The paper analyses how E-mobility experts understand and address the extra-local impacts of urban E-mobility, and makes recommendations on the scope of IA for urban electric mobility policy.
Electrifying mobility is a high priority in urban sustainability agendas because it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve urban quality of life through lower air emissions and noise. However, electric mobility requires significant amounts of minerals for batteries, other vehicle parts and associated infrastructure. Extracting these minerals has a range of social and environmental impacts. In most cases, the cities where electric vehicles circulate are far from the mines that produce the minerals. So, the social and environmental consequences of mineral extraction occur largely outside cities. Does urban mobility electrification policy take these impacts into account? How can IA contribute to sustainable urban mobility electrification? Drawing on interviews with electric mobility experts in three European cities, this paper finds that discussions of mobility electrification tend to focus on greenhouse gas emissions and human rights impacts when considering extra-local impacts. However, IA research and practice have documented other social and environmental impacts outside city boundaries that receive less attention in urban mobility electrification policy. Through a reflection on boundaries and resource use considerations in IA for urban transition policies, the paper suggests that IA can help address this blind spot by extending assessment boundaries beyond the city to a broader range of upstream social and environmental impacts, thus encouraging more consideration of resource sufficiency in urban mobility electrification.
Dr Diana Arbeláez-Ruiz studies the social and political aspects of resource extraction with emphasis on the energy transition, electric mobility, conflict and peacebuilding, and Indigenous rights.