Road transportation in China: How big are fuel consumption and pollutant emissions really?

Abstract

There is conflicting information about road transport’s fuel consumption in China. Clear is only, that it is high and strongly growing. Our new estimate of about 76-87 Mtoe petroleum fuel consumption in the year 2000 is the highest so far published. We furthermore calculate exhaust emissions from on-road vehicles and identify the most important vehicle categories. Up to the year 2030 a strong growth in transportation is expected with the booming economy and rising income levels. According to our new calculation this may lead to about a factor 7 growth in fuel demand by passenger cars until 2030, even with significant improvements of their fuel economy. However, the expansion of the commercial vehicles and their technical level will determine the overall growth in fuel demand. In the absence of significant efficiency improvements the overall transport fuel demand can increase until 2030 to about 400 to 450 Mtoe.