Electric cars are on the rise in cities. Can power grids cope?
In 2030, the sale of petrol and diesel cars in Sweden will be banned. This is great news for the environment, but it may cause some challenges. For the first ¾ of the year, electric vehicles made up 28% of the market in Sweden, with 56,559 fully electric or hybrid vehicles sold. Although this is great news for helping the environment, and reducing carbon emissions, there may be some problems with charging these cars. Right now, there are around 5,000,000 passenger cars in Sweden, and they will need to gradually be replaced by electric cars by 2030. With this huge change in the type of cars being bought, there needs to be public or private electric charging stations for the cars. In Stockholm, Sweden, there are fewer than 4,000 public charging stations, but they will eventually need 25,000 by 2030. Other than the lack of chargers, where the charging stations are going also raises concerns. Right now, the demand for electric charging stations is still low, so investors are wary of investing. Hand in hand with that, the people who would buy electric cars need charging stations in place in order to charge their cars. Limited charging stations could halt the sales of electric vehicles.
Along with concerns about the use of the electric charging stations, there seem to be concerns about Sweden’s power grid, and the distribution of these electric chargers throughout the EU. The issue with the distribution of these power stations is that there are concerns about only the wealthier, Western areas of the EU getting these power stations. That means that for most automakers, they will have to focus their efforts in the Western parts to meet the carbon reduction targets. Companies, backers, and private investors will have to make sure that there are enough power stations throughout the EU to promote sales of electric cars in more than just the wealthier, Western member states. The concerns about the power grid in Sweden is that it is robust, but old. It may not be able to meet the demands of consumers in 2030, especially when everyone needs to charge their cars. Officials are trying to combat this problem by informing consumers to charge their cars at less busy times of the day. People can also use their old car batteries to charge their electric cars. Fortunately, there are plans to spend up to 150 billion Swedish Krona to rebuild about 3,107(around a third of the grid) miles of the power grid by 2030.
Overall, I think that this article was very informative and interesting. I knew about the EU’s efforts to combat climate change, but this is a huge step in the right direction. Although there are challenges, I am very interested to see how this will turn out, and if/when it will be replicated in other high-emission countries such as Russia, China, and the United States.