Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6.29
Urban highways. Jinan has also built many urban highways in recent years, at a cost to the
quality of the urban realm, and also facilitating greater traffic volumes and transport CO2
emissions. These types of highways are very expensive and the money can be much better spent
on other transport investments.
Vehicle emission profiles and fuel efficiency
Low-emission vehicles, if they become readily available and taken up by the mass market,
could make a very large impact on projected CO2 emissions. An and Sauer (2004) outline
the potential and relative progress in vehicle-emission profiles by country (
Figure 6.30
). Fuel
economy standards were introduced in China in 2004, and are based on fuel intensity, the
weight of the vehicle and the type of transmission. For passenger vehicles weighing less than
750 kg, the maximum new fuel vehicle intensity for a manual transmission is 7.2 litres/100
vehicle weight rises. The current vehicle mix in China is relatively heavy, with a large share
of imported large cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs), though an increasing number of
smaller vehicles are being purchased by middle-class households (Ng and Schipper, 2005).
China is thus seeking to move from a fleet with relatively high emission levels of 210 gCO2/km
(2002) to the lower level of 170 gCO2/km (2009). It is not yet clear whether these profiles
have been achieved, but this would still represent poor progress relative to Japanese or European
standards. There is substantial potential for reducing carbon emissions from the vehicle fleet
relative to international best practice.
