To appropriately mitigate environmental impacts from transportation, it is necessary for decision makers to consider the life-cycle energy use and emissions. Most current decision-making relies on analysis at the tailpipe, ignoring vehicle production, infrastructure provision, and fuel production required for support. We present results of a comprehensive life-cycle energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and selected criteria air pollutant emissions inventory for automobiles, buses, trains, and airplanes in the US, including vehicles. | IOP Publishing Environmental Research Letters Environ. Res. Lett. 4 2009 024008 8pp doi 1748-9326 4 2 024008 Environmental assessment of passenger transportation should include infrastructure and supply chains Mikhail V Chester1 and Arpad Horvath Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of California 760 Davis Hall Berkeley CA 94720 USA E-mail mchester@ and horvath@ Received 6 January 2009 Accepted for publication 5 May 2009 Published 8 June 2009 Online at ERL 4 024008 Abstract To appropriately mitigate environmental impacts from transportation it is necessary for decision makers to consider the life-cycle energy use and emissions. Most current decision-making relies on analysis at the tailpipe ignoring vehicle production infrastructure provision and fuel production required for support. We present results of a comprehensive life-cycle energy greenhouse gas emissions and selected criteria air pollutant emissions inventory for automobiles buses trains and airplanes in the US including vehicles infrastructure fuel production and supply chains. We find that total life-cycle energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions contribute an additional 63 for onroad 155 for rail and 31 for air systems over vehicle tailpipe operation. Inventorying criteria air pollutants shows that vehicle non-operational components often dominate total emissions. Life-cycle criteria air pollutant emissions are between and 800 times larger than vehicle operation. Ranges in passenger occupancy can easily change the relative performance of modes. Keywords passenger transportation life-cycle assessment cars autos buses trains rail aircraft planes energy fuel emissions greenhouse gas criteria air pollutants Q Supplementary data are available from ERL 4 024008 1. Background Passenger transportation s energy requirements and emissions are receiving more and more scrutiny as concern for energy security global .
