Short-Sighted Climate Goals: It Is Impossible to Expand Electrical Grids to Support EV Conversion
The net-zero crowd wants the United States and Europe to transition to all-electric vehicles by 2035. Achieving that goal would require an enormous expansion of the electrical grid, on a scale that is both financially and physically impractical, if not impossible.
Several reports estimate that a full conversion to electric vehicles would increase overall electricity demand by about 10%, a level they already conclude would be difficult to support. However, those projections overlook a number of factors. In reality, a complete conversion would likely increase electricity demand by multiples of those estimates, transforming an already impractical undertaking into an impossible one.
At the end of 2024, the global electric car fleet had reached almost 58 million, about 4% of the total passenger car fleet. That fleet consumed around 180 TWh of electricity in 2024, representing approximately 0.7% of total global final electricity consumption. Scaling from those figures, if every vehicle on earth were converted to electric, the straight-line projection yields roughly 3,000 to 3,400 TWh of additional annual electricity demand, which is against the IEA’s reported global consumption of 30,856 TWh in 2024 represents approximately a 10% increase.
That straight-line projection is almost certainly a severe undercount, for five structural reasons.
First, long-haul trucking is nearly absent from current EV data. Heavy-duty long-haul trucks generate more than half of road freight oil demand today, yet remain one of the hardest vehicle segments to electrify. In terms of power demand, full truck electrification could add approximately 3% to global electricity consumption by 2050, on top of passenger vehicle demand, with fuel consumption for heavy trucks running 2 to 3 times higher per vehicle than for light trucks, and yearly distances 3 to 5 times greater in long-haul applications. Current EV electricity consumption figures are built almost entirely on passenger car data and carry none of that freight burden.
Second, the second-car effect suppresses current per-EV mileage figures. A large share of today’s EV owners use their electric vehicle for short trips and a second Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle for longer range, meaning total household vehicle-kilometers are split across two powertrains. Full conversion eliminates that division; every mile, including the longest trips, must be covered by electricity alone.
Third, plug-in hybrids inflate the current consumption baseline in the wrong direction. Many vehicles counted in current EV electricity statistics are PHEVs drawing only partial electricity, with the remainder supplied by gasoline. A full conversion replaces those vehicles with 100% electric demand, making current per-vehicle electricity figures an understatement of what full-EV usage would require.