Phasing Out the Internal Combustion Engine No Easy Task

"Transportation is the most vexing problem the summit will confront," reported Evan Halper for the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 11, the day before the 3-day Global Climate Action Summit began in San Francisco. Reducing emissions from driving is more complex than reducing emissions from electricity generation, as one energy expert cited in the article observed.

The political leaders coming from around the world for Gov. Jerry Brown’s climate action summit this week will grapple with a lot of urgent deadlines to drive down emissions, but one date is especially exasperating. It is 2035 — the year advocates aim to kill off production of gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. 

Internal combustion engine cars need to be off the roads altogether by 2050 to meet the Paris goals. Dealers would need to stop selling new models 15 years earlier.

That will be a heavy lift, according to Peter Tertzakian, executive director of the Arc Energy Research Institute, a Canadian group that analyzes energy investments.

The idea that the internal-combustion engine can be phased out in the next 20 years without government intervention on a massive scale and an unprecedented social awakening among the driving public is foolish, said Tertzakian.

He said most leaders assume the average driver will embrace electric as technology improves, much as parts of the power industry gave up fossil fuels as better systems emerged. But giving up gas-powered cars requires complex shifts in the way people live that don’t come into play when a coal power plant is replaced with a solar or gas plant.

“The Paris agreement was signed three years ago,” Tertzakian said. “The years keep passing, and the substitution [of gas-powered vehicles] is not happening. Look at oil and gas use. It is not decelerating. It is accelerating.”

A new academic study and an updated survey on achieving phase-outs or bans on the sales of new internal combustion engine passenger vehicles by a date certain were released at the conference:

• 100% Zero: Solutions to Achieve Universal Zero-Emission Vehicle Adoption, by Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley Law, and Ted Lamm, Research Fellow in the Climate Program.
• A Survey on Global Activity to Phase Out Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles [pdf], by Isabella Burch, Center for Climate Protection, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Halper illustrates the aforementioned point made by Tertzakian of Arc Energy Research Institute, that "massive government intervention" is a requirement to achieve a phase-out:

The shift toward electric vehicles in parts of Europe and Asia is bolstered by government subsidies and tax structures that few American politicians would consider. They include tough gas-guzzler penalties for those who drive high-horsepower, climate-unfriendly pickups and SUVs, and large cash grants and tax breaks for those who buy electric.