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Australians could’ve saved $716,320,000 in fuel if CO2 legislation had come 3 years earlier


When it comes to road transport, Australia is at risk of becoming a climate villain as we lag behind international best practices on fuel efficiency.

Road transport is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions and represented 16% of Australia’s total carbon dioxide emissions in 2000, growing to 21% in 2016. Total CO? emissions from road transport increased by almost 30% in the period 2000-16.

Fuel efficiency (CO? emission) standards have been adopted in around 80% of the global light vehicle market to cap the growth of transport emissions. This includes the United States, the European Union, Canada, Japan, China, South Korea, and India – but not Australia.

If Australia had introduced internationally harmonized emissions legislation three years ago, households could have made savings on fuel costs to the tune of A$1 billion.

[Read: Here’s how much emissions you reduce by choosing an EV over a fossil fuel-powered car]


A report, published yesterday by Transport Energy/Emission Research, looked at what Australia has achieved in vehicle fuel efficiency and CO? standards over the past 20 years. While Australia has considered and tried to impose standards a number of times, sadly these attempts were unsuccessful.

Legislative action on vehicle CO? emissions is long overdue and demands urgent attention by the Australian government.

Australian consumers are increasingly buying heavier vehicles with bigger emissions. Shuterstock

How did Australia get here?




The general expectation appears to be that the average CO? emission rates of new cars in Australia will reduce over time as technology advances overseas. In the absence of CO? standards locally, it is more likely that consumers will continue to not be offered more efficient cars, and pay higher fuel costs as a consequence.

Estimating the fuel savings


The Australian vehicle fleet uses about 32 billion liters of fuel per year.

Using an Australian fleet model described in the TER report, we can make a conservative estimate that the passenger vehicle fleet uses about half of this fuel: 16 billion liters per year. New cars entering the fleet each year would represent about 5% of this: 800 million liters per year.

So assuming that mandatory CO? standards improve fuel efficiency by 27%, fuel savings would be 216 million liters per year.

In the last three years, the average fuel price across Australia’s five major cities is A$1.33 per liter. This equates to a total savings of A$287 million per year, although this would be about half the first year as new cars are purchased throughout the year and travel less, and would reduce as vehicles travel less when they age.




Policy has come close, but what are we waiting for?

The Australian government is not progressing with any measures to introduce a fuel efficiency target. In fact, it recently labeled Labor’s proposed fuel efficiency standard as a “car tax.”

But Australia has come close to adopting mandatory vehicle CO? emission standards in the past.



Then, in 2010, the Labor government decided mandatory CO? emissions standards would apply to new light vehicles from 2015. But a change in government in 2013 meant these standards did not see the light of day.



The targets for adopting this policy in 2025, considered in the draft statement, were marked as “strong” (105g of CO? per km), “medium” (119g/km), and “mild” (135g/km) standards.


It begs the question: what exactly are we waiting for?

The technical state of play

Transport Energy/Emission Research conducted preliminary modeling of Australian real-world CO? emissions.

This research suggests average CO? emission rates of the on-road car fleet in Australia are actually increasing over time and are, in reality, higher than what is officially reported in laboratory emissions tests.




With continuing population growth, road travel will only increase further. This will put even more pressure on the need to reduce average real-world CO? emission rates, given the increasing environmental and health impacts of the vehicle fleet.


This article is republished from The Conversation by Robin Smit, Adjunct professor, The University of Queensland; Jake Whitehead, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland, and Nic Surawski, Lecturer in Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Published August 12, 2020 — 18:00 UTC