Steering Clear of Emissions

Jul 3

Facts:

Global: Transportation is about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions (EPA).
US: Transportation is 28% of national greenhouse gas emissions (EPA, 2018).
Cars and light-duty trucks account for over half of the transportation sector’s emissions(EPA, 2018)
Ford sold 900,000 new F-150’s in 2019 (autoweek).
There are such things as cloud physicists, which just sound fun, but they actually look at important things like the effects of airplane emissions.

Are you a drivers seat or a passenger seat type of person? If this survey hasn’t been done yet, we may need to get a poll out there. Whether you’re a driver or a passenger, when it comes to adventures and road trips, sliding into that seat with a brimming cup of coffee and full tank of gas is a pretty unbeatable feeling. You plug in your phone and scroll to your favorite “jams” or “heaters” playlist. It’s on.

The only thing that could possibly take you away from this—the one thing—is that nagging guilt from burning fuel. If you’ve already sworn off the internal combustion engine for an electric vehicle, good on you. Only part of this will apply to you, but it’s a big part, especially if you’re still flying. That is unless you’re Greta and you can call up a professional sailing team like an Uber for cross-Atlantic trips. She’s such a badass.

People and Products

We’re not going to look at the entire transportation industry, because that would be bananas. It’s intimately connected to other industries, such as energy, aka fueling the various modes of transportation. But it’s worth defining, and then we can come back to you and your travel habits.

The transportation sector is the movement of people (you) and products (the last thing you ordered on amazon). Planes, trains and… trucking and shipping and infrastructure and logistics firms and yes, automobiles. There are unfathomably large supply chains that make it so that it’s cheaper to manufacture in China or South East Asia than down the street. This includes shipping parts. One of the craziest examples of this is the iPhone. Check out how many countries and companies create and ship the parts that coalesce into your pocket computer. Those parts are put on ships, trucks, planes, etc. That’s one part of the transportation industry.

Another is you going from A to B, and it matters what you use to get there.

An Optimistic Interlude

Before we jump into the effects of transportation on the environment, here’s a cool innovation that’s underway. LanzaTech is a company that produces biofuels (energy produced from organic matter, like corn to ethanol). They are developing a way to turn CO2 emissions into alternative fuel sources.

Back to the problem—and what you can start to do about it.

How Much CO2 Do You Emit?

The main emissions culprit is almost always Carbon Dioxide (CO2). CO2 is the primary cause of global warming. Exhaust from internal combustion engines, whether that’s a plane, a car or anything else, is mostly CO2. When it comes to your car, Nitrous Oxide (N2O) and Methane (CH4) are the other main tailpipe emissions, and they trap heat at substantially higher levels than CO2, making them the worst, but CO2 is still the majority of the environmental impact because it is the most abundant.

So let’s look at the efficiency of traveling. It turns out that, in many cases, a full plane can be a “more efficient” way to travel than driving alone in a car. Per metric ton of CO2 per person, you’d “use” less. While you don’t have a ton of control over how many people travel on a plane with you, it’s worth noting the relative difference in travel methods. Being alone in a car is a comparatively inefficient use of fuel.

There's a lot of “quotes” there because the planet doesn’t really care how the CO2 gets there. It just knows that there’s too much in the air. But, at the same time, the goal is to emit less CO2, ultimately allowing the naturally existing carbon sinks (things that absorb CO2, like trees) to bring down the CO2 levels. So looking at your individual outputs is a part of a series of small decisions that, when scaled up to populations of people making the same decisions, matters. And there are many aspects that you do have control over.

Choosing your car's fuel efficiency is a good example of that. If you haven’t done this calculation before, check out the fuel economy calculator.

Here’s a quick example of switching from a car that gets 20mpg to one that gets 25mpg: Driving 15,000 miles a year, of which 75% of that is in the city, you’re saving $320 a year and emitting 1.7 fewer metric tons of CO2 a year. That amounts to a reduction of about 1/3 of your car’s annual emissions. Go for 30 mpg, 40mpg or higher, and you’re making huge strides.

The gold standard is an all electric vehicle. You still need to plug it in, and that power needs to come from somewhere, but it’s much less energy intensive and creates zero emissions while driving. Buying electric is one of the most significant actions you can take, but for those of you that are not in the market for a new car, here are some other things you can start doing now to lower your transportation impact.

Daily Things To Do:

When it comes to the environment, the first solution is always the same: less. Drive less or be more efficient, i.e. carpool. Nothing new there.
Don’t idle. After 10 seconds passes, you’re burning more gas than it would take to restart your car. Just turn it off.
Buy used. Cut out the manufacturing component and buy a used car. The tailpipe emissions are most of your car's environmental impact, but it’s a good practice to get into the mindset of reuse.
Carbon offsets for flights. There are a lot of misconceptions around this option–we should write an article on it. Some people say offsets are wack because it is a pay to pollute solution… However, it’s better than nothing because right now most of us are not paying for our pollution. You’re not not emitting. But, with offsetting, you’re compensating, and it’s a start. Here’s an example of a registered program out there.