THE ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE HISTORIC AND CLASSIC MOTOR INDUSTRY IN THE UK

58 13. Environmental impact of classic and historic vehicles 13.1 Introduction It might be imagined that classic and historical vehicles, often produced well before emissions legislation became widespread, could have negative environmental effects. This section looks carefully at this concept, comparing the impact of spending on classic and historic vehicles with that on a normal basket of consumer spending. The results are clear. The environmental footprint of spending on classic and historic vehicles is very much lower than that of normal consumer spending. This is for three reasons: 1) Spending on classic and historic vehicles has a high labour and conservation content and a low energy and materials content; 2) The philosophy of repair rather than build new means that the industry focuses on reuse rather than building from scratch; and 3) Classic vehicles are valued at least as much for show as go and typically have very low levels of usage. 13.2 Methodology This subsection describes the methodology for the environmental impact measurements. We have examined the environmental impact in three different ways. For the first methodology, we stream each type of expenditure associated with the sector through the input-output model to discover the knock-on impacts on a series of selected emission generating sectors. Then we model the impact on greenhouse gas emissions for key emitting sector and sum these up. Then we normalise the impact into the effect per £1,000 of spend and compare this, using the same methodology, to an ave rage basket of £1,000 of consumer spending. These results have been standardised to 2018 impacts (the most contemporary emissions by sector data that exists). Second, we use this data plus the emissions data for historic and classic vehicle usage to compare the annual emissions from ownership and usage with those from a range of other activities. Finally, since classic car ownership is a luxury and in principle any money that might be spent on the sector might just as easily have been spent elsewhere we com pare the impact of spending £1,000 on classic and historic vehicles with that of spending the same amount on other possible products. 13.3 The results of the input output analysis The results of the input output analysis are shown in