What’s the chance of the 50/50 challenge succeeding?

The 50/50 Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI) challenge is the latest brainchild of the FIA Foundation, a UK charity established in 2001 by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). This international federation of motoring organisations is also the governing body of world motor sport.

The aim of the project is to achieve a fifty per cent improvement in fuel economy in the global light duty vehicle fleet by 2050. The foundation's environment director Sheila Watson says the project’s title is very much evidence-based and states it is just good fortune that it turned out to be so catchy. She also stresses that 50/50 is very much a minimum target.

Fanfare
The GFEI was launched in a fanfare of publicity at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this year with three other founding partners: the International Energy Agency, International Transport Forum and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The launch report estimates that annual savings of six billion barrels of oil and two gigatonnes of CO2 are achievable through existing, cost-effective technologies such as better engines and drive trains, more efficient components such as tyres, and lighter materials. That would be a reduction equivalent to half the total current annual emissions of the EU.

One of the first GFEI goals is to improve the amount and quality of information on fuel economy, particularly in non-member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where the amount of data available is currently limited. This will then make it easier to establish what needs to be done, which strategies are more successful, and what will be the costs involved.

This is how we do it
GFEI aims to influence government policies through the development of a Toolkit providing information on ways to improve national fuel efficiency, using case studies and examples of fuel efficiency policies and initiatives around the world.

Sheila says GFEI is organising conferences, seminars and workshops to get a wide range of public, private and state organisations together to gather ideas for improving fuel economy in a cost-effective manner.

The four partners are also prioritising education and delivering information through fuel economy labelling programmes. The aim is to raise awareness of how adapting your driving style and maintaining a vehicle properly can cut fuel consumption.

Right here, right now
Sheila says it’s not about relying on future technology to save our bacon. We must work with what we have got and make existing internal combustion engines more efficient.

“We’re often being told that there are lots of new technologies just around the corner that will solve all our problems, which means we wait and we wait and we do nothing. Our policy is we can do so much right here, right now, so let’s get on with it,” she says.