A Consideration of Whole-Life Carbon Emissions by Indiana Manufacturers in Efforts to Gauge Lifecycle Sustainability Records in the Multinational Automobile Industry

The Ricardo Report (2020) recommends a holistic analysis of the effects of the global auto industry on sustainabilityby assessing the impacts of automobiles on the environment throughout their lifecycle.Much of the literature on sustainability in the transportation sector focuses on vehicle exhaustemissionsand theircontribution to urban smog, and there has been little consideration of emissions produced during the automobile manufacturing process itself. This study builds on the lifecycle emissions approach recommended by the Ricardo Report. Specifically, data on the pounds of pollution emitted was collected from the Toxic Release Inventory report of major multinational automobile producers and analyzed via piecewise linear regression analyses to provide insight about the pollution emitted during a vehicle‟s production. The findings in this study will fill a gap in Ricardo‟s “birth to grave” proposal to quantify whole-life carbon emissions in the automobile sector.