The challenge of an EU Light-Duty Road Passenger Transport Sector within Planetary Boundaries

The challenge of an EU Light-Duty Road Passenger Transport Sector within Planetary Boundaries | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article The challenge of an EU Light-Duty Road Passenger Transport Sector within Planetary Boundaries Fabian Lechtenberg, Jorge Jaime Gata-Cuesta, Richard Cabrera-Jiménez, and 2 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7963182/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract European Union (EU) policies and regulations aim to transform the light-duty road passenger transport (LRPT) sector by setting development targets and incentivizing technologies such as battery electric vehicles. However, it remains uncertain whether these transformation pathways align with the Earth's ecological limits. This study applies a planetary boundary-based life cycle assessment (LCA) to the entire EU LRPT sector, examining seven powertrain options across climate and policy scenarios under a prospective approach that explicitly accounts for how future economic trends will affect the sector’s performance. Results show that the transport sector will likely fail to remain within the Earth’s carrying capacity, even with projected technology and supply chain advances. In five of the sixteen impact categories, namely climate change, land use, particulate matter formation, freshwater ecotoxicity, and material resource use (minerals and metals), the LRPT sector already exceeds the EU safe operating space share. Climate change transgression decreases from 2.4 to 1.3 under a < 2°C pathway, but material resource use rises from 1.4 to 2.8, with other transgressed categories also worsening. Regional and time-explicit LCA reveals that local electricity mixes and temporal dynamics play a major role, pointing towards the need for localized measures implemented at the right location and time. Looking ahead, systemic reduction strategies will be essential to operate within the Earth’s carrying capacity, including expanded recycling, circular business models, alternative materials, higher vehicle occupancy, and modal shifts toward public and active transport. While not evaluated in detail in this study, these measures, together with policy dialogues on sufficiency and cross-sectoral trade-offs, could form the basis for embedding absolute sustainability principles into long-term EU transport planning, supported by life cycle optimization approaches with high technological, spatial, and temporal granularity levels. Planetary boundaries Life cycle assessment Light-duty road passenger transport European Union Full Text Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Supplementary Files LRPTESIFinal.pdf Electronic supplementary material Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. 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Zurich","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"Planetary boundaries, Life cycle assessment, Light-duty road passenger transport, European Union","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7963182/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7963182/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eEuropean Union (EU) policies and regulations aim to transform the light-duty road passenger transport (LRPT) sector by setting development targets and incentivizing technologies such as battery electric vehicles. However, it remains uncertain whether these transformation pathways align with the Earth's ecological limits. This study applies a planetary boundary-based life cycle assessment (LCA) to the entire EU LRPT sector, examining seven powertrain options across climate and policy scenarios under a prospective approach that explicitly accounts for how future economic trends will affect the sector\u0026rsquo;s performance. Results show that the transport sector will likely fail to remain within the Earth\u0026rsquo;s carrying capacity, even with projected technology and supply chain advances. In five of the sixteen impact categories, namely climate change, land use, particulate matter formation, freshwater ecotoxicity, and material resource use (minerals and metals), the LRPT sector already exceeds the EU safe operating space share. Climate change transgression decreases from 2.4 to 1.3 under a\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;2\u0026deg;C pathway, but material resource use rises from 1.4 to 2.8, with other transgressed categories also worsening. Regional and time-explicit LCA reveals that local electricity mixes and temporal dynamics play a major role, pointing towards the need for localized measures implemented at the right location and time. Looking ahead, systemic reduction strategies will be essential to operate within the Earth\u0026rsquo;s carrying capacity, including expanded recycling, circular business models, alternative materials, higher vehicle occupancy, and modal shifts toward public and active transport. While not evaluated in detail in this study, these measures, together with policy dialogues on sufficiency and cross-sectoral trade-offs, could form the basis for embedding absolute sustainability principles into long-term EU transport planning, supported by life cycle optimization approaches with high technological, spatial, and temporal granularity levels.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"The challenge of an EU Light-Duty Road Passenger Transport Sector within Planetary Boundaries","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-10-29 04:11:07","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7963182/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"2f6530c8-3642-49d2-8e36-b99ce51f0f47","owner":[],"postedDate":"October 29th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2025-10-29T04:11:07+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-10-29 04:11:07","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7963182","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7963182","identity":"rs-7963182","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}