Yes, good catch. I was getting that mixed up with the US EPA's stats[1]. FWIW they say passenger cars account for 58% of all transportation emissions within the US, more than all trucking, flights, and shipping combined. Again, within the US.
"Using a diesel or petrol car produced nine times more carbon than going by train.
The figure was four times more polluting than a train if driving a plug-in hybrid electric car, or almost two-and-a-half times more if using a battery electric car."
tl;dr; car transport is 15% of emissions, we need to cut down at least 55%. So switching to fully electric gets us a quarter way there, but we need other solutions as well
Every time I used a train in the UK on a weekend I had to ride in a diesel bus for part of the journey. I doubt if that is less co2 emitting than driving my electric car.
nonsense. cars, buses, and SUVs (odd distinction, but ok. also why buses?!) account for ~10-15% of global emissions (depending on how you cut it). see https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector.
its great that they're incentivising public transport. Does anyone have any numbers comparing carbon emissions from a population using green public transport vs using electric cars vs using gasoline cars?
~14% of total emissions are from transportation. If there were somehow 100% adoption of electric cars, including replacement of all existing cars on the road, you'd see a reduction of around that amount.
Isn't the whole argument for public transport that it has lower CO2 emissions per passenger-mile than private cars? Electric cars in a country with a high proportion of electricity generated renewably (24% and rising) could be better than diesel busses.
Any calculation on cars that does not factor in commercial trucks is flawed. Over the past two decades, we have seen an enormous increase in commercial freight traffic. The last numbers I remember from [1] estimated that cars account for 40% of tailpipe emissions, whereas trucks account for ~60%, and this was estimate from before the pandemic. I am certain the ratio is more skewed in favour of trucks now.
To the point: 73% of what exactly? 80% of total emissions? 40%? 10%? Given the externalities, it may mean the difference between worthwhile or irrelevant.
Yeah common people think emissions come mostly form cars. Globally all transportation represents like 15% while electricity production is like 25% of our emissions.
Also, you reduce the space that needs converting from {All the cars on Earth} to {All fossil fuel powerplants}. There are ~1 billion cars. I can't find good numbers for coal and gas plants, but it can't be more than a 200k or so.
That's a gigantic improvement in our ability to rapidly reduce CO2 from transportation.
"Transportation makes up the largest share of emissions."1)
Transportation is still only 28%, slightly more than a quarter. Electricity & "industry" account for 50%.
Further, I remember a discussion with the president of Mercedes who was pushed for cleaner cars. He mentioned that one ocean-going freight vessel pollutes more than 450k cars combined (here is an article in that same trend (2).
I love the notion of quiet, electric cars, but the "industry" that pollutes these cars, and the "electricity" that is needed to charge these cars still accounts for 50% of the pollution. So, until ocean freighters are cleaned up, the net effect on pollution will likely be zero.
Transportation accounts for nearly 1/3 of the US's greenhouse gas emissions and has been the fastest growing contributor. The vast majority of that comes from light and medium duty vehicles so personal cars and trucks.
If we stopping building our cities to require driving and electrify where we can, we'll see a huge reduction in GHG emissions.
that is a fallacy. Passenger vehicles are responsible for 10% of global emissions - so whether to drop it 4x (100mpg instead of 25mpg) to 2.5% or drop it to 0% wouldn't matter much. And using renewables for electricity we basically drop emissions to the rounding error around 0.
Cars are around half of oil consumption. They are a huge part of the transportation industry in terms of CO2 emitted. They are also the most rapidly growing part.
reply