Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Anand N. | Delivered April 19, 2020

Hawaii - Green House Gas emissions

Goals

To find the number of trips in Hawaii under 6 miles in length and how much carbon emissions result from these trips.

Early Findings

According to data from the Hawaii State Department of Business, 66.6% of commuters drive a car alone to get to and from work. In absolute numbers, this worked out to 441,988 people.
The average commute is 26.8 minutes.
In Hawaii, there are 769,383 licensed drivers, driving an average of 11,104 miles per year per driver.
 82.2% of vehicle miles occured on urban roads. In 2015, there were 10,099,000,000 vehicle miles driven in the state.
The US average for trips under 6 miles is 59.4% of all trips. Broken down, 5% were less than 0.5 miles, 16.4% were 1 mile, 13.8% were 2 miles, 10.4% were 3 miles, 7.9% were 4 miles and 6% were 5 miles.
In the National Household Travel Survey from 2017, 922 million trips were recorded in Hawaii. 41 million were less 0.5 miles, 179 million were around 1 mile, 151 million were around 2 miles, 92 million were around 3 miles, 61 million were around 4 miles and 46 million were around 5 miles.
In percentages, this is 4.4% were less than 0.5 miles, 19.4% were around 1 miles, 16.3% were around 2 miles, 10% were around 3 miles, 6.6% were around 4 miles and 5% were around 5 miles.
As a rough calculation, multiplying the number of trips in that mileage category by the median mile results in: 20.5 million + 179 million + 302 million + 276 million + 244 million + 230 million = 1,251,500,000 miles on trips under 6 miles in total length.
The average passenger vehicle emits 404 grams of CO2 per mile.
Therefore, roughly, 505.6 billion grams of CO2 could be saved annually if all car trips under 6 miles in Hawaii were conducted using EVs.