Sandra Laville reports that global carmakers are among the leading opponents of action on the climate crisis.
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| A question of balance for the planet |
This is according to an exclusive analysis of the way major corporations frustrate or undermine initiatives to cut greenhouse gases. The research, for the Guardian, revealed that since 2015, Fiat Chrysler, Ford, Daimler, BMW, Toyota and General Motors have been among the strongest opponents of regulations to help countries meet the 1.5C warming limit in the Paris agreement. The car industry in the US and Europe has attempted to block, delay and frustrate initiatives to regulate and reduce emissions from the transport sector and slow the move to electric vehicles, the report says.
Edward Collins, author of The Carbon Policy Footprint, said: “Corporations have a profound impact on the climate change agenda not only through physical emissions but through influencing of the climate change policy agendas being introduced by governments around the world.
“The sector has dug in hard to dampen rising vehicle emissions and fuel economy standards. Through their lobbying, auto companies have delayed the transition of a sector that sucks up a huge proportion of oil demand globally...”
Julia Poliscanova, the clean vehicles director for the Transport & Environment NGO, said the automotive industry was seeking to eke out the last profits of the traditional engine by frustrating emissions reduction targets and questioning every aspect of electric technology, from expressing apparent concerns about the affordability for consumers to querying if the infrastructure will be in place in time.
“The car industry has always maximised its profits from its existing models and products for as long as is possible to make their money and delay and work around the regulations,” she said.
“They have known for years – since 2013 – the standards coming in on emissions in 2021. They have had years to prepare but they didn’t. Instead they pushed their SUV market, maximised its sales reach to make profits from these high-polluting, high-margin vehicles for as long as possible and now they are scrambling to comply, claiming how difficult it is to meet the targets, but they only have themselves to blame.”1
Barry Saxifrage reports that Canadians and Americans currently drive the world's most climate polluting cars and trucks.
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| Canadian car, trucks, and GHG |
On average they emit more than 60 tonnes of climate pollution (tCO2) each over their lifespan. To meet our Paris Climate Agreement goals, all our cars and trucks will need to quickly transition to nearly zero-emissions.
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| https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/09/04/analysis/canadian-cars-are-worlds-dirtiest-ev-age-essential |
If you look back at that chart, (MIT did the math and created an interactive chart on their CarbonCounter.com website.) you'll see that only electric vehicles are clean enough to meet future climate targets. And only then if they are also fuelled with fairly clean electricity.
I customized that chart to use the emissions-intensity of the super-clean electricity that most Canadians have access to: 20 gCO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). With electricity that clean, EVs meet future climate targets.
But if the electricity they use is too dirty, then even the cleanest cars no longer meet even the 2040 targets. This is the case with the current electricity supply in Alberta, Saskatchewan and many U.S. coal-burning states.
So the climate task ahead is two pronged. First, we need to stop buying new vehicles that burn gasoline. All new vehicles need to be able to run on zero-emissions energy. The cleanest option available today is a BEV.
Second, we need to clean up the electricity supply in regions where it is still too climate polluting. Let's take a quick look at each of these in turn.2
Jason Markusoff reports that three of Canada’s oil sands giants ran full-page ads in newspapers across the country that made a bold claim that some of their operations are producing oil “with a smaller greenhouse impact than the oil average.” What’s more, the ad suggested, shuttering the oil sands could result in higher carbon fuels replacing their products. Trouble is, a close look at the leading comparisons of the world’s crude oil sources, assembled by governments, academics and private-sector analysts, shows that, overall, producing a barrel of crude from oil sands still emits more greenhouse gas than the average of all sources. The best or newest oil sands developments, whose emissions are below the mean, remain exceptions. “You have a lot of amazing trees here. But it is not the forest,” says Benjamin Israel, senior analyst at the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think tank.
Industry leaders say they’ll continue to pursue ways to drive down the oil sands’ per-barrel emissions (also known as their carbon intensity) with a variety of promising innovations and huge sums invested in further research.3
Oil that can be produced cheaply with low emissions can become more highly sought after. The oil sands have long struggled on both those scores. The energy source fueling the BEV’s will need to produce much less GHG emissions than the bitumen from the oil sands.
References
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