Light-Duty Vehicle Fuel Economy, Energy Use, and CO2 Global Trends and Opportunities

This paper provides an overview of recent trends in light-duty vehicle fuel economy around the world, new projections, and a discussion of fuel economy technology opportunities and costs over the next 30-50 years – all in the context of recent IEA projections of global energy use (especially oil use) and CO2 emissions. Worldwide transport energy use and CO2 emissions are headed in a very unsustainable direction. The recently published IEA Energy Technology Perspectives 2008 projects baseline transport energy use to increase by 150% between 2005 and 2050, in the absence of strong new measures to change course. Light-duty vehicles (LDV) (cars, small vans and sport-utility-vehicles) comprise nearly 50% of transport energy use and emissions, and so must play a central role in cutting emissions. The good news is that, as discussed in the paper’s second section, there are abundant existing, cost effective technologies available to make light-duty vehicles more efficient. The IEA estimates that the fuel economy (in terms of energy intensity, e.g. L/100km) of new LDVs could, on average, be improved by 50% (fuel use halved) by about 2030 (cutting stock fuel intensity by half by 2050) at low or possibly negative cost, if strong enough measures are put into place around the world. This would cut LDV CO2 emissions in half by 2050 compared to a baseline scenario. Recent and planned fuel economy policy implementation (e.g. US, EU) will help move things in the right direction, but additional policies (and policies in more countries) will likely be needed to achieve the potential and avoid efficiency being “lost” to ongoing increases in vehicle size, weight and power. (A policy discussion is not included here but is available in an expanded IEA paper).

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Fulton, Lewis M
  • Cazzola, Pierpaolo
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2009-1-11 to 2009-1-15
• Date: 2009

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: DVD
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 33p
• Monograph Title: TRB 88th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Alternate fuels; Carbon dioxide; Environmental impacts; Exhaust gases; Fuel conservation; Fuel consumption; Globalization; Pollutants
• Uncontrolled Terms: Energy efficiency; Light duty vehicles
• Subject Areas: Energy; Environment; Highways; I15: Environment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01126845
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 09-2698
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Apr 17 2009 9:56AM