Industrial ripples: Automotive electrification sends through carbon emissions

Automotive electrification is a crucial initiative for addressing climate challenges in the transport sector. The automotive industry is a major contributor of carbon emissions and consumes a large amount of energy. This study captured the ripple effects of carbon emissions from the automotive industry in China with an industry chain perspective, focusing on three mitigation approaches: material efficiency, automotive electrification, and cleaner energy. By predicting the automotive market and employing the scenario analysis, this study indicated that electric vehicles will dominate the future automotive market, and hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will play transitional roles. These three mitigation approaches will individually influence carbon emissions and collectively interact with each other in the industry chain. Carbon emissions from automotive related industries will display the ripple effects, particularly in the machinery & equipment industry. Compared to electricity consumption, automotive electrification will facilitate fuel consumption to reach carbon peak 5–7 years earlier. Combined scenarios with pairwise approaches will result in cumulative mitigation from 44.90% to 82.22%, while synthetic scenarios will achieve the largest mitigation potential up to 29.29 Gt and 42.66 Gt. In order to mitigate carbon emissions from the automotive industry, this study proposed several policy recommendations: promoting automotive electrification stepwise, identifying crucial mitigation initiatives, and exploring coordinated policy combinations.