Electrifying Denmark's Automotive Fleet: Is It the Only Key to tackle the Sustainability Challenge?

The electrification of Denmark's passenger car fleet is widely regarded as a cornerstone of national decarbonisation strategy, with EU mandates phasing out internal combustion engine sales by 2035. But is switching from combustion engines to batteries enough to bring the automotive sector within safe ecological limits?

This talk introduces the MAp methodology, an integrated framework that chains Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Dynamic Stock Modelling, Prospective LCA, and Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessment into a single cohort-based analytical pipeline. The methodology is applied to the Danish passenger car fleet from 2025 to 2050, covering multiple vehicle archetypes across different battery chemistries and supporting charging infrastructure, and comparing fleet-level environmental impacts against allocated shares of the planetary Safe Operating Space across multiple impact categories.

The results reveal that electrification alone, while necessary, is not sufficient. A truly sustainable transition requires acting on multiple fronts simultaneously: reducing the manufacturing footprint of batteries and vehicles through technology improvement and material efficiency; decarbonising the electricity grid that powers the use phase; curbing the rebound effect that risks increasing kilometres driven as per-kilometer costs fall; and critically, avoiding burden shifting: the risk that improvements in climate change come at the cost of worsening mineral resource depletion, ecotoxicity, or land use.

The talk will discuss how combining lifecycle thinking with absolute sustainability boundaries can inform policy that moves beyond tailpipe emissions to address the full chain, from mine to end-of-life.

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