Car change puts brakes on Biden’s plans
For US President Joe Biden to reach his ambitious goal of slashing America’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, huge reductions will have to come from somewhere other than one of the worst culprits: auto exhaust pipes.
That’s because there are just too many petrol-powered passenger vehicles in the US – roughly 279 million – to replace them in less than a decade, experts say.
In a typical year, automakers sell about 17 million vehicles nationwide. Even if every one of the new ones were electric, it would take more than 16 years to replace the whole fleet.
Also, vehicles now remain on America’s roads for an average of nearly 12 years before they’re scrapped, which means that petrol-fuelled vehicles will predominate for many years to come.
Last year, fewer than 2 per cent of new vehicles sold in the US were fully electric.
‘‘If every new vehicle sold today was an electric vehicle and it was entirely powered by renewable energy overnight, it would take 10 years or more for us to achieve a 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,’’ said Chris Atkinson, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of smart mobility at Ohio State University.
Other sectors of the US economy would have to slash greenhouse gas emissions deeply to make up the shortfall
in the auto industry.
Transportation as a whole, which includes ships and airplanes, is the single largest source of such pollution. Of the nearly 6.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that were emitted in the US in 2019, transportation produced 29 per cent. Next was electricity generation at 25 per cent.
To increase sales of electric vehicles, the Biden Administration plans to spend US$15 billion to build half a million charging stations by 2030, as well as offering unspecified tax credits and rebates.
Biden’s goals could be reached with significant cuts in electric power plant emissions as well as reductions in methane pollution from oil wells and cuts in hydrofluorocarbons used in refrigeration and air conditioning, said Kate Larsen, director at Rhodium Group, a research firm.
Even countries that are ahead of the US in electric vehicle adoption, mainly in Europe and China, estimates are that sales still won’t put enough electric vehicles in use to reach 2030 carbon dioxide reduction goals, according to a Boston Consulting report.