Eurostar Train, UK
Roads choking with gas-guzzling vehicles are one of the first images that springs to mind when talking about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while the hybrid car has become an icon in the fight against climate change.
Personal and commercial transport consumes about 20 per cent of the global energy supply, 80 per cent of which comes from fossil fuels. One tonne of petrol will release the GHG equivalent of 3,760 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There are now more than 700 million cars in use globally, and the world is well on its way to a population of one billion vehicles.
Transport entails the movement of both goods and people. Transport infrastructure contributes to social and economic development by enabling trade and providing opportunities for employment, education and leisure. But the modern transport sector relies heavily on the combustion of fossil fuels. It is one of the largest sources of both urban and regional air pollution and greenhouse gases.
Road transport contributes close to 80 per cent to climate change. Air transport contributes 13 per cent, sea transport 7 per cent and rail contributes just half a per cent of total emissions from the transport sector.
Although there have been major technological advances in land and air transport technology during recent decades, increases in the demand for transport have eroded environmental gains. Technological advances could mean cleaner new vehicles but in the developing world older and poorly maintained cars tend to dominate the streets.
Sustainable transport policies promote cleaner and more efficient public and freight transport, as well as encourage non-motorized transport as a viable and safe transport option. Sustainable transport involves an assessment on what materials are being used to build the infrastructure as much as what energy source is fuelling the planes, trains, cars and ships that use it. It also means coordinating land-use planning and transport planning.
Developed country governments are focusing on solving both environmental and safety problems caused by transport, and on extending transport services to those of their poor citizens who cannot afford it, particularly in urban areas. They are also concerned with building transport corridors between cities and ports to enhance trade and encourage economic growth. A lot more infrastructure is still being built. As with the global energy system to which it is closely coupled, the world’s transport infrastructure is the result of an enormous capital investment by the public and private sectors, which has been made over several decades and will thus only change slowly.
Meanwhile investments in cleaner, more efficient and less polluting urban public transport has even more potential prospects as sustainable public transport systems have secondary employment generation multipliers of up to four jobs per direct job created.
The stimulus packages, allied to incentives and fiscal measures, could accelerate these transitions by triggering changes in consumer and public behaviour and raising additional funds for sustainable transport.
Reducing or scrapping the close to $300 billion-worth of annual, global fuel subsidies could generate investment funds for sustainable transport and clean energies
Measures such as the gasoline or carbon tax on fuels like those introduced in Poland and Sweden.
Other possible actions include Japan and the United States' clean car rebates; London's congestion charge; Singapore's electronic road pricing or France's insurance specific auto tax.
Road Transport
The global car fleet is expected to triple by 2050 with more than 90 per cent of the growth in non-OECD countries. In terms of road transport, more miles are driven by more cars, so even if these cars are more eco-friendly, the effect of the new technology is counter-balanced.
The IPCC has recommended that vehicle fuel economy needs to improve by 50 per cent. UNEP has launched a global initiative to double the fuel economy of the global vehicle fleet - in line with IPCC and G8 recommendations.
This Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI) promotes the investments in green, efficient cars. A recent UNEP-sponsored assessment has found that accelerated investments in high fuel efficiency vehicles including hybrids and ones powered by alternative fuels could create close to four million jobs world-wide with an additional 19 million jobs in areas such as sales, repairs and servicing. Applying technologies available today, this could save 6 billion barrels of oil, or 2 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions per year (similar to half of all EU emissions today).
Despite rapid growth in private motorization, most cities in the developing regions (with some exceptions) are not yet locked into an absolute automobile dependence. Current car ownership levels are still low compared to international standards and provide great opportunity for policies and measures that will restrict the growth of private vehicles in use in cities and create incentives for public and non-motorized transport.
However, this task is made especially challenging because market forces often work against environmental best practice. In other words, consumer preferences are often for the most inexpensive or personally convenient transport options, which are sometimes the most highly polluting. In other words low-cost, fast, convenient, cheap and environmentally friendly transport options do not always dominate the transport sector in many countries yet.
In India, Tata Motors launched the world’s cheapest car, the Tata Nano, at the beginning of 2008. These cars will replace many highly polluting two-stroke vehicles. Annual demand for the $2500 car is expected to reach 1 million, adding to the 13 million cars already on the country’s roads. On the other hand, experts say India’s greenhouse gas emissions will rise almost seven-fold if car travel remains unchecked.
At the same time, the car market is moving towards more efficient and more climate-friendly vehicles, and science is experimenting with new innovative designs, for example electric cars. There are also positive examples of more community-oriented travel by car. Websites where people announce where they are going and when, offering a lift to those with the same destination have become very popular over the last few years in many places.
Finally, applying the principles of eco-driving – shifting into a higher gear at the right time and avoiding harsh acceleration and breaking – can reduce fuel consumption and associated GHG emissions. In fact, one of the findings of the IPCC when it was investigating how to tackle transport related GHG emissions was that in Europe and the USA 5-20 per cent savings can be made in fuel consumption from eco-driving training.
Air Transport
Flying is one of the most dominant topics when it comes to the villains of climate change, but looking at the sober facts, its overall contribution to global CO2 emissions is not striking. The IPCC estimates the overall impact of an aircraft on the climate is about two to four times higher than the impact of its CO2 emissions alone and concludes that aviation is responsible for around 3.5% of anthropogenic climate change, a figure which includes both CO2 and non-CO2 induced effects. But aviation is a fast-growing contributor to climate change. What counts are not only the CO2 emissions but also ozone generation through nitrogen oxide emissions and the formation of condensation trails, so-called contrails, from water vapor release which also have warming effects.
The more an individual consumes a product that has had to travel, the greater their carbon footprint. Just between 1990 and 2003 the miles flown by air travelers rose by 80 per cent. Economy class travel emits 220 kg of CO2 per thousand kilometres, compared to 510 in business class and 770 in first class.
Although emissions from aviation, just as from shipping, are exempted from the Kyoto Protocol in any country’s emission target, the European Commission has adopted a proposal to include aviation in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) from 2011. For the post-Kyoto agreement after 2012, the inclusion of aviation emissions could be one of the political solutions.
In the global quest for low-carbon air travel, a number of airlines have also announced plans to use biofuels alongside traditional jet fuels. The close of the year 2008 was marked by the successful touchdown of a jatropha-fuelled Air New Zealand jumbo jet, while earlier in the year, Virgin Atlantic successfully tried a mixture of 80% jet fuel and 20% biofuel - made from coconut oil and babassu palm oil - in one engine of a Boeing 747 on a flight between London and Amsterdam.
Improved operational measures for planes, such as better routing and timing and efficient air traffic management (so that planes do not wait for landing, for example) also have a role in reducing the industry’s carbon footprint.
For example, the Scandinavian airline SAS began testing a new landing approach in 2006 called Continuous Descent Approach (CDA), where the landing itinerary is known to the crew well in advance to let the pilot descend in neutral gear without using the power of the engines until the release of the landing gear. SAS has applied the procedure for 2000 landing approaches to Stockholm’s Arlanda airport, saving an estimated 50,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. Sweden’s goal is that by 2012 three out of five planes landing in Stockholm should use the CDA method.
Finally, improving fuel efficiency is another key area of intervention on the path to low-emissions air travel. Airbus, which builds the super-jumbo A380 aircraft, says the industry’s performance on fuel consumption is twice as good as in 1960, and the A380 uses less than three litres per passenger per 100 kilometres – the figure for a small diesel-engine car. It says the plane’s CO2 emissions are as low as 80g per passenger per kilometre, half the figure for an average European car.This figure however does not consider the non-CO2-related climate impact of high altitude fuel combustion, which is considered to result in two to four times higher impact than from carbon emissions alone.
Rail Transport
In terms of travel, trains are by far the most climate friendly mode of transport, but how much they actually save depends on how many people are on the train and what energy source it uses.
For example, trains in Switzerland run on electricity from a mix of hydroelectric and nuclear power. In Norway trains use 95 per cent hydroelectric power. Local shopping malls are also located close to public transport stops. In France, trains run on nuclear power, as most of the country’s electricity is nuclear-based.
Transporting goods by train is also the most carbon friendly way. Shipping one tonne of goods by train in Europe emits 2.3 kilograms of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere. However, transporting the same in a short haul plane will emit 330 kilograms of CO2 equivalent, 209 kilograms on a medium hall plane (travelling 5000 – 8000 kilometres) and 117 kilograms on a long haul plane travelling more than 8000 kilometres.
Europe has probably the most elaborate transnational train network in the world, but also a wide range of low-cost airlines offering cheap fares and frequent departures to numerous destinations. Apart from the price of a ticket, complicated connections and sometimes unfavorable timetables often put planes ahead in competing for customers.
To improve their services seven European high-speed rail operators have founded Railteam with the aim of offering integrated high-speed rail travel between major European cities and competing with airlines on punctuality, pricing and speed. The launch of a consistent ticketing-system on a single website is planned in 2009.
Railways can, with forward-looking reforms and modernization, be profitable enterprises. Indian railways, which employs 1.4 million people, has been recently transformed into a 'cash-rich enterprise' and is undergoing a major modernization effort. In the Republic of Korea, the $7 billion to be invested in mass transit and railways over the next three years - as part of its 'green new deal' –is expected to create 138,000 jobs.
Sea Transport
The worldwide fleet of 90,000 ships transports 90 per cent of the world’s goods, and shipping emissions are projected to grow by more than 70 per cent by 2020, as global trade expands.
In terms of sea travel, an unpublished report by the International Maritime Organization revealed that shipping emitted around 800 million tonnes of CO2 in 2007. This amounts to around three per cent of global emissions. For many years shipping had been thought to be one of the better forms of transport for keeping GHGs down, but studies show that its global CO2 emissions are double those of aviation, and rising rapidly.
Other figures reflect much higher emissions than those given by the IMO. Recent articles in the press suggests that CO2 emissions from shipping have been grossly underestimated and would amount to 1,120 million tonnes or nearly 4.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions. This is almost twice the UK’s total emissions and exceeds all of Africa’s.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
UNEP’s transport programme promotes the integration of environmental considerations into transport-related decisions at all levels, ranging from global to personal. UNEP assists decision makers in the public and private sectors to develop a broad-based approach to transportation planning and policy making. Priorities include working with developing countries to develop tools, indicators and operational parameters for assessing the performance of sustainable transport systems; assisting developing country cities to develop better transport plans; promoting alternative fuels (including biofuels) and encouraging consumer behavioral change.
UNEP has identified three key areas of work to assist countries to meet the targets under multilateral environmental agreements. These are:
- The diffusion of cleaner technologies and the deployment of relevant policies that drive them to reduce environmental impacts
- The improvement of urban planning, and
- The introduction of price signals that capture the full costs of different modes of transport.
The overall objective of this work is to bring about a shift to transport systems and approaches to mobility that are less disruptive to the environment – an objective that can be achieved while still enhancing mobility options for billions of people around the world.