Electric cars no cure for CO2 emission: IEA official

Driving electric cars won’t cause any noticeable reduction in global carbon emissions, Fatih Birol, executive director at the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.

“Today, we’ve 5 million electric cars. Even if there are about 300 million electric cars, with the current power generation system in the world, the impact on CO₂ emission [of these cars] will be less than 1 percent,” Birol said during a panel discussion at the ongoing World Economic Forum at Davos.

“Electricity demand is growing faster than many of us believe. This is mainly driven by rising incomes, especially in emerging markets,” he said while terming 2018 as a big year for energy.

“We will need oil, clean coal, gas and of course renewables, but electricity is the future of energy,” he added.