Review of greenhouse gas life-cycle assessments of passenger cars in India

This study explores six life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission assessments of passenger cars in India, identifying three variables that explained about three-quarters of the variance in life-cycle GHG intensity: grid carbon intensity, test-cycle energy consumption, and the real-world energy consumption adjustment factor.

Our findings translate into several policy considerations:

• Prioritize immediate adoption of BEVs, while accounting for regional gridmix variations-delaying BEV uptake risks locking in long-term emissions from ICEs as India’s grid gradually decarbonizes.
• Enforce stringent fuel efficiency standards and give importance to real-world adjustment factors to close the lab-to-road gap, ensuring accurate life cycle emissions accounting and promoting truly energy-efficient vehicles. HEVs exhibit higher deviations from test-cycle performance than ICE, while BEVs consistently demonstrate the highest energy efficiency across all powertrains.
• Requiring on-board fuel and energy consumption meters to collect real-world data across all powertrains can help to refine future life-cycle assessments and inform evidence-based policy design.
• Incorporate land-use change impacts in biofuel life cycle assessments, as statistical analysis highlights that biofuel-related emissions are often significantly underestimated in existing studies.

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