Automotive

For the last 100 years, virtually every automobile was an internal combustion vehicle (ICV) powered by either gasoline or diesel and mostly made from steel. Even as the ICV was identified as a source of serious environmental impact, it continued to outcompete others, arguably more environmentally benign, transportation modes. Banning lead from gasoline, requiring catalytic converters, and increasing powertrain efficiency allowed the ICV to respond to environmental criticism and continue its dominance over other transportation technologies. Today, well over one billion ICVs are in use worldwide. Since the turn of the last century, however, this dominance is beginning to be contested, not so much from other transportation modes but from alternative automotive designs and fuels, such as biofuels, lightweight materials, and fuel cell, hybrid, and battery electric powertrains. All of these alternatives are meant to decrease the environmental impacts of cars, but in all cases there is concern about trade-offs, unintended consequences, and regrettable substitutions. An industrial ecology perspective is necessary to determine the extent to which the emerging automotive technologies can genuinely reduce rather than simply shift the environmental impacts of automobiles.

Publications

Geyer R, Malen D (2020) Parsimonious powertrain modeling for environmental vehicle assessments Part 2 – Electric vehicles, International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment,
DOI 10.1007/s11367-020-01775-z.

Geyer R, Malen D (2020) Parsimonious powertrain modeling for environmental vehicle assessments Part 1 – Internal combustion vehicles, International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, DOI 10.1007/s11367-020-01774-0.

Palazzo J, Geyer R (2018) Consequential Life Cycle Assessment of Automotive Material Substitution: Replacing Steel with Aluminum in North American Vehicle Production, Environmental Impact Assessment Research, 75(2019), 47-58.

Geyer R (2016) The Industrial Ecology of the Automobile, in: Taking Stock of Industrial Ecology, Clift R & Druckman A (Eds.), Springer, Berlin, Germany.

Geyer R, Stoms D, Kallaos J (2013) Spatially-Explicit Life Cycle Assessment of Sun-to-Wheels Transportation Pathways in the U.S., Environmental Science and Technology, 47(2), 1170-1176.

Geyer R (2008) Parametric assessment of climate change impacts of automotive material substitution, Environmental Science and Technology, 42(18), 6973-6979.

Geyer R (2007) Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emission Assessments of Automotive Materials: Methodology Report, peer-reviewed, for the International Iron and Steel Institute, Brussels, Belgium.