The role of vehicle lifetime extensions of countries on global CO₂ emissions

This paper spatially extended the vehicle life-cycle analysis of a single country and developed a new method for vehicle life-cycle analysis by combining a 15-country automotive stock-flow model based on the 15-country automotive lifetime distribution with global multi-regional input-output analysis. From the results, considering that ten of the 15 countries had vehicle lifetimes shorter than the average of 15.8 years: Austria, Canada, Germany, France, the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the Netherlands, we found that by increasing the average vehicle lifetimes of these 10 countries to the global average of 15.8 years, a reduction of 17 Mt-CO₂-eq. from the carbon footprint of the 10 countries could be achieved. In addition, we also revealed that roles of changes in vehicle lifetime and fuel efficiency on global CO₂ emissions are vastly different between countries where vehicle lifetimes are longer and those where lifetimes are shorter.