Carbon Burden From US Cars Increasing

11 August 2005

CO2 per vehicle. This chart is an inverse image of the EPA fuel economy chart. (I.e., as fuel economy decreases, emissions increase.)

A new report from Environmental Defense finds that total annual CO₂ emissions from US cars and light trucks have increased 25% above 1990 levels (through 2003). Both the total emissions and average emissions per vehicle continue to rise.

The sizeable increase is due to multiple factors: stagnating fuel economy (earlier post), the growth in market share held by light trucks, and an increase in vehicle miles travelled.

This CO₂ emissions level...represents net growth of 64% from 1970 and a 25% increase from the 1990 level, a common base for climate policies. Nevertheless, the 64% growth in carbon emissions is much less than the 160% jump in vehicle miles of travel from 1970 to 2003 because of the rapid improvement in new vehicle fuel economy between 1974 and 1981.

The report, Automakers’s Corporate Carbon Burdens, updates an earlier version published in 2002, and extends the analysis through 2003.

Key findings of the report for the six largest automakers (which account for 87% of US sales) are:

• Nissan’s new fleet-average CO₂ emissions rate increased the most among the Big Six firms, jumping 8.4% between 1990 and 2003.

• Ford’s performance was second worst, with its average CO₂ emissions rate rising 7.7%.

• DaimlerChrysler’s rose by 6.8%.

• GM’s rose by 6.3%.

• Honda’s rose 5.7%.

• Toyota’s rose 2.9%.

General Motors and Ford—with the largest share of the market—have the largest total new fleet CO₂ emissions. GM’s vehicles sold in 2003 will emit 6.4 million tons of carbon annually, the biggest carbon burden among automakers.

The highest and lowest values in each column in the table below are in bold.

Resources:

• Automakers’s Corporate Carbon Burdens