Environmental assessment of passenger transportation should include infrastructure and supply chains

By Mikhail V. Chester, A. Horvath. 2009

598 citations recorded by the source corpus.

To appropriately mitigate environmental impacts from transportation, it is necessary for decision makers to consider the life-cycle energy use and emissions. Most current decision-making relies on analysis at the tailpipe, ignoring vehicle production, infrastructure provision, and fuel production required for support. We present results of a comprehensive life-cycle energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and selected criteria air pollutant emissions inventory for automobiles, buses, trains, and airplanes in the US, including vehicles, infrastructure, fuel production, and supply chains. We find that total life-cycle energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions contribute an additional 63% for onroad, 155% for rail, and 31% for air systems over vehicle tailpipe operation. Inventorying criteria air pollutants shows that vehicle non-operational components often dominate total emissions. Life-cycle criteria air pollutant emissions are between 1.1 and 800 times larger than vehicle operation. Ranges in passenger occupancy can easily change the relative performance of modes.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1087e2dbba4e5682d3e5a8837236145a273f018f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

In Environmental Engineering

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Citations in the corpus

Does car sharing reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Assessing the modal shift and lifetime shift rebound effects from a life cycle perspective (2020, background): “) of a vehicle’s life contribute significantly to the total GHG emissions related to transportation (Chester and Horvath, 2009).”
Part II: Policy instruments for sustainable road transport (2010, background): “Chester and Horvath (2009) make a case for comparing the lifecycle energy use and emissions of different modes of transport.”
Climate policy through changing consumption choices: Options and obstacles for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (2014, unknown): “, 2011), conventional transport vehicles (11) (Chester and Horvath, 2009) and electric vehicles (4) (Hawkins et al.”
Are e-scooters polluters? The environmental impacts of shared dockless electric scooters (2019, unknown): “…impacts from bus ridership is 82 g CO2-eq/passenger-mile [33], consistent with the well-to-wheels calculation for urban diesel bus use during peak hours from Chester and Horvath, 2009, with the important caveat that emissions from buses do not decrease proportionally with the loss of one rider.”
Carsharing’s Life-Cycle Impacts on Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions (2016, methodology): “The impacts of vehicle manufacturing and maintenance changes are a 288 result of the private vehicle replacement rate in Table 1 and are based on per PKT estimates of a 289 2005 Toyota Camry from Chester and Horvath (2009).”
Accessibility in Cities: Transport and Urban Form (2017, background): “In addition, life cycle analysis suggests that carbon emissions embedded in transport infrastructures are substantial(5), typically adding another 63 per cent for on-road and 155 per cent for rail in addition to emissions from vehicle operations (Chester and Horvath 2009).”
A Review of Ex-Post Evidence for Mode Substitution and Induced Demand Following the Introduction of High-Speed Rail (2013, unknown): “…that can limit the negative environmental impact of transport, although this assumption is debatable and HSR can result in significant environmental cost, especially when lifecycle analysis is considered (see Chester & Horvath, 2009, 2010; Givoni, Brand, & Watkiss, 2009; Miyoshi & Givoni, 2013).”
Transportation and the environment. (2011, background): “They take account of the non-negligible impacts of transport activities through vehicle production and scrapping, energy (fuel) extraction and production, and the full environmental impacts associated with infrastructure, such as land take, materials used, and the construction itself (49).”