What is the greenhouse performance of your car?
While much of the national and international debate about strategies to reduce greenhouse emissions are predominantly focused on the need to contain emissions from stationary energy generation (i.e. coal-fired electricity generation), this is not the only sector that needs to be tackled if we are truly to respond to the challenges of climate change. There is also a need to consider the second biggest contributor – transport.
In Europe, for example, transport was recently observed to be the worst performing of all sectors being pursued under the ‘Kyoto’ umbrella. Greenhouse emissions from transport in Europe have grown by 32% since 1990 and represent 28% of all greenhouse emissions from the European Union in 2004 (up from 21% in 1990). Passenger cars and vans account for approximately half of this total.
In 1998, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) committed to reducing CO2 emissions from new cars to 140 g/km by 2008. This target equates to fuel consumption in the order of 6 litres per 100 kilometres for petrol cars and 5.3 litres per 100 kilometres for diesel cars.
The European Federation for Transport and Environment has just released an assessment of the performance of European car manufacturers in meeting this objective and the report How green is your car? makes for some interesting reading.
Given that the transport sector is both the second biggest source of greenhouse emissions in Australia and the fastest growing sector, the European approach might well be worth considering in the Australian context.