What effect has personal car ownership had on the environment?

Owning a car has enabled a vast amount of movement that once would not have been possible. Cars have enabled stronger face to face connections, opportunities to work in more locations and the increased freedom that we all experience.

However, against this benefit there also lay costs. Carbon dioxide levels within the atmosphere are at the highest levels ever recorded. These are the most dangerous and prevalent greenhouse gases. Yet 22% of Great Britain’s carbon dioxide emissions arises from road use alone, with most of this being for non-essential journeys. Over the life of an average car, it will have created 24 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Cars also significantly contribute to the decline air quality. In 2017, London breached air pollution legal targets just 5 days into the year. Other years have been in a similar vein with 2018 breaching within the first month and 2016 seeing a total of 43 breaches in London alone. Nationally, in 2019, 83% of Great Britain experienced illegal levels of air pollution. Air pollution causes thousands of early deaths each year as a result of the lung and heart disease.

To be able to use these gas emitting machines, a physical infrastructure also needs to be in place. Roads must be built and maintained while parking needs to be available to house all the vehicles. In Great Britain, there are roughly 250,000 miles of road networks and 5,000 parking facilities. Not only does this disrupt natural habitats but also creates an ongoing barrier to the natural movement of wildlife. The goods used in making the roads must be extracted, processed and shipped to where it will be set down. All of which has an environmental impact. 

Technology might not yet have the answer to all of the consequences of car ownership, but it has been successful in creating some alternatives to the traditional model. One way in which car emissions can be reduced is to utilise start-stop technology in petrol and diesel models. When the car is not moving, the engine stops and so do the carbon dioxide emissions.

For a more significant impact in reducing the ongoing environmental effects of cars is the creation and use of electric vehicles. These do not use petrol or diesel to run but instead have a battery installed which can be recharged when these run low. Electric cars can reduce the ongoing environmental impact, but this only provides a palliative rather than a remedy to the effects of personal car ownership. Research has found that an electric car will still generate carbon emissions but at a 30% reduction to the petrol/diesel counterpart. Further, the electricity currently used to recharge the batteries is often taken from non-renewable sources. 

These alternatives also do not address the over reliance on infrastructure development for roads and that currently there are more personally owned cars in the UK than there are drivers. With rising sea levels reducing inhabitable space, do we really want to live in a world where infrastructure keeps pace with the consumer demands for more roads and more parking? Is it imperative that we all have personal machinery at our doorstep to use as and when we desire? Could there be an alternative?

Charlotte Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2020