Car emissions: do we have unrealistic aims?
Let’s delve right in. In this short article, I want to focus right now on environmental emissions. I’m a car guy, and I also fully support our transition to a less world-damaging economy and livelihood.
But the reality is, travelling long distances quickly requires energy, and this energy must come from somewhere. In the past, humans relied on animals (oxen, horses, mules, etc.) and weather conditions like wind for sailing.
Since the Industrial Revolution, that’s flipped upside down. We now depend on fossil fuels, a source more directly useful for generating mass amounts of energy, and seek to overcome the natural barriers put in front of us.
These days, more and more people are increasingly aware of the damage fossil fuels almost certainly do to our environment. Governments and lobby groups push EVs (of various kinds) as the most effective solution.
But are they?
In any attempt to overcome a problem, the individuals involved set SMART goals. The ‘R’ stands for ‘Realistic’. And I don’t know if our ambition for ‘net-zero’ (from a transportation standpoint alone) meets that criterion.
What type of car… or no car?
If you’re worried about carbon emissions and harming the environment, one solution could be a more fuel-efficient car or an EV. However, a far more effective conclusion — and one I can say with 100% certainty — is to not drive. Walk, ride a bicycle. Even taking a bus or train is much, much kinder to the environment on a per-person basis.
Fuel economy is a similar topic. Some people are obsessed with getting the highest mpg or lowest l/100km possible. I understand — fuel is expensive! But most of these wild and wacky techniques from probably-shouldn’t-be-trusted online blogs make your car much less safe.
For instance, I’ve seen some people put the car in Neutral or dip the clutch to go around roundabouts or coast. This doesn’t save fuel — in fact, because of how engines work, it actually uses more — and, more importantly, it drastically reduces your car control, making an accident much more likely.
The best way to keep fuel economy to a maximum? Get regular servicing, keep your tyres inflated, and drive smoothly and relatively slowly. Or, even better, walk.
I recently had a similar conversation with a Canadian car detailer, asking how he recommended protecting a vehicle’s paint against the salty winters. His answer was to the effect of the following: “Wash and wax your car all the time. If you don’t want to do that, don’t go anywhere.”
You can take these ideas and apply them to anything. One that springs to mind is sugar and sweeteners. In the UK, in an effort to cut down on obesity rates, the government introduced a ‘sugar tax’. This means most sweet drinks and snacks contain alternative artificial sweeteners.
Are these sweeteners really better for us than sugar? Well, maybe — maybe not. Time will tell. But the best health change any of us could make is removing sugar and sweeteners from our lives. It isn’t necessarily that one is better or worse than the other. We know there’s an undoubtedly better choice than either! Nothing!
Can a car ever be emission-free?
Okay, I can’t see the future, but I’m willing to make a public assumption here.
No. Cars can never be emission-free.
Why is that? Because making and using anything — any energy exchange — ‘emits’ something.
Here’s the most obvious example. Let’s compare some generally accepted (unsourced) figures for alternative transportation methods covering one kilometre.
(These figures only concern the ‘fuel’ aspect, not the lifetime emissions.)
- Car (gasoline/petrol): ~180g CO2 (per vehicle)
- Passenger plane: ~101g CO2 (per person)
- BEV: ~78g CO2 (charged on the US grid — less elsewhere)
- Bus: ~30g CO2 (per person)
- Train: ~23g CO2 (per person)
- Walking: ~12g CO2 (because, friend, breathing, exertion and eating. Yep. Fuel.)
- Bicycle: ~5g CO2 (less effort to travel further compared with walking)
Some intriguing considerations there! For example, fascinatingly, an aeroplane is less polluting than a car (once you account for all its passengers and the distance one typically flies).
We’ll come back to these statistics in the next section, but I want to draw your attention to one conclusion. Nothing is ‘emission-free’. It’s physically impossible. Even if you walk or pedal everywhere, you’re still technically releasing carbon into the atmosphere (albeit, of course, extensively less!).
And, as mentioned, these statistics don’t take the manufacturing process into account, and they’re based on generic research rather than an expert database, so take them with a pinch of salt.
Do we need to travel?
Let’s continue thinking about the difference between the carbon emissions of passenger planes and cars, then.
At face value, it sounds like an excellent justification for taking a flight instead of a long road trip. To be honest, I’d be down for that.
But it ignores the real-life-ness of the situation. Do you have to travel 1,000 miles quickly? Or are you only travelling 1,000 miles because the transportation is there, accessible, and ready?
Because whether you drive or fly, sail or swim, we all know that the most environmentally friendly thing to do is stay where you are.
Sure, many mitigating circumstances exist: family living abroad, emergencies, and the occasional relaxing break. But do we need to fly or drive as much as we do? Probably not.
This leads me to my final point. Do we travel because we need to? Or because we want to? Or just because we can?
As our cars become more eco-conscious and emit fewer carbon emissions — as they have been doing for a few decades now — it will, in my mind, simply mean people travel more. See the imaginary scenario below.
Person 1: “Let’s drive for a weekend break 200 miles away.”
Person 2: “No, my car is too bad for the environment.” [Person 2 is very nice and totally unrealistic…]
Person 1: “That’s okay, we’ll take mine. It emits way less.”
Here, we see three possibilities: taking Person 1’s car, Person 2’s car, or not going. Because Person 2 decided their vehicle was too damaging to the environment, they might have voted to not go on their weekend trip. But Person 1 has a much less polluting car, so they made the call to go.
Ultimately, what’s the best scenario for the environment? Not taking the trip. It’s not like they must go or were even considering it before the option became available. But instead, because of the greater availability of resources, they actually use more than they would have otherwise.
You can always trust people to do the laziest thing available to them. That was very sound and very accurate advice I was given some years ago, and it holds true almost every time. I expect to see precisely that as EVs and hydrogen-engined vehicles become more widespread.
We aren’t solving our problems; we’re just facilitating new ones. If we really want to make a difference in the environment, the real answer is a change of the human mindset, travelling selectively instead of ‘just because we can’.
I’m very aware that I’m sitting here in a warm house, typing away on my laptop about how to solve all the world’s problems, and that I myself drive about 24,000 km and make at least two return trips over the Atlantic per year. I’m as guilty as anyone.
I’m also very aware that this tiny little article will make very little difference to the world as a whole.
So, in your goals — and mine — to work towards a greener future, the best solution — one you can implement right now — isn’t to exchange your car for something marketed as more sustainable, but simply to travel less often and more efficiently. And sure, do all those other things too, but remember that it all comes down to not the technology, but what we do with it.
