This website shows information about electricity generation in the UK
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
As I write most electricity is being produced from burning natural gas, this is a screenshot of live information I took from the Gridwatch website just now. In this screenshot Ccgt is the bar showing the amount of electricity being produced by burning gas... At this moment most electricity in the UK is being produced by burning gas - Over 3 times more electricity from burning gas than from nuclear power stations, over 5 (nearly 6) times more electricity is being produced from burning gas than from all the windfarms combined, over 3 times more than solar (and this is July).
Making a new vehicle produces a lot of CO2. I can convert existing vehicles to run on cleaner LPG (and they can still run on petrol). Existing vehicles have obviously already been built, they don't need to be built because they already exist, keeping them doesn't produce CO2 until we use them, changing them to a new vehicle causes a lot of CO2 to be produced before the new vehicle is even driven.
Even if all the electricity used to charge an electric vehicle were produced without burning anything (so even if charging electric vehicles released no CO2) it would take a long time before buying a new electric vehicle would result in lower CO2 emissions than it's new owner instead deciding not to buy the new EV but to continue to drive their old vehicle which has already (obviously) been built. But while they are burning gas and other things anyway to produce electricity to charge new electric vehicles it is arguably better for the environment just to adapt old vehicles to run on LPG (or even just keep them running on petrol) than it is to produce new vehicles to run on electricity produced by burning gas. I can make vehicles run on natural gas too, exactly the same stuff they burn in power stations to make electricity to charge EVs. Nuclear power is cleaner, maybe government should plan on building future nuclear power stations near the highest concentrations of EV owners lol.
The website allows you to look back at recorded information... today's average, this months, last months, this year's, last year's, etc. In all records most electricity has been produced by burning gas. Even if wind farms and solar could provide all the UK's energy we would still have to have enough gas power stations to keep supply everyone in the UK for those times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Obviously there are plenty times when the sun doesn't shine, every night for starters.
If you run an EV, well done, because you're running on mostly gas. But you probably got rid of a car that had already been built to buy a new EV that was recently built and building the new EV will have created the equivalent of years worth or CO2 emissions from the car you got rid of. If you need to recharge the EV away from home and you don't have some agreed low (or free) rate for charging away from home it will probably cost you more to run per mile than running an equivalent sized vehicle on LPG. Handy to be able to refuel/recharge at home though, I could do that with LPG if I wanted but refuelling/recharging at home isn't a biggy for me when it takes only minutes to refuel with LPG at a forecourt.
