How Green is Your Car?

By Ceri Balston

Soaring oil prices and concerns over the environmental impact of car emissions is surely going to bring about a huge change in consumer preference when it comes to choosing a new car. But what are the options available to us now, what information is there, and what does the future hold?

According to Toyota, one of the leaders in developing vehicles driven by alternative fuels, there are approximately 740 million cars on the planet today. It is estimated that this number is likely to almost double to 1.2 billion by 2020. That's a lot of cars.

The main by-product of burning both petrol and diesel is carbon dioxide (CO²), a greenhouse gas that pollutes the atmosphere and is believed to contribute to climate change. It is estimated that the average car emits around 4.5 tonnes of this gas every year. Ok, so a lot of cars and a lot of CO².

Just to put into perspective how worrying this figure is we can look at the principle of Contraction and Convergence, which is generally regarded as the way forward for reducing global CO² emission. Using this principle to find an amount of CO² that our planetary system will be able to cope with, it has been calculated that each person in the world should have an allowance of two tonnes of CO² per year. I'm sure you've already worked out that just by driving your car around, without even starting breathing, you've already gone over your allowance, by more than double!

There are many ways in which to reduce the amount of CO² we release into the atmosphere. When it comes to cars for example we can do simple things like set up lift clubs to get us to and from work. In this article though I'm going to concentrate on how to choose a car with environmental concerns in mind and what choices we'll be able to make in the future.

Part Two - Fuel Consumption and CO² Emissions >>>

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