Fuel Efficiency Standards

The International Council on Clean Transportation released a report titled: "Passenger Vehicle Greenhouse Gas and Fuel Economy Standards: A Global Update" In July 2007 where they compared fuel efficiency by country. This is a little tricky as different places track efficiency differently, some like CA include emissions from things like A/C, others like the US in general mainly consider MPG. The ICCT normalized this data. Here is the graph normalized to MPG:



The United States lags pretty far in this graph, and California lags even more as of today (although they aim to make major strides). Another way to look at it is in CO2 equivalents emitted per km driven by vehicle. I like this alternative chart as well:



Each bar in this image shows one region. The top of the bar represents the current emissions per km driven, the bottom of the bar represents the expected emissions due to laws in place to limit CO2 emissions. The most significant decrease comes from California, the least significant is the overall United States.