At present there are over 500 million cars worldwide, over three quarters of them in the OECD countries. The global car fleet is rapidly expanding; a new car rolls off the assembly line faster than one every second. [22]
According to the World Bank, there will be 800 million cars in the year 2010. [23] The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there will be 1,000 million cars in the world in 2015. [24] According to a trend analysis by the UPI Institute for Forecasts and the Environment, the numbers of cars will increase four or fivefold by the year 2030 to 2 - 2,500 million cars, mainly through a rapid growth in Asia. In this scenario the specific consumption of each car will fall markedly worldwide over that time period, but even assuming this, the world's consumption of petrol will double in the next two generations. [see reference #8]
The CO2 picture is even bleaker. Based on a "business-as-usual" scenario where the car fleet expands with only minor changes in fuel efficiency, car CO2 emissions would double to 8,000 million tons by the year 2030.
According to the UPI analysis, the worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide from cars will amount to 7,500 million tonnes by the year 2030, again based on the car fleet expandson with no significant change in fuel efficiency2 . These figures are confirmed by a study by the U.S. Department of Energy, which predicts a world-wide growth of CO2 emissions by 54% in the year 2015 over 1990 levels, out of which oil products will account for nearly half the increase in emission. [25]
The traffic sector is responsible for 28% of the total CO2 emissions in 31 OECD-countries who reported their emissions data so far to the United Nations [26].
