The car has accelerated trade and made an indelible mark on modern culture and lifestyles. But cars are also responsible for around 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and a large share of global steel, aluminium, plastic, rubber, glass, and increasingly battery material consumption. It is now time for a revolution in automotive sustainability.
The World Economic Forum and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) jointly formed the Circular Cars Initiative to accelerate this transformation. The Initiative takes a systemic approach – accounting for the build phase as well as the use phase – to automotive sustainability. It looks at how technology and business levers can maximize the resource value of the car, minimize life-cycle emissions and unlock new opportunities. Within the Circular Car Initiative, 40 companies from the automotive value chain, several research institutes, international organizations, governmental bodies and think tanks are charting the course towards a zero-emission future through new technology, materials innovation, efficient vehicle usage and full life-cycle management.
The systems-wide change needed to create circularity in the automotive sector and sometimes seem costly and prohibitive. However, as this report demonstrates, significant abatement is possible for the auto industry with very little additional added vehicle material cost. Using a special carbon abatement model, this analysis shows that a large proportion of automotive material carbon emissions could be abated by 2030 at no net-cost increase using technologies and practices that could be implemented today.
The report is the last of three framework reports developed by the Circular Cars Initiative to help the sector and its regulators better understand automotive’s new sustainable future.