Factors Impacting Carbon Dioxide Emissions of Automobiles on the Streets of Chinese Counties

摘要

To explore the mechanism behind carbon dioxide emission of automobiles on the streets of Chinese counties, the paper studied some basic factors such as random factors, desired speeds of drivers, and vehicle lengths of automobiles, which might influence carbon dioxide emissions, by applying MOVES (motor vehicle emission simulator), based upon calculation of distributions of average travel speeds of automobiles, obtained from microscopic traffic simulations. It was found out that although random factors impacted movements and speeds of individual vehicles, their influences upon carbon dioxide emissions of automobiles were very insignificant and could be ignored. Desired speed distributions had some obvious influence upon carbon dioxide emissions of automobiles. With increase of desired speeds of automobiles, carbon dioxide emission factors would decrease. Finally, vehicle length distributions of three Chinese counties were calculated and although the distributions were different, their influences upon carbon dioxide emissions were so small that they could be ignored.