Roadmap for a Sustainable Car Industry

The article is an exclusive interview wth John DeCicco, senior fellow for automotive strategies at the Environmental Defense Fund:

"The big missing piece of sustainability in this industry is the carbon cap. We can't make the automobiles sustainable unless we do something about fuel, our reliance on oil, and the unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions associated with it."

"To date, the policy framework has been to tackle these things individually without any clear, overarching principle. The individual elements of policy all have their merits, including California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, efforts on renewable fuels, and sustainable transportation in terms of transit, smart growth, land use planning, and so on. To date, the policy framework has been a case where all of these different pieces haven't added up."

"I developed the Green Book and the green score approach in the late '90s. We launched the first edition in 1998. One of the reasons I developed the green score approach was because the debate over alternative cars and fuels back then was much as it is now, the particulars were somewhat different, but there was a cacophony of voices saying, "No, it's going to be electric. No, it's going to be methanol, fuel cells, natural gas, etc." Every proponent of one technology or another would marshal their arguments about why their approach was the best and, ergo, why the taxpayers should support them through subsidies or policies. From a customer point of view there was an unmet need among the public of, "what can I do?" Many of these solutions that were being proffered then, just like unfortunately many of them are today, were really out of reach for the vast majority of consumers."

Thanks to James Brasuell