Product roadmaps: Cars

As part of our work on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP), we are  developing ten pilot product roadmaps to reduce the environmental impacts across the life cycle of a range of priority products. One of these is passenger cars.

Why cars?

Evidence shows that, at an EU-25 level, passenger transport accounts for 15-35 percent of all environmental impacts.

Within this broader category, we know that cars generate significant environmental impacts across their life cycle, including resource depletion, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, noise and waste.

Scope of roadmap

The cars roadmap covers life cycle impacts associated with passenger cars consumed in the UK (wherever in the world those impacts occur). The focus is on the environmental performance of cars through a change of either their inherent characteristics (engine, car design, material composition) or their use patterns where such changes are predicted to result in environmental improvements. Wider issues of mobility, such as drivers of consumption, were outside the project scope.

Production and consumption impacts and trends

Defra carried out an evidence review to bring together existing information on the environmental impacts of passenger cars across their life cycle (raw materials to end of life) and analyse the trade-offs, gaps in knowledge and potential for improvement of  viable current and possible interventions aimed at improving sustainability.

Headline consumption trends

  • The numbers of vehicles on the roads of Great Britain have increased steadily. In 1970 there were just under 10 million private cars; in 2005 there were over 26 million (source: Environment Agency)

Headline sustainablity impacts

  • One of the most significant impacts from cars is the CO2 emissions generated when the car is in use.
  • Approximately 21 percent of the UK’s man made CO2 emissions are from road transport (freight and passenger transport). Since 1990 UK road transport CO2 emissions have increased by 9 percent (source: Defra Statistics based on SD indicators, 2005)
  • While the EU as a whole has reduced emissions of greenhouse gases by just under 5 percent over the 1990-2004 period, CO2 emissions from road transport have increased by 26 percent. Road transport is the biggest transport emission source (94 percent of domestic emissions) with approximately 1/3 from freight, 2/3 from passengers
  • Road transport relies quasi exclusively on fossil fuels, consuming 60 percent of all the oil consumed in the EU (source: EC Communication: Community Strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars and light-commercial vehicles Impact Assessment (2007))
  • End of Life vehicles generate between 8 and 9 million tonnes of waste in the EU and over 2 million in the UK (source: Defra Waste Statistics, 2005)

Current activities

July 2009 report on the current status of the roadmap:

Further information

Page last modified: 10 August 2009