From my perspective, the issue of climate change is personal. I consider myself an environmentalist, and I generally try to do my part — whether it is recycling, using my car as efficiently as possible, or watching my overall footprint on the planet. I think climate change is probably the defining issue of our time.
That said, not everyone feels that way. In fact, the majority don’t. The problem is, we are unlikely to make any significant progress in meeting our national and global climate change goals until it becomes personal.
That probably sounds like I am pontificating, but let me tease out why the personalization of climate change, or lack thereof, has potentially huge consequences for the automotive industry at both the OEM and dealer level.
Transportation emissions represent about 30 per cent of all of Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, when most people (including many politicians) think about “transportation,” they think only about cars and trucks. The reality is that in 2018 light-duty cars and trucks represented less than half (42 per cent) of Canada’s transportation emissions, and notably only about 12 per cent of Canada’s overall emissions.
I’m not saying this to diminish the importance of addressing emissions from cars and trucks. The industry needs to be, and I would argue has been, very responsible in reducing emissions from the products it is putting on the road. The only challenge that we have with governments and some other stakeholders in society is the speed with which we can get there.
But here is where the math runs up against the wall of the public policy and regulation developed for our sector with respect to climate change. In any given year, new auto sales represent about eight per cent of all of the vehicles on the road. While this eight per cent of vehicles sold is the safest, most technologically advanced, and most fuel-efficient (across the segments) of the entire on-road fleet…it is still only eight per cent.
Where is public policy to reduce the industry’s contribution to transportation and overall GHG emissions focused? It is squarely on the eight per cent — the new vehicles.
Canada is a signatory to the United Nations Paris Agreement under which it is committed to reducing its emissions by 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, with net zero GHG emissions by 2050. However, by the government’s own reckoning, with all of the measures planned and implemented under the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, even the most optimistic scenario without any additional measures will have Canada reducing its emissions by only 19 per cent by 2030, which equates to being about 77Mt (that’s millions of tonnes) short of its target.
Yet the federal government has more recently committed to exceeding its 2030 emissions reductions targets and in the federal government’s recent Throne Speech in September, it committed to both releasing a comprehensive plan to best its 2030 emissions target as well as formally legislate a target of net-zero emissions by 2050.
These are perhaps appropriate goals and targets for Canada to aspire to, but with transportation emissions sitting at about 30 per cent of total emissions, one can bet that transportation emissions and, by proxy, light-duty car and truck emissions, will be targeted by the government for increased regulation. Focusing only on new vehicles will not achieve the government’s goals.
What is needed is a comprehensive plan to address emissions from all vehicles on the road, not just the new ones.
Automakers and dealers have proposed to the federal government a national vehicle scrappage program to work towards retiring some of the 10 million vehicles on Canada’s roads that are 12-plus years old and more, and is one mechanism to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Our analysis has suggested that at the very least, GHG emissions from the on-road fleet could be reduced by 2Mt through such a measure.
Some environmental organizations have suggested that a vehicle scrappage idea is a fine concept, but only if the vehicle being replaced is a zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV).
While that is a fine concept, the reality is that even with the current federal and provincial rebates, ZEVs still represent very expensive new vehicle options for most consumers, so it can be anticipated that the uptake on such a program would be quite limited, undermining the overall GHG emissions reduction potential if the scrappage program instead was applied to all vehicles, as we have suggested.
Furthermore, focusing a scrappage program only on ZEVs would add another demand stress to ZEV supply that is already globally constrained, risking further consumer dissatisfaction with dealers and manufacturers as the world makes the transition to electrification as quickly as possible.
Neither a focus on ZEVs, nor a scrappage program, nor the transition to a clean fuel standard, nor a myriad of other measures are likely to appreciably address light-duty vehicle emissions because of the existing on-road fleet — which takes about 20 years to turn over.
Governments are loath to constrain or limit consumers with respect to their choice of vehicles or how they are used. So, what to do?
Increased gas taxes, congestion pricing, road tolls and other measures are probably things that governments need to consider. However, to come full circle from where I started, ultimately if any real progress is going to be made on reducing emissions from light-duty vehicles, then it needs to be personal.
People need to see and appreciate their own role in contributing to climate change with respect to both the type of vehicle that they purchase, and perhaps more importantly, how they use that vehicle. After all, a vehicle sitting in a garage or driveway is not producing any GHG emissions.
The concept of looking at carbon budgets for individuals and vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) as a means of assisting in making climate change personal are things that should be looked at.
Giving consumers a carbon budget annually and letting them figure out how they are going to “spend” that budget brings top of mind awareness to the issue of GHG emissions. Likewise, with looking at VKT as it more narrowly relates to vehicle use, and taxing consumers accordingly still provides consumers with the ability to choose the vehicle that they want or need, while focusing on how that vehicle is used.
Focusing a disproportionate amount of regulations on the new vehicle, without addressing the overall on-road vehicle fleet and the consumers that use their vehicles, is a recipe for continuing to fall short on our GHG emissions reductions as a nation and globally.
It has to get personal.
