A top official in the Department of Energy (DOE) tweeted Monday that it would not be sustainable to replace all gas-powered cars with electric vehicles (EVs).
“Replacing all of the vehicles in the world with EVs is not sustainable,” DOE Loan Program Director Jigar Shah stated in his tweet. He suggested that broader changes to American urban planning and transportation preferences to shift away from a reliance on driving could be necessary to reach climate-related “sustainability” targets.
“We need to invest in micro mobility, new ownership models, better urban planning models and other improvements,” Shah continued in the tweet. He later linked to an article about alternatives to driving cars in urban environments when corresponding with followers who had replied to him. (RELATED: ‘In Harmony With Nature’: Davos Speaker Touts Cities Where People Don’t Own Cars, Have A ‘Sustainable Lifestyle’)
Replacing all of the vehicles in the world with EVs is not sustainable. We need to invest in micro mobility, new ownership models, better urban planning models and other improvements. We need to improve on the current 4-6% utilization rate of our current car fleet. https://t.co/dmizj0pmHL
— Jigar Shah (@JigarShahDC) September 19, 2023
Shah leads the effort to secure government financing for green energy companies and ventures that struggle to secure funds from private lenders as loan program director for the DOE, according to Utility Dive.
Shah appeared to suggest that vehicle electrification is not the answer to permanently increasing the sustainability of driving, but instead that reducing societal dependence on personal driving will more directly achieve sustainability targets.
In other correspondence with followers on the same thread, Shah wrote that a low car utilization rate “matters because for many people their cost to own a car is higher than their mortgage/rent,” and linked to an August 2022 article by AAA detailing how the annual cost of new car ownership had exceeded $10,000 on average. New car prices have spiked by about 25% over the course of Biden’s first term, and they are likely to continue increasing as his administration’s proposed automobile efficiency standards drive up production costs for manufacturers, according to a report by the Institute for Energy Research.
It is unclear exactly what Shah meant by “new ownership models,” but one paper published in Energy Policy suggests that a “trifecta of disruptions, namely electrification, sharing, and autonomy” of vehicles, could “have profound impacts across developed world economies, from the auto industry, to the labor force, to family lifestyles and more” in ways that align with climate targets.
Neither the DOE nor the White House responded immediately to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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