High gasoline prices could lead to a dramatic saving in US greenhouse-gas emissions. That’s the conclusion of economists in the US, who suggest high fuel prices are turning consumers off SUVs and onto smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

What’s more, car owners are predicted to cut back on driving in order to save money. Together, these changes in consumer behaviour could make an important dent in the US contribution to global warming, reducing annual carbon dioxide emissions by tens of millions of tonnes per year. The impact will be dramatic, says Chris Knittel, an economist at the University of California, Davis, who was involved in one of the studies.

The changes are being driven by record fuel prices in the US, where, at the end of April, the average price of gasoline stood at $3.65 per gallon, 20 per cent more than in January and treble the price of a decade ago. Until recently, these increases did not seem to be having a consistent effect on the car market and fuel use. Though sales of SUVs in the US have been falling over the past few years, this decline has come on the back of years of rapid growth, and overall gasoline consumption has been increasing every year since 1991.

That could be about to change. Knittel and colleagues looked at data on 1.4 million car purchases over the past 10 years, comparing sales patterns with gas prices. They found that sales of the least fuel-efficient cars, such as SUVs and pick-up trucks, fell by 13 per cent for every $1 per gallon increase in the price of gasoline. The biggest SUVs suffered the most, with sales dropping by over 25 per cent for every dollar by which the gas price rose. And for every $1 hike in gas prices there was a corresponding 17 per cent sales boost for the most efficient vehicles, such as compact cars and hybrids. Knittel estimates that over about a decade, such changes in buying habits could cut the amount of gasoline used by US drivers by around 7 per cent for every $1 increase in its price.

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