CAReFUL - Car fleet renewal as a key role for atmospheric emission reduction

• RENOVAÇÃO DO PARQUE AUTOMÓVEL COMO ELEMENTO-CHAVE PARA A REDUÇÃO DE EMISSÕES ATMOSFÉRICAS

  CAReFUL - Car fleet renewal as a key role for atmospheric emission reduction Abstract By the mid and late 70s, the environmental issue came to the fore of transport activity, largely through the item of acidifying substances and ozone precursors. Since then, an interesting process has been going with successive discovery of new types of environmental aggressions and associated risks, followed by technological responses and their introduction in the market.

Climate change is a major environmental burden that implied severe restrictive EU policies to the transport sector, and more specifically to the car industry through the EURO regulation. As a prime contributor to atmospheric emissions, much attention is paid to car´s technological aspects (mainly emissions and energy consumption). Although problems aren´t solved, the situation is improving in general, and in many respects the question of accelerating fleet renewal is now dominant. It is commonly accepted that technology can solve road transportation environmental problems, but there is no precise knowledge on when and how this will happen.

The main goal of this project is to prepare a modelling tool to assess the transport and environmental policies aiming to upgrade current car fleet and diffuse more efficient vehicles due to the environmental restrictions in the near future, for instance, the Kyoto Protocol. The theoretical ground of the present proposal is based on energy systems and air emission research. Practical motivations refer to the recent government´s approval of the National Programme for Climate Change, where a critical diagnosis is drawn for the next 10 years of the national greenhouse gas emissions. If trend line emissions are not curbed, Portugal will embrace an international non-compliance situation with respect to the Kyoto protocol commitment. This situation is even more critical if we consider its EU burden share agreement that implicates Portugal into severe consequences.

The present research proposal brings a model (CAReFUL) that integrates methodologies for the estimation of the evolution of car fleet (CARFLEE), emissions (CAREM) and energy consumption (CAREN) by cars. Life-cycle thinking is considered here.

Moreover, this methodology is complemented by the rack up into a conceptual model of the interrelationships of:

- Major conjuncture factors that influence technological evolution of car fleets;

- Major driving forces that trigger technological innovation; and

- Major improvement paths for innovation (incremental, remanufacturing, rethink, or hybridization of the last two).

Major contributions are the expected results of the case-study applied to the Portuguese situation.

Obs: Felicite-se os investigadores deste projecto que será, seguramente, mais um marco na harmonização do progresso tecnológico com a qualidade de vida [sustentável] no séc. XXI.