Accelerating Car Scrappage: A Review of Research into the Environmental Impacts

This paper reviews the literature on policies that aim to accelerate car scrappage and on related models. We conclude that substantial model efforts have been made to capture the direct reaction of households with older cars to the scrappage schemes, but that indirect effects on the second-hand car market, effects on car use and emissions from car use and on lifecycle emissions have received far less attention. Emission effects are modest and occur only in the short term. The cost-effectiveness of scrapping schemes is often quite poor. The most favourable cost-effectiveness scores occur in large densely populated areas, and only (or mainly) if cars with old (or no) emissions control technologies are scrapped. A full overview of the pros and cons of scrapping schemes, including all the dominant effects and their determinants in an advanced way, is lacking. Nevertheless, we think the general conclusions with respect to the effects and cost-effectiveness as presented above are quite robust.