How much do cars pollute annually?

Question

Something like how many millions of gallons of Co2 each year or whatever would be great.

THANKS

Answer 1

Well, a gallon of gasoline produces about 19.4 pounds of CO2, and a gallon of diesel produces about 22.2 pounds.



The "Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks" indicates that the US produces about 1,800 Tg (2 billion tons) of CO2 per year from the transportation sector.  However, this includes cars, buses, trains, airplanes, etc.

According to the Transportation Energy Data Book, in 2004 cars used about 16,700 trillion BTUs of gasoline and 404 trillion BTUs of diesel.  Using 125,000 BTU per gallon for gasoline and 138,700 BTU per gallon for diesel, we get 133.6 billion gallons of gasoline, and 3 billion gallons of diesel used for cars.

Using the above figures, it makes a grand total of 1.33 billion tons (1,205 Tg) for cars, light trucks, and motorcycles.