Emissions Targets Need All-Electric Cars

Cutting emissions to meet the internationally-agreed limits on global temperature rise will require an end soon to all fossil-fuelled cars.

A new study says that achieving limits on temperature rise agreed at last year’s Paris climate conference will require a massive switch to zero emissions electric-powered vehicles (EVs), coupled with the development of a completely decarbonised power sector.

The transport sector – cars, trucks, planes and trains – accounts for about 14% of total climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.  But the study by Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent scientific analysis organisation, focuses on the car sector.

“Without swift and extensive deployment of electric vehicles powered by clean electricity, reductions [in emissions] from the transport sector will not be enough to meet the more stringent long-term goals of the Paris Agreement – that is, limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C,” the report says.

Clean electricity
Its analysis shows that limiting the global average temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels would require a doubling in the fuel economy standards of new cars by 2030.

That means that half the world’s cars would have to be powered by clean, completely decarbonised electricity by 2050.

To achieve the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C – seen by most scientists as vital to have any real hope of tackling climate change – CAT says these goals would have to be achieved 10 years earlier than under the 2°C target figure.

And this would mean that, given the average 15-year lifetime of a vehicle, the last car powered by petrol or diesel would be sold in 2035.

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