Cleaner Vehicles Handbook 4 : Transport and the Environment

As populations and economies expand, increasing quantities of natural resources are extracted and processed, more goods are moved, more people travel, more energy is used, and more wastes are generated. One outcome is over 800 million motor vehicles operating in the world today, consuming around 40 million barrels per day of petroleum, producing about half the urban pollution, and emitting over 1/10 of the world’s anthropogenic greenhouse gases (IEA, 2000). This process is not sustainable unless energy and environmental performance is improved. In this chapter, we focus on the energy and environmental performance of land-based vehicles, especially those operating on roads. We examine internal combustion engine vehicles, electric-drive vehicles, and alternative fuels.