Life Cycle Environmental Effect Of Electric Vehicle Charging Facilities

With the rapid growth of automobile ownership in China,environmental problems such as energy consumption and pollutant emissions make electric vehicles become the focus of the future automobile industry.As an indispensable auxiliary facility for electric vehicles,the environmental effect caused by the large-scale construction of charging facilities has become an issue that cannot be ignored.Many scholars have studied the environmental effect of electric vehicles,in order to provide suggestions for the government policy in transportation,clean energy and so on.However,in the existing relevant studies,the evaluation of life cycle environmental effect of charging facilities is not perfect.In this paper,the life cycle of charging facilities is divided into the fuel cycle(Well-to-Wheels,WTW)and the charging pile cycle by referring to the method of life cycle assessment of vehicles.WTW consists of Well-to-Pile(WTP)and Pile-to-Wheels(PTW).The charging pile cycle includes four stages:manufacturing,distribution,use and maintenance and recycling.This paper analyzes the energy consumption and pollutant emissions(CO2,conventional pollutant and particulate matter)of charging facilities in all stages of life cycle.Then the life cycle assessment model for environmental effect of charging facilities is established.By evaluating the environmental effect of different types of charging facilities of life cycle in China,the results show that private charging piles and public AC charging piles have lower energy consumption and pollutant emissions in their life cycle.This is mainly because these two charging piles have less power loss and lighter weight in their life cycle compared with public DC charging piles and public AC-DC integrated charging piles.Therefore,the main influencing factors of environmental effect in the life cycle of charging facilities include the power structure of generation,the power loss of charging facilities and the consumption of raw materials of charging facilities.From the perspective of environmental effect,private charging piles and public AC charging piles should be given priority to promoting in the large-scale construction of charging facilities in China,so as to reduce energy consumption and alleviate environmental harm such as greenhouse effect,photochemical smog,acid rain and haze weather.The life cycle of charging facilities is closely related to electric vehicles.This paper further constructs the life cycle assessment model for environmental effect of electric vehicle system.The electric vehicle system consists of an electric vehicle and charging facilities required during the life cycle of an electric vehicle.Then this paper evaluates the environmental effect of charging facilities in electric passenger car system and electric taxi system,and analyzes the proportion of charging facilities in the electric vehicle system for the environmental effect in the life cycle.The results show that the energy consumption from charging facilities accounts for 8.80%and 11.50%of the total energy consumption of electric passenger car system and electric taxi system in the life cycle,respectively.And the pollutant emissions from charging facilities account for between 0.55%and 4.96%of the total pollutant emissions of electric passenger vehicle system in the life cycle,between 1.41%and 7.30%of the total pollutant emissions of electric taxi system in the life cycle,respectively.Therefore,as a non-negligible part of the life cycle of electric vehicles,charging facilities should be included in the research scope of the life cycle assessment of electric vehicles.The life cycle assessment model for environmental effect of charging facilities established in this paper can not only provide scientific policy suggestions for large-scale construction of charging facilities in China,but also provide references for related studies on assessment of environmental effect of life cycle of electric vehicles.