Global Warming Reports

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Executive Summary

With summer driving season and the resulting spikes in gasoline prices just around the corner, Illinois consumers are already paying over $3.50 a gallon at the pump due to the dramatically increased price of crude oil. In the Midwest, where the average household uses 1176 gallons of gasoline per year for transportation, families will have to budget more than $4100 per year for motor vehicle fuel.

Finding relief from high gas prices is no easy task. For many Illinoisans today, public transit, biking or walking to work are just not realistic options. While there is broad consensus that dramatic improvements in transit availability and transit oriented community design are needed, redesigning our communities and building out our transit systems will take years. Meanwhile, if recent history is a guide, the total vehicle miles traveled in Illinois could continue to increase by about 1.5% annually for the next several decades.

In the near term, making cleaner, more efficient vehicles available to Illinois drivers is the most effective way to reduce the burden of high gas prices on Illinois consumers.

This report estimates the economic benefits we could achieve as individuals, statewide and on a county-by-county basis, if Illinois were to adopt the same Clean Car Program that has already been adopted in 13 states across the nation.

What is the Clean Car Program?

Automobile tailpipe emissions make up a substantial proportion of the air pollution and global warming pollution emitted nationally and in Illinois. Automobile emissions standards set limits on the levels of pollution that can be emitted by new cars sold by automakers. Under federal law, automakers must follow the national emissions standards except in states that opt for California’s more protective standards. The California emission standards achieve deeper cuts in air pollution than the federal standards, and include limits on global warming pollution that the federal standards lack entirely.

Thirteen states--California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington--have adopted the stronger California standards. Meanwhile, in the Midwest, clean car standards have been recommended by the Illinois Climate Change Advisory Group, the Iowa Office of Energy Independence, and are under consideration in the Minnesota legislature.

How much money can Illinoisans save on gasoline by adopting the Clean Car Program here?

The Clean Car Program provides an extremely cost-effective way of reducing pollution. In fact, when the program was first adopted in California, the state estimated that for every ton of global warming pollution avoided by the program, consumers would save a net $126 that would otherwise be spent on gasoline. In other words, addressing global warming by reducing vehicle emissions has a negative cost (a savings) to consumers that provides a boost to the economy. With today’s gas prices, those savings are even greater.

Specifically, if Illinois adopts the Clean Car Program –

• Individual Driver: Assuming fuel costs of $3 per gallon, a figure that is quickly becoming unrealistically low, Illinois consumers buying a clean car using a five-year loan, would see a net savings of $115-$170 per year during the period of their loan, and after the loan is paid off, would see $360 to $410 per year in savings at the gas pump. For a person purchasing the car with cash up-front, the payback period would be 2.2 to 2.5 years.

• Statewide: Assuming a more realistic $3.50/gallon, when the Clean Car Program is fully phased-in so that the average Illinois car was meeting the 2020 standards, Illinois consumers could save an estimated $1.24 billion per year on gasoline costs, over and above the savings we will see under the federal fuel economy standards;

• County-by-County: When the Clean Car Program is fully phased in:
  • Drivers in eighteen Illinois counties would save an additional $10 million or more at the gas pump if Illinois adopts the Clean Car Program. These counties are – Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will, Kane, Madison, St. Clair, Winnebego, McHenry, Sangamon, Champaign, McClean, Peoria, LaSalle, Tazewell, Rock Island, Macon and Kankakee.
  • Drivers in 94 of Illinois 102 counties would save more than $1 million per year at the gas pump under the Clean Car Program;
  • In Cook County alone, drivers would save an additional $385 million at the gas pump if Illinois adopts the Clean Car Program.

The Clean Car Program’s Environmental and Public Health Benefits

Of course, the primary purpose and policy goals of the Clean Car Program would be to reduce air pollution, improve public health, and help fight global warming. The economic benefits are incidental to the substantial air quality and environmental benefits.

The Clean Car program is one of the most effective tools to combat the growing threat of global warming. Nationally, one million more drivers are on today’s roads than there were just two years ago.iii America’s cars and trucks already produce more than 360 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year; these emissions are expected to rise another 50 percent by 2015. In Illinois, the transportation sector is the second largest source of carbon dioxide pollution, making up nearly one-third of the state’s emissions.

Air pollution like smog, soot and cancer-causing air toxics from our cars, trucks and SUVs worsen asthma and lung disease and have been linked to an increased risk of stroke, heart attack and cancer. Nationally, our vehicles are responsible for more than 50 percent of all volatile organic compound and nitrogen oxide emissions—precursors to smog.

By adopting the Clean Cars program, Illinois can set a course toward cleaner air, lower global warming emissions, and do so while saving consumers money, and improving our economy.