- US Energy Information Agency gives figures of 530 million cars in 1999. Growth rate is taken as 2.4% per year, giving 2 billion cars in 2054. A light-duty vehicle (“car”) consumes 330 gallons of gasoline per year if it goes 10,000 miles with a fuel economy of 30 mpg. Transport statistics from the UK Department for Transport
- The carbon content of a gallon of gasoline is about 2.4 kg (specific gravity = 0.74; 85% carbon by weight), leading to 3 kg of carbon emissions per gallon of gasoline when one adds about 25% carbon “overheads” incurred at production, at the refinery and further downstream. Thus a typical car emits around one ton of carbon into the air each year.
- Therefore, if fuel efficiency is doubled, using these baseline figures, there is the potential to produce one wedge.
- The figures are strongly dependent on the average fuel economy assumed. If it is actually 24mpg, then a wedge is achieved by raising fuel efficiency to 40mpg.
- Since decarbonization of the fuel is strenuous (whether hydrogen or biofuels), it should never happen that we put decarbonized fuel into 30 mpg cars. We would want to change the cars to get 60 mpg first, whereupon one would attribute one wedge to efficiency and one wedge to decarbonization of fuels.
For more information on Road Transport, see the ImpEE Resource "Road Transport".
