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Written By: Chad Ghalamzan, Marketing Manager at Siemens Digital Industries Software
This article is an updated version of one posted to the Siemens blog, January 11, 2022.
When We Changed How We Travel
The mechanization of transportation made it practical and safe to travel further and faster. It revolutionized personal mobility and the commercial freight industry. It enabled us to get where we wanted to go—no matter how far away—and it fueled the global economy, allowing us to receive products produced from anywhere in the world.
That transition came at a cost. The amount of exhaust fumes created as a by-product of this has grown exponentially over the last century; these exhaust gases directly increase the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Transportation emissions add 8 billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere every year, representing 16 percent of all emissions. There are indications that this problem is getting worse rather than better, as motorists in less developed economies increase the demand for gasoline petrol vehicles, causing their numbers to grow despite the increasing adoption of electric vehicles elsewhere.
With most CO2 staying put for at least a thousand years, tailpipes are driving up the average global temperature fast and furiously.
Before mechanization, when humans and horses powered mobility, their carbon emissions were practically nil. But movement was restricted and slow. A horse and wagon could travel 10-30 miles a day, depending on terrain and weather. Transatlantic voyages lasted weeks and were a hotbed for diseases.
It was only towards the end of the 19th century, with the help of steam-powered engines, that transatlantic voyages became practical and cost-effective for passengers and cargo. My great-grandparents, who immigrated to Canada in 1921, made the journey on a coal-burning ocean liner called the S.S. Megantic.
Our Growing Carbon Footprint from Transportation Emissions
Had my great-grandparents made the journey from the United Kingdom to Canada in 1830, their sailing boat would have caused almost zero CO2 emissions. However, it would have taken five to six weeks for them to make the trip.
The carbon footprint would have been 47 g of CO2 per passenger per kilometre. As you can see in the graph above, very few modern modes of transport produce so little CO2.
In 1921, it took seven days to cross the Atlantic. The twin quadruple-expansion-compound marine engines that powered the boat consumed about 1.34 lbs of coal per hour per indicated horsepower. The S.S. Megantic had a rating of 1,180 NHP
2 engines x 1.34 lbs per HP per hour per engine x 1,180 HP X 24 hours x 7 days per voyage x 1 U.S. Ton / 2000 lbs = 265.6 tons of coal per voyage.
Assuming each ton of coal burnt releases 4,172 pounds of CO2, the total CO2 released would have been 554.1 tons for the trip. The ship could carry 1,135 passengers, and the distance from London to Montreal is 5,227 km. So, at full capacity, this would translate to 84.7 g of CO2 per passenger per kilometer.
In 2022, you can fly from London, U.K., to Montreal, Canada, in 7.5 hours at 150 g of CO2 per passenger per kilometer. In the last century, the world has shrunk by a factor of 20. However, the carbon footprint has grown substantially per kilometer, almost doubling for the same trip.
Comparing the Emissions by Fuel Type
Comparing the CO2 emissions by fuel type per capita in 1820, 1920, 1970 and 2020—note the rising emissions from gas and oil. In the last century, gas-related emissions have gone up by almost a factor of 50, and oil by a factor of 8 while coal has remained stable.
Over this same period, the amount of CO2 emissions from aviation and road passenger vehicles has continuously increased.
In the United States, the total distance travelled, fuel consumed and carbon dioxide emitted per year has steadily increased. Distance travelled, and fuel consumption data taken from U.S. Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Emissions based on one gallon of fuel consumed releases 19.64 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
According to The Guardian, one person will die for every release of 4,434 metric tons of CO2 produced beyond 2020 levels. That is equivalent to the lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans.
The 8 Billion-Ton Question
The current predictions from Climate Action Tracker are bleak: rising carbon emissions, causing a greater than 1.5 C degree increase in global average temperature by 2050 or sooner. We are veering off course towards a climate catastrophe.
Four significant subsectors (road passengers, road freight, aviation and shipping) emit 95 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions due to transportation. From an energy perspective, passenger road vehicles are responsible for 10.8 percent of the annual global CO2 emissions.
Road Passenger Vehicles
In 1888, Bertha Benz drove her Model 3 internal combustion engine (ICE) prototype vehicle from Mannheim to Pforzheim. This was a test drive and a publicity stunt, but it was no cake walk. Benz, the wife and business partner of Carl Benz, inventor of the automobile, was also mechanically minded which was helpful as she made many repairs—which included inventing brake pads—while on the journey. Together, the work of the Benz family eventually evolved into the companies Mercedes-Benz and it’s parent company Daimler AG (formerly Daimler-Benz).
Bertha is widely considered the first person to drive an automobile a significant distance—and the first to need a gas station. The solvent she needed as fuel, ligroin, was only available in apothecary shops. Thus, the towns where she stopped to buy some, such as of Wiesloch, became ground zero for greenhouse gas emissions for road vehicles.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ICE vehicles faced competition from steam and electric powered engines. It was not a foregone conclusion which technology would dominate the automobile industry.
Steam-powered vehicles had limited energy storage capacity and took forever to start up. They also had a rather inconvenient habit of exploding.
The electric cars of that era were quiet and easier to operate than their ICE counterparts. Yet, they suffered from familiar drawbacks: the small energy storage capacity limited their range and required a long time to recharge.
Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles Were Not Vastly Superior
To clarify, ICE vehicles were noisy, unreliable, mechanically complex and difficult to start. For a brief period, electric and ICE vehicles had comparable ranges on one charge or one tank of fuel.
However, innovations came quickly. In the 1920s, fuel economy was improved and gave ICE vehicles a range advantage. The cumbersome ignition issue was resolved. Henry Ford’s Model T added another advantage: price point. Using assembly lines to manufacture the car made it almost four times cheaper than electric vehicles. With that, steam and electric cars started to disappear and the CO2 emmisions from gas continues to grow.
Although combustion vehicles dominate the road transportation market, their time may be limited. Governments have established legislation to restrict or prohibit the sale of fossil-fueled vehicles in the next decade.
The Sluggish Adoption of Electric Vehicles
Electric vehicles have significantly improved over the past 20 years. In 2001, the Toyota Prius became the first to make significant enduring market penetration. And while it is a success and they may be better for the environment than a pure ICE vehicle, or hybrid-electric vehicle (HEV), it is not an emission-free car. The electricity these vehicles run on has to come from somewhere, after all, and in much of the world that will still be gas, oil or coal.
In truth, there has been minimal adoption of anything but gasoline and diesel-burning vehicles, despite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) growing warnings since 1990 as to the looming danger of greenhouse gases.
Other Alternatives
Hydrogen passenger vehicles have also been in development since the late 1990s. However, there is a lack of infrastructure to make refuelling practical. Extracting hydrogen is energy-intensive and generally not carbon neutral. There is currently no cost-effective low-carbon fuel source to replace even a small proportion of the fossil fuel market.
Electrification is not the only solution. Reaching net-zero by 2050 will require fuel cells, biofuels and other yet-to-be-discovered enhancements. The consensus is that the electrification of light-duty road vehicles represents the best chance of significantly reducing CO2 emissions by 2030.
"We need to be adopting electric vehicles as fast as we bought clothes dryers and color TVs when those became available." – Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
Upstream Emissions
Part of the climate math here is avoiding upstream carbon emissions. If we are plugging in instead of fueling up, those kilowatts need to be coming from green energy, or we are just swapping the emission source. Stephen Ferguson’s story Keeping the lights on in a Climate Emergency explores this issue.
Making Electric Vehicles Vastly Superior
Drawbacks identified over a century ago are still not fully resolved. The same engineering ingenuity that addressed flaws and reduced the cost of early ICE vehicles is what EVs require now. Additionally, the rising use of SUVs complicates efforts to reduce auto emissions. Electrifying SUVs is much more complex than smaller vehicles. The additional battery capacity required further increases their weight (which reduces range), drives up their cost over conventional SUVs and prolongs the recharge time.
Batteries are at the crux of these limitations. The challenge is lowering their costs while also improving capacity and recharge times. Improperly shortening charge times can have deleterious effects, as the article "Improving battery fast charging experience while limiting battery ageing" explores.
Reducing the weight of electric vehicles is another way to extend their range. New composite materials that are light and less costly to mass-produce are needed. Simcenter offers multi-attribute solutions for composite materials, including multiscale simulation, allowing for predicting performance for lightweighting. Read more in Composite Materials Performance Evaluation – using a fast, virtual testing tool.
Charging infrastructure is also critical; it must become as ubiquitous and convenient as gas stations. There are calls for a greater degree of interchangeability between EVs.
At the heart of electrification are the electric motors and inverters. Simcenter solutions can help develop novel traction motors.
Bringing the Cost Down Through Better Engineering
Countries with higher EV adoption offer a tax credit or similar incentive to bring cost parity to conventional vehicles artificially. Without bringing the cost down through better design and engineering, further adoption will slow down if these incentives disappear. Our integrated and precise digital twin for electric vehicles addresses challenges for all vehicle domains.
Long-haul Freight, Aviation & Shipping
There are limited solutions to decarbonize road freight, aviation and shipping. At least those that would be practical and scalable. That is why companies such as Airbus are exploring a wide variety of options.
The weight of heavy-duty freight trucks makes electrification problematic. Gasoline has an energy density of about 46 MJ/kg. The densest battery (just cracking 1 MJ/kg) is still 30-40 times less than gasoline. The weight and space taken by the batteries to allow such trucks to be driven a reasonable time before requiring a recharge would reduce their cargo capacity up to 75 percent. Further refining current battery technology, such as lithium ions, is unlikely to yield the density required for freight. Significant breakthroughs in battery technology would be needed to make electrification viable.
Electrification would be an option for smaller crafts that fly shorter distances. Cranfield University and Siemens Industry Software have partnered for aircraft propulsion electrification. However, marine, long-haul flights and larger aircraft electrification suffer from the same impracticalities as freight trucks.
Hydrogen fuel cells could be three to five times denser than gasoline. It would be an attractive solution for all three subsectors, producing no emissions at the tailpipe. However, as we explore in “Black, Gray, Blue, Purple, or Green: What color is our low carbon hydrogen future?” most hydrogen is currently manufactured from carbon dioxide-emitting fossil fuels, and there are considerable challenges ahead in developing large quantities of green hydrogen and distributing it around the world. Ensuring the safety of hydrogen mobility explores how Simcenter can help with the research and development to move this forward.
Many countries use nuclear-powered planes and ships for their military craft. However, the technology is mainly unexplored for these commercial purposes due to previous disasters (even though it is safer than wind).
Biofuels and other "drop-in" fuels, which work with existing engines and produce no greenhouse gases as they are being burnt, are another option being researched. They are more likely to help reach 2040 or 2050 targets as nothing seems close to becoming an abundant and reasonably priced alternative that would yield significant reductions beforehand.
The blog How can the marine industry make Greta proud? outlines how Simcenter simulation can help design cleaner, greener vessels in line with the next phase of the IMO Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) regulation.
Getting Back on Course
Set an ambitious target. Miss target. Set a new target.
There isn't much time left to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worse impacts of climate change. A drastic acceleration in deploying carbon-zero technologies available is a must. It will take more engineering innovation to decarbonize all the different transportation subsectors and reach net-zero by 2050.
The question remains: can we hit the 20 percent reduction needed by 2030? If we lean heavily on passenger road vehicle electrification, the answer is yes, according to projections from the IEA:
There are significant barriers to EV adoption; however, it is within our grasp with further innovations driven by Simcenter solutions.
And there are encouraging signs—for example, the city of Shenzhen, China, has electrified its entire fleet of more than 16,000 buses and nearly 22,000 taxis.
Set an ambitious target. Reduce transport emissions 20 percent by 2030. Make target. Set a more ambitious target for 2040 and beyond. Stay on course for net-zero emissions by 2050.
To learn more about Simcenter, visit Siemens Digital Industries.