Significant progress has been made in recent years in technologies and standards to decrease the environmental impact of vehicles. However, the number of vehicles in China is increasing at a dramatic rate, such that implementing additional policies and education now is critical to controlling the negative environmental externalities associated with this rapid growth. From 1990 to 2004, the total vehicle population in China underwent a five-fold increase, with private automobiles undergoing an increase of eighteen-fold. With China's rapidly growing GDP, the motorization rate of its population is likely to continue to grow.
With this rapid increasing of the number of vehicles in China comes at least two major environmental problems:
1) Dramatic increase in air pollution in mega cities due to vehicular exhaust; and,
2)
Dramatic increases in global-warming inducing greenhouse gas emissions due to the combustion of fossil fuels.
The introduction and promotion of green vehicles, fuels, and vehicle technologies is imperative to
control these negative envrionmental impacts and promote sustainable development of the transportation sector.
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Some existing, international
environmental rating systems and searchable databases are:
Links to international fuel economy guides:
Comprehensive international vehicle criteria emissions standards information may be found at
http://www.dieselnet.com/standards/
A comprehensive comparison of international fuel economy standards (written by Dr. Feng An, Executive Director of iCET), may be found here; update for 2007 here.
