Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have cast a harsh new light on the UK’s flagship green policies, arguing that electric cars and heat pumps have delivered no proven carbon savings so far under current grid conditions. Their “sanity check” challenges the belief that simply swapping engines and boilers for plugs and compressors will cut emissions in a power system still strongly backed by gas. This article unpacks what that claim means, how it clashes with earlier research that praised battery cars, and what it suggests for the next phase of net zero planning.
What the ‘sanity check’ actually says
The starting point is blunt. According to a recent “sanity check” of current UK conditions, scientists warn that electric cars deliver “no proven carbon savings” because the power that charges them often comes from gas-fired plants rather than a large surplus of wind or solar. The same warning is applied to heat pumps, which draw power from the same grid and therefore inherit its emissions profile. In this view, the UK has traded tailpipes and boiler flues for taller chimneys at gas stations, without yet showing clear, measured cuts in overall carbon output.
The authors go further, arguing that UK electric vehicles and heat pumps may offer little or no measurable benefit even with a decade of further rollout if the grid does not change. A summary of the work notes that the researchers find “no proven carbon savings” from these technologies and warn that, on present trends, they could still offer “no measurable emissions savings” by 2035, when the UK is meant to be deep into its net zero pathway, according to coverage of the. Their modelling points out that if the grid’s average emissions stay close to today’s levels, the carbon intensity of an electric car could remain around 72 grams of CO2 per kilometre, while a typical petrol car, once upstream fuel emissions are counted, might sit nearer 98 grams per kilometre, leaving only a narrow margin for clear savings.
Net zero strategy under fire
At the heart of the new work is a charge that current net zero policy is “misplaced”. The study argues that the UK is prioritising electrification of cars and heating before it has enough clean generation to feed them. In plain terms, ministers have focused on the devices that plug into the socket rather than the mix of power behind the socket itself. That criticism matters because it questions not just one technology but the sequencing of the entire transition, and it suggests that counting devices may be easier than tracking real-world emissions.
According to reporting on the study, the UK’s choice to expand electric demand ahead of clean supply locks in extra load on a grid still supported by gas and delays measurable savings from EVs and heat pumps. Professor Alan Drew is cited as warning that policymakers are banking on future emissions cuts that have not yet materialised, a concern detailed in the institutional press release. The authors point out that the UK power sector still emitted around 603 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour at peak fossil-heavy times in recent years, compared with much lower figures in countries with more hydro or nuclear, and argue that tying net zero targets to such a grid risks turning climate policy into a box-ticking exercise.
A narrow UK lens on EV emissions
The core research that sparked the current debate comes from a Queen Mary University London study that uses a narrow UK data set. According to a technical review, the authors focus on present British grid conditions and specific driving patterns rather than a wide international sample or long-term projections. That makes sense if the question is “what is happening on the ground in the UK right now,” but it also means the findings are tightly bound to today’s power mix and policy choices, which may look very different in ten or twenty years.
More importantly, that same review notes that the Queen Mary study compares EV charging emissions to tailpipe exhaust only, instead of weighing full upstream emissions on both sides. In practice, that means the analysis sets the carbon from generating electricity for EVs against the direct exhaust from petrol cars, without fully counting the emissions from extracting, refining and transporting fuel. Critics argue that this choice can exaggerate the apparent emissions from electric vehicles and downplay the hidden footprint of internal combustion, a concern laid out in detail in a critical assessment. When upstream emissions are included, some analysts estimate that a typical UK petrol car could be responsible for about 61 grams of CO2 per megajoule of fuel energy, while an EV charged on the current grid might be closer to 50–55 grams per megajoule, suggesting that the “no benefit” claim may depend heavily on where the system boundary is drawn.
Clashing with earlier climate studies
The “sanity check” framing does not arrive in a vacuum. It runs directly into earlier research that found battery cars clearly cleaner than petrol models over their lifetimes. One widely cited study reported that electric cars produce less CO2 than petrol vehicles, even when the power mix includes fossil fuels, and that conclusion has been used to support large-scale EV rollouts. That work also noted that some individuals and governments had started to question whether electric car technologies were worth expanding, precisely because of concerns about grid emissions, and set out to address that doubt by comparing many regions with different power mixes.
Another major piece of research went further, stating that fears that electric cars could actually increase carbon emissions are a damaging myth. That study argued that, across a wide range of power systems, battery vehicles still come out ahead on climate impact compared with petrol cars, and described the idea that they are worse for the climate as a myth that needed to be corrected, as reported by both the BBC’s science coverage and a separate environmental report. The new UK-focused claims that electric cars deliver “no proven carbon savings” therefore sit in direct conflict with the finding that electric cars produce less CO2 than petrol vehicles overall. For readers, this clash can be confusing, but it also reflects two different questions: how EVs perform in theory over decades, and how they perform in one country’s power system right now.
Grid timing, heat pumps and green hydrogen
Once you accept that timing matters, the study’s prescription starts to look less like an attack on EVs themselves and more like a call to reorder priorities. The authors argue that the UK should first build a power system with significant surplus clean generation, then scale up electric vehicles and heat pumps into that cleaner grid. That means more wind, solar and other low-carbon sources, but also better ways to store and shift energy so that clean power is not wasted when demand is low and then replaced by gas when demand is high. They suggest that, without this shift, the combined extra demand from EVs and heat pumps could reach 698 petajoules per year by the mid-2030s, stressing a system that still relies on fossil fuels.
To make that shift, the study suggests introducing technologies that can absorb large surpluses of renewable energy, such as green hydrogen production, as part of a strategy to focus on the bottlenecks that matter. In this view, EVs and heat pumps become part of a wider system that includes storage, flexible demand and new industrial uses for excess power, rather than stand-alone climate fixes. The authors also argue that UK electric vehicles and heat pumps may offer little benefit even with a decade of further development if the grid behind them does not change, a warning summarised in sector-focused reporting. They estimate that, without deeper decarbonisation, the grid could still emit around 593 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour at key times in the 2030s, leaving little room for electrification to shine.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
