Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Electrification of light-duty vehicle fleet alone will not meet mitigation targets

Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 1102–1107 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Climate change mitigation strategies are often technology-oriented, and electric vehicles (EVs) are a good example of something believed to be a silver bullet. Here we show that current US policies are insufficient to remain within a sectoral CO2 emission budget for light-duty vehicles, consistent with preventing more than 2 °C global warming, creating a mitigation gap of up to 19 GtCO2 (28% of the projected 2015–2050 light-duty vehicle fleet emissions). Closing the mitigation gap solely with EVs would require more than 350 million on-road EVs (90% of the fleet), half of national electricity demand and excessive amounts of critical materials to be deployed in 2050. Improving average fuel consumption of conventional vehicles, with stringent standards and weight control, would reduce the requirement for alternative technologies, but is unlikely to fully bridge the mitigation gap. There is therefore a need for a wide range of policies that include measures to reduce vehicle ownership and usage.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: 2015–2050 US light-duty fleet cumulative CO2 emissions versus CO2 budget under prospective future developments.
Fig. 2: EV deployment requirements.
Fig. 3: Powering EVs.

Data availability

The datasets generated during the study are available in a Zenodo repository (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3982990) (ref. 60).

Code availability

The source code for the model developed in this study can be accessed on request. It uses the open-source Fleet Life Cycle Assessment and Material-Flow Estimation (FLAME) model, available in a Zenodo repository (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2548012)61.

References

  1. CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion 2019 (International Energy Agency, 2019).

  2. Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2019).

  3. Creutzig, F. et al. Towards demand-side solutions for mitigating climate change. Nat. Clim. Change 8, 268–271 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Leard, B., Linn, J. & Munnings, C. Explaining the evolution of passenger vehicle miles traveled in the United States. Energy J. 40, 25–54 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  5. World Energy Outlook 2018 Executive Summary (International Energy Agency, 2018).

  6. Global EV Outlook 2019: Scaling up the Transition to Electric Mobility (International Energy Agency, 2019).

  7. 2018 Multi-State ZEV Action Plan: Accelerating the Adoption on Zero Emission Vehicles (Multi-State ZEV Task Force, 2018).

  8. Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Program (Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, 2019).

  9. Ellingsen, L. A.-W., Singh, B. & Strømman, A. H. The size and range effect: lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of electric vehicles. Environ. Res. Lett. 11, 054010 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Cox, B., Mutel, C. L., Bauer, C., Mendoza Beltran, A. & van Vuuren, D. P. Uncertain environmental footprint of current and future battery electric vehicles. Environ. Sci. Technol. 52, 4989–4995 (2018).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Marmiroli, B. et al. Electricity generation in LCA of electric vehicles: a review. Appl. Sci. 8, 1384 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Wu, D. et al. Regional heterogeneity in the emissions benefits of electrified and lightweighted light-duty vehicles. Environ. Sci. Technol. 53, 10560–10570 (2019).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Milovanoff, A. et al. A dynamic fleet model of US light-duty vehicle lightweighting and associated greenhouse gas emissions from 2016 to 2050. Environ. Sci. Technol. 53, 2199–2208 (2019).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Martin, N. P. D., Bishop, J. D. K. & Boies, A. M. How well do we know the future of CO2 emissions? Projecting fleet emissions from light duty vehicle technology drivers. Environ. Sci. Technol. 51, 3093–3101 (2017).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. The Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Proposed Rule for Model Years 2021–2026 (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration & Environmental Protection Agency, 2018).

  16. Keith, D. R., Houston, S. & Naumov, S. Vehicle fleet turnover and the future of fuel economy. Environ. Res. Lett. 14, 021001 (2019).

  17. Trancik, J. E., Chang, M. T., Karapataki, C. & Stokes, L. C. Effectiveness of a segmental approach to climate policy. Environ. Sci. Technol. 48, 27–35 (2014).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Matthews, H. D., Gillett, N. P., Stott, P. A. & Zickfeld, K. The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions. Nature 459, 829–832 (2009).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Melaina, M. W. & Webster, K. Role of fuel carbon intensity in achieving 2050 greenhouse gas reduction goals within the light-duty vehicle sector. Environ. Sci. Technol. 45, 3865–3871 (2011).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Winkler, S. L., Wallington, T. J., Maas, H. & Hass, H. Light-duty vehicle CO2 targets consistent with 450 ppm CO2 stabilization. Environ. Sci. Technol. 48, 6453–6460 (2014).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Meier, P. J. et al. Potential for electrified vehicles to contribute to US petroleum and climate goals and implications for advanced biofuels. Environ. Sci. Technol. 49, 8277–8286 (2015).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Miotti, M., Supran, G. J., Kim, E. J. & Trancik, J. E. Personal vehicles evaluated against climate change mitigation targets. Environ. Sci. Technol. 50, 10795–10804 (2016).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Grimes-Casey, H. G., Keoleian, G. A. & Willcox, B. Carbon emission targets for driving sustainable mobility with US light-duty vehicles. Environ. Sci. Technol. 43, 585–590 (2009).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. O’Neill, B. C. et al. The roads ahead: narratives for shared socioeconomic pathways describing world futures in the 21st century. Glob. Environ. Change 42, 169–180 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  25. Robinson, J. B. Energy backcasting: a proposed method of policy analysis. Energ. Policy 10, 337–344 (1982).

    Google Scholar 

  26. Calvin, K. et al. GCAM v5.1: representing the linkages between energy, water, land, climate, and economic systems. Geosci. Model Dev. 12, 677–698 (2019).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Schivley, G., Azevedo, I. & Samaras, C. Assessing the evolution of power sector carbon intensity in the United States. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 064018 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  28. Annual Energy Outlook 2019. US Energy Information Administration https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/ (2019).

  29. Muratori, M. Impact of uncoordinated plug-in electric vehicle charging on residential power demand. Nat. Energy 3, 193–201 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  30. Sioshansi, R. & Denholm, P. Emissions impacts and benefits of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid services. Environ. Sci. Technol. 43, 1199–1204 (2009).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Zubi, G., Dufo-López, R., Carvalho, M. & Pasaoglu, G. The lithium-ion battery: state of the art and future perspectives. Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 89, 292–308 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  32. A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals. US Department of Commerce https://www.commerce.gov/news/reports/2019/06/federal-strategy-ensure-secure-and-reliable-supplies-critical-minerals (2019).

  33. National Minerals Information Center. US Geological Survey https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic (2020).

  34. Roelich, K. et al. Assessing the dynamic material criticality of infrastructure transitions: a case of low carbon electricity. Appl. Energy 123, 378–386 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  35. Nansai, K. et al. Nexus between economy-wide metal inputs and the deterioration of sustainable development goals. Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 149, 12–19 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  36. Ali, S. H. et al. Mineral supply for sustainable development requires resource governance. Nature 543, 367–372 (2017).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  37. Harper, G. et al. Recycling lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles. Nature 575, 75–86 (2019).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  38. Kushnir, D. & Sandén, B. A. The time dimension and lithium resource constraints for electric vehicles. Resour. Policy 37, 93–103 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  39. Larcher, D. & Tarascon, J. M. Towards greener and more sustainable batteries for electrical energy storage. Nat. Chem. 7, 19–29 (2015).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  40. Light-Duty Automotive Technology, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, and Fuel Economy Trends Report: 1975 Through 2017 (EPA-420-R-18-001) (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2018).

  41. Whitefoot, K. S. & Skerlos, S. J. Design incentives to increase vehicle size created from the US footprint-based fuel economy standards. Energ. Policy 41, 402–411 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  42. Luk, J. M., Kim, H. C., De Kleine, R., Wallington, T. J. & MacLean, H. L. Review of the fuel saving, life cycle GHG emission, and ownership cost impacts of lightweighting vehicles with different powertrains. Environ. Sci. Technol. 51, 8215–8228 (2017).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  43. Mackenzie, D., Zoepf, S. & Heywood, J. Determinants of US passenger car weight. Int. J. Veh. Des. 65, 73–93 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  44. Needell, Z. A., McNerney, J., Chang, M. T. & Trancik, J. E. Potential for widespread electrification of personal vehicle travel in the United States. Nat. Energy 1, 16112 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  45. Gai, Y. et al. Health and climate benefits of electric vehicle deployment in the greater Toronto and Hamilton area. Environ. Pollut. 265, 114983 (2020).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  46. Reichmuth, D. S., Lutz, A. E., Manley, D. K. & Keller, J. O. Comparison of the technical potential for hydrogen, battery electric, and conventional light-duty vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum consumption in the United States. Int. J. Hydrogen Energ. 38, 1200–1208 (2013).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  47. Milovanoff, A., Posen, I. D., Saville, B. A. & MacLean, H. L. Well-to-wheel greenhouse gas implications of mid-level ethanol blend deployment in Canada’s light-duty fleet. Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 131, 110012 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  48. Pacala, S. & Socolow, R. Stabilization wedges: solving the climate problem for the next 50 years with current technologies. Science 305, 968–972 (2004).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  49. Sager, J., Apte, J. S., Lemoine, D. M. & Kammen, D. M. Reduce growth rate of light-duty vehicle travel to meet 2050 global climate goals. Environ. Res. Lett. 6, 024018 (2011).

  50. Axsen, J., Plötz, P. & Wolinetz, M. Crafting strong, integrated policy mixes for deep CO2 mitigation in road transport. Nat. Clim. Change 10, 809–818 (2020).

  51. Wadud, Z., MacKenzie, D. & Leiby, P. Help or hindrance? The travel, energy and carbon impacts of highly automated vehicles. Transp. Res. A 86, 1–18 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  52. Schmutzler, A. Local transportation policy and the environment. Environ. Resour. Econ. 48, 511–535 (2011).

    Google Scholar 

  53. Mattioli, G. Transport needs in a climate-constrained world. A novel framework to reconcile social and environmental sustainability in transport. Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 18, 118–128 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  54. van Vuuren, D. P. et al. Energy, land-use and greenhouse gas emissions trajectories under a green growth paradigm. Global Environ. Chang. 42, 237–250 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  55. Fricko, O. et al. The marker quantification of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2: a middle-of-the-road scenario for the 21st century. Global Environ. Chang. 42, 251–267 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  56. Kriegler, E. et al. Fossil-fueled development (SSP5): an energy and resource intensive scenario for the 21st century. Global Environ. Chang. 42, 297–315 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  57. Meinshausen, M. et al. The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions from 1765 to 2300. Clim. Change 109, 213–241 (2011).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  58. Kim, H. C. & Wallington, T. J. Life cycle assessment of vehicle lightweighting: a physics-based model to estimate use-phase fuel consumption of electrified vehicles. Environ. Sci. Technol. 50, 11226–11233 (2016).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  59. Electric Vehicle Outlook 2020 (Bloomberg New Finance Energy, 2020).

  60. Milovanoff, A., Posen, I. D. & MacLean, H. L. Repository: electrification of light-duty vehicle fleet alone will not meet mitigation targets. Zenodo http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3982990 (2020).

  61. Milovanoff, A. The fleet life cycle assessment and material-flow estimation (FLAME) model. Zenodo http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2548012 (2019).

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was co-funded by the Hatch Graduate Scholarship for Sustainable Energy Research, a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant and the University of Toronto Dean’s Strategic Fund. Views expressed in this work are those of the authors alone. We thank P. Kyle at the Joint Global Change Research Institute for providing the GCAM results and helping us to process them.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Alexandre Milovanoff, I. Daniel Posen & Heather L. MacLean

Authors
  1. Alexandre Milovanoff
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. I. Daniel Posen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Heather L. MacLean
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors conceived and planned the study. A.M. collected the data, developed the code and ran the simulations. All authors analysed data and wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandre Milovanoff.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–33, Tables 1–9, methods, results and discussion.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Milovanoff, A., Posen, I.D. & MacLean, H.L. Electrification of light-duty vehicle fleet alone will not meet mitigation targets. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 1102–1107 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-00921-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-00921-7

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing