Cars for sale in Olympia, Wash., in 2012. A panel of experts, asked by Congress in 2010 to investigate whether cars could use 80 percent less fuel and produce 80 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, reported on Monday that the transition won't happen without subsidies, regulations and technology improvements.
Image: Flickr/Jim Belford
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Efforts to drastically slash automobile emissions and fuel use within 40 years don't stand a chance without subsidies, technology improvements and more stringent government standards, according to a report by a panel of experts released Monday.
Congress in 2010 directed the National Research Council to assess the feasibility of reducing both gasoline use and greenhouse gas emissions in cars and light trucks by 80 percent by 2050. The council concluded that goal would be "extremely challenging."
Even hitting an intermediate target – cutting fuel use in half by 2030 – would be "very difficult," the council reported.
"Vehicles must become dramatically more efficient, regardless of how they are powered," said Douglas M. Chapin, an engineer who chaired the committee that wrote the report, in a statement. In addition, alternative fuels must be readily available, cost-effective and produced with low emissions of greenhouse gases, he said.
"Such a transition will be costly and require several decades.... On its own the market would not make this transition," said Chapin, a principal at a Virginia-based consulting company, MPR Associates.
The panel was made up of 19 engineers and other auto and energy experts from academia, industry, private consulting firms and elsewhere.
Four paths
The panel identified four ways to reduce oil use and emissions: More efficient gas-powered engines, and vehicles that use biofuels, electricity or hydrogen. Natural gas vehicles were considered, but their greenhouse gas emissions are too high for the 2050 goal.
There is no "silver bullet," Chapin said. With technologies uncertain, the panel felt the best approach would be to promote a portfolio of vehicle and fuel research and development.
The report made clear the costs of transitioning away from fossil fuels is high. But it also noted the economic benefits of such a transition outweigh the costs.
Still, the transition to alternative vehicles will not be cheap. By 2050, the authors project the manufacturing of hybrid electric and fuel cell vehicles will be cheaper than conventional vehicles, but battery electric and plug-in electric hybrids will still be more expensive.
For consumers, alternative vehicles will still probably be several thousand dollars more than what conventional vehicles cost now, the authors note.
More optimistic
Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, said he was more optimistic than the panel about the move away from fossil fuel.
"Given the strong commitment of the auto industry to efficiency and the strong vehicle policies already in place, one can plausibly argue that the industry is on a trajectory to an 80 percent reduction in 2050," he said in an e-mail.
Cars and light trucks that use gasoline account for about 17 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA.
Under today's federal standards, average vehicle fuel efficiency is set to rise to 54.5 mpg for cars and small trucks by 2025. The authors didn't say what the final number should be, but they noted it would need a "steady increase."
The Union of Concerned Scientists endorsed the report's "no silver bullet" conclusion.
"What we really need is silver buckshot: A suite of policy and technology options that will cut oil use while protecting consumers and strengthening our economy," said Michelle Robinson, director of the group's clean vehicles program, in a statement.
Need sales
The alternative vehicle choices are there now, said Gloria Bergquist, vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry trade association. But the cars are only "one leg of the three-legged stool," she said. The country also needs widely available energy to power alternative vehicles – such as clean diesel, electric charging stations.
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29 Comments
Add CommentThis attitude from the industry that achieving major fuel savings is "extremely challenging" quite simply ignores the myriad of technologies available. I just direct your attention to Armory Lovins as one example here: http://www.smartplanet.com/video/amory-lovins-carbon-fiber-cars-would-cut-oil-dependency/6354495
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"That's not happening yet: After a dozen years on the market, gasoline-electric hybrids – like the Toyota Prius or Chevrolet Volt..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow, I've been looking for those mythical 2001 Chevy Volts for a long time! Seriously, how do gross factual errors like this get into print? But I digress...
First of all, we need to more than DOUBLE the federal gas tax just to hold our crumbling transportation infrastructure together in its current disgraceful state. To get it up-to-date might require another dollar per gallon tax.
However, "18-wheelers" or "big-rigs" or whatever cause the vast majority of damage to our roads because of their outsized mass and miles traveled. The artificially low diesel fuel costs they pay is an enormous subsidy to the trucking industry while the rest of America's motorists get stuck driving over more and more of the potholes these trucks gouge out. Putting more of the road infrastructure cost burden on the trucking industry would shift more cargo onto freight rail, so we should build more rail and update our existing freight lines to accomodate the increased throughput. Could electrified rail lines double as power line corridors too? I don't know, but it's an exciting possibility.
As for light duty vehicle fuel use, there is a lot of room for improvement outside of the vehicle. Redesinging our cities so that there are more transportation options besides a personal car is a good start. Walkable & bikeable high-density development can decrease fuel use, improve health and lower the environmental impact of our built environment. Convenient mass transit helps as well.
Cutting subsidies to oil companies and charging a carbon tax to help cover the costs of dealing with climate change will keep oil-derived fuels from being artificially expensive. Increasing the import duties on imported fuels to help cover the cost of our military presence in the Middle East keeps these actions from being a blatant subsidy to fossil fuels as well.
As for the vehicles themselves, investing in research eventually makes efficient vehicles more competitive and incentivising their deployment helps manufacturers move down the learning curve, making them even more competitive. A more widespread fueling infrastructure for alt-fuel vehicles helps too.
We need to recognize that combustion-powered vehicles have benefitted from over a century of government support and industry development. Expecting alternatives to compete against that without help is hopelessly naïve.
Reality once again gets in the way of the vision of the folks who believe that humanity needs to stop atmospheric CO2 concentrations from rising worldwide.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA fossil fuel tax in the US would have benefits to the US government by increasing revenue, but it most certainly would do nothing to reduce consumption in other countries. The key issue is the 3 billion people who do not currently have access to electricity or personal transportation. That is what will drive worldwide emissions.
It doesn't matter. The proverbial handwriting is on the wall. Fossil fueled vehicles are at the end of their life cycle. Tesla has shown us the way. And it's just the start. Within a decade we'll have efficient all wheel drive EVs where acceleration is only limited by the traction of the tires you can afford. Only nostalgic collectors and hobbyists will burden themselves with the primitive vehicles we have now. Their mileage is a moot point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo how well is Tesla doing in the market? Answer very poorly
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisElectric vehicles are very interesting, but your 10 year estimate seems highly optimistic given the current state of battery and capacitor technology
Reality once again gets in the way of the deniers claiming that we can pump billions of tons of GHGs into the atmosphere and expect nothing to happen. 98% of climate scientists and over 99% of scientific papers written in the past 20 years agree that anthropogenic GHG emissions are changing the climate. Sorry, but serious debate on this is over.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTaxing carbon in the USA will lower the 20% of global emissions that we are responsible for. Finally showing some global leadership on climate instead of being one of the biggest roadblocks to an international agreement on GHG emissions will further reduce climate disruption. Having the policy certainty to develop clean energy and efficiency technologies will unleash the potential of the market, allowing us to help those 3 billion people in the developing world leapfrog past the dirty energy paradigm and into a clean energy future.
How is Tesla doing very poorly? They are ramping up production of the Model S and their ENTIRE production run for 2013 is already sold out. Where are you getting this nonsense?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually the problem is already solved by the Chinese using HTGR nukes (2017 service) turning hydrogen into synfuels like zero carbon ammonia at less than a buck a gallon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuke power is far less dangerous and even at today's prices - 30% the cost of production - cheaper than gas, now pushed by Obama and his Big Oil shills at the DOE.
Gas actually produces more GHG's than coal when Methane leaks are added in, and while cleaner than coal still kills lots of folks with its deadly fine particulate and radon gas emissions.
If proposed utility gas plants were required to include a guaranteed gas price over the life of their plant in their proposals to regulators, no gas power plants would ever be built.
The only roadblock in the west are our 100% corrupt politicians and media all on Big Oil's pad. It will likely take the destruction of Western economies by penny a kwh BRIC country advanced nuclear before we can throw off the yoke of Big Oil corruption and join their nuclear dirt cheep clean energy future.
Any increase in the viability of alternate energy just lowers the price of fossil fuels...making them more in demand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's largely irrelevent what the USA does. The biggest vehicle market is now China and India will be second.
These countries will have no meaningful 'real' world standards....it's all token on paper. A barrel of oil or ton of coal burned in a western country is done cleaner than elsewhere. If an Iraqi oilfield ships a barrel of oil to China instead of the USA, there is greater potential emissions.
Overall fossil fuel consumption will not drop. There are huge markets to gobble up production and invest in new production. Chinese companies are investing tens of billions in Australian coal and Canadian oil. There are no environmental savings but just the shifting of the sources of emissions from regulated to largely unregulated markets.
Carbon taxes and other artificial regulation helps how? It just shifts production to India, Brazil, etc. An orange farmer in Florida can't compete with one in Brazil for sales of fruit to Canada if his input costs are higher. This in turn impacts scale of production, market influence, etc. and further weakens the Florida farmer's solvency. The Brazil farmer then produces even more oranges. A downward cycle begins in an industry and soon it is eclipsed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIncreasing costs might be fine in a world in which there was no competition but it won't work in one of over 180 independent nations. With the exception of China and India, individual countries are no longer large enough markets to be self-sustained leaders in technology. Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, ford, Boeing need to tap into world market of 7 billion to remain cutting edge.
How many years in a row did Amazon lose money? Have you looked at Tesla's sales and revenue projections? Do you see something that others haven't? The stock is up 83% since the IPO, so there are PLENTY of investors that would disagree with you. Why don't you try to short the stock and see how well you do?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow can a problem ALREADY be solved by an experimental reactor that isn't ALREADY in service? Do you know how crazy that sounds? You do know that China is struggling to increase nuclear power from 1% of its current electricity supply to 6% by 2020 right? Many independent analysts don't think they can even manage this much. And you think a TINY experimental reactor is going to solve all their problems? What is it fueled by, unicorn horns?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo by your logic, an overweight person suffering from heart disease and diabetes shouldn't worry about eating doughnuts because they already had a burger with supersized fries? This just doesn't make sense. The problem is cumulative emissions into the atmosphere and you are correct in saying that it doesn't really matter WHERE those emissions come from. However, a ton of carbon is a ton of carbon. It also doesn't matter WHERE reductions come from either! Every ton counts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo if we institute a carbon tax and clean up our act, we can then sell the clean approaches we've developed to BRIC and other countries as well. Since China is already choaking under a cloud of pollution, the potential for growth in this area is immense.
Trade policy should tack on the cost of carbon from countries that refuse to charge their own fees. Just like how the VAT is handled in Europe, countries thinking they could get by without charging for carbon pollution will be abandoning massive revenues to the importing countries that will just charge carbon fees anyway. It is a self-policing system because there is nothing to gain by trying to bypass it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOECD countries are responsible for 30 - 40% of global emissions and the demand for imported goods in these countries drives another 30 - 40% of global emissions. ALL of the OECD, with the EXCEPTION of the USA, are willing or are ALREADY party to emissions reductions arrangements. If you think policy will have no impact on emissions and climate change, you are either willingly or unwillingly ignorant of what is actually going on.
"The biggest vehicle market is now China and India will be second."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe India: The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, or SIAM, reported a 4.6 percent drop in car deliveries in the 11 months through February, 2013.
Re Tesla: Tesla has a near clean sweep of awards and accolades for its new Model S, has been doubling revenue year on year for three years running, has ramped up production from a few dozen units per month last year to over 1,600 per month today. It also has an order book full to the horizon.
There's another car company that followed this trajectory. It's first proper model also was welcomed with rave reviews, had nominal early production (11 in the first full month), and very full order books: Ford's Model T. And just like Tesla, Ford most certainly had its detractors and doom prognosticators as well.
Fantastic comment. Cars must become drastically more efficient (weight & aerodynamics), and subsidies to big oil must be stopped, as well as military deployments to secure "cheap oil..." which cost us $G...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery good observation about road surface damage, which result from "power four" formula, which means the road damage is in function of power 4 (or even 8 and 12). Definitely the trucking industry is getting free pass... and we all are paying for it...
Thank you for pointing all that out...
It is relevant to know bias, or full disclosure, as any court of law or ethical article or journal would require. It is suspicious that you have so much time to post far more than anyone else, especially during working hours that lead to a suspicion that you are being remunerated for your time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, I am pro-Nuclear but I will fully disclose that I do not work in the Nuclear Industry and am not remunerated by even one red cent from them. My support is purely from a moral standpoint - as in I would like to see a future for the next generation, and don't want them to be screwed as they are being to an unfathomable extent which seems to be the ethic of the current generation of corporate & political leaders.
I’m beginning to figure out just what these comment sections are. They are chat rooms where mostly the same people talk to each other. I looked up “internet tough guy” in the Urban dictionary. Many participants here seem to fall into a variation on “internet tough guy”.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the case you are new to SA online and thought the comments might be informative, maybe this observation will save you some time. I take that back. If you are approaching the comments from a "Gorillas in the Mist" standpoint, then reading them might be interesting.
Lest I increase their numbers, I’m logging out.
As has been pointed out numerous times without penetrating the thickness, the Chinese pebble bed unit for 2017 service, is a grid connected 200MW unit, not a tiny experimental reactor. The French had no trouble going from zero to 80% nuke power in the 1980's, nobody doubts the Chinese can do the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes dwbd, sault using logic and all those pesky facts is really unfair!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNope, Sault consistently has avoided logic and "pesky" facts and just repeats falsehoods that I have many times proven wrong and he has yet to come up with any counter-argument, but still repeats the same falsehoods. The only thing Sault is good at is QUANTITY not Quality. Seems somebody is paying him to comment 10X more than anyone else, full-time, while the rest of us have jobs to go to and don't get paid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe our government should not limit fuel economy goals to cars and light trucks. 18-wheelers and large diesel trucks need to be included as well. Large diesel hybrids trucks could already be on the market if our government had proper incentives in place. Also, present day large diesel trucks are not aerodynamic at all. Manufactures of diesel trucks could increase fuel economy drastically by simply making their trucks more aerodynamic. Look up Luigi Colani. He has some futuristic 18-wheeler designs that I'm sure will be copied in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHorrible analogy:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"China's National Development and Reform Commission has indicated the intention to raise the percentage of China's electricity produced by nuclear power from the current 1% to 6% by 2020 (compared to 20% in the USA as of 2008). This will require the current installed capacity of 11.3 GW to be increased to 86 GW (more than France at 63 GW).[3] However, rapid nuclear expansion may lead to a shortfall of fuel, equipment, qualified plant workers, and safety inspectors.[4][5]"
China would have to install MORE nuclear power than France has in TOTAL just to increase their capacity by 5%!
Well, good thing this whole nuclear power thing isn't really working out. The costs keep rising, from building them (see the cost overruns at Vogtle), to decommissioning:
"The cost of cleaning up Canada’s nuclear program has risen dramatically in recent years and Ottawa is being warned another $2.4 billion is needed, bring the total to $6 billion.
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited posted a statement Tuesday saying liability costs will go up by $2.4 billion from $3.6 billion in March of last year."
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/nuclear-waste-cleanup-liability-cost-up-by-2-4b-ottawa-told-1.1203000
Usual nonsense from Big Oil's resident shill.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Chinese economy is much larger than France's was so proportionally its plans are much smaller. The Chinese are very pragmatic so if the nuke expansion works as well as expected it will be accelerated. China regards Western media as pests so press releases are frequently contradictory.
Almost all of AECL cleanup costs are from its medical and research operations half a century ago. Nothing to do with nuke power.
Vogtle costs have increased slightly caused by delays originating with Obama's man on the spot - Jazcko. VC Summer is nominal cost and schedule.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is what 18-wheeler semi trucks should look like:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttps://www.google.com/search?q=colani%20truck&rlz=1C1CHMO_enUS497US497&aq=f&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=8mdKUfiiOaeO2AX95YCwDg&biw=1052&bih=753&sei=9WdKUdSvOMeWqAHGooH4AQ
That's funny! You are accusing others of exactly what you do- you are the troll...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou might want to take the trouble to learn what the term "troll" means before you start joining Sault in resorting to Ad Hominems, instead of genuine argument, of which you have NONE.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPsychological projection...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this