Carsharing’s Life-Cycle Impacts on Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

This paper examines the life-cycle inventory impacts on energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a result of travelers adopting the carsharing mode in U.S. settings where shared-car use is reasonable. Here, households already residing in relatively dense urban neighborhoods with good access to transit and traveling relatively few miles in private vehicles (roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population) are considered good candidates for carsharing. This analysis recognizes the cradle-to-grave impacts of carsharing on vehicle ownership levels, travel distances, fleet fuel economy (partly a result of faster fleet turnover), parking demand (and the associated infrastructure), and alternative mode use. Analytical results suggest that current carsharing candidates reduce their average individual transportation energy use and GHG emissions by approximately 51% upon joining a carsharing organization. Collectively, these individual-level effects translate to roughly a 5% savings in all household transport-related energy use and GHG emissions in the U.S. These energy and emissions savings can be mostly attributed to mode shifts and avoided travel, followed by savings in parking infrastructure demands and fuel consumption. If indirect rebound effects are taken into account (where individuals’ travel-cost savings is then spent on other goods and services), these savings may fall to as little as 3% across all U.S. households.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF20 Bicycle Transportation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Chen, T Donna
  • Kockelman, Kara M
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Energy consumption; Environmental impacts; Life cycle analysis; Modal shift; Parking demand; Pollutants; Savings; Vehicle sharing
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Public Transportation; Vehicles and Equipment; I15: Environment; I90: Vehicles;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01554357
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-4447
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 26 2015 9:49AM