Tesla joins global emission tracking program

Tesla, along with a handful of other automakers, have announced that they joining Climate Trace, a global emission tracking program co-founded by former US Vice President Al Gore.

Climate Trace presents itself as a sort of global tracker of emissions. It writes on its website:

We make meaningful climate action faster and easier by harnessing technology to track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with unprecedented detail and speed, delivering information that is relevant to all parties working to achieve net-zero global emissions.

Today, the company opened a new online platform to access its database of global emissions.

With the release, the company confirmed several new partners, including Tesla and GM.

Climate Trace wrote about how Tesla uses its platform:

“As the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles, Tesla is accelerating the world’s transition to a sustainable energy economy. As part of its responsible sourcing strategy, Tesla is collaborating with Climate TRACE to validate primary emissions data from its suppliers of steel and aluminum and to fill gaps where primary data are not yet available.”

Along with Tesla and GM, Polestar is another automaker that jumped on board with the initiative.

Tesla has been putting more effort lately into tracking source materials throughout its entire supply chain in order to get a better understand of the overall impact of its electric vehicle business.

On top of this collaboration with Climate Trace, Tesla is also working with the Battery Passport to track all its battery materials down to the source.

There has been some propaganda about how mining for battery material is resulting in more polluting emissions than gasoline vehicles, but that’s not supported by evidence when accounting for the mining and refining of petroleum and not just the burning of gas in vehicles.

Hopefully, this is going to become clearer for everyone as more data about the entire EV supply chain becomes more easily available thanks to projects like Climate Trace and Battery Passport.