smile) “zero emissions”.
There are different techniques of greenwashingthe false label is one of them.