Chapter 14. Panorama: emissions reduction in the transport sector - a complex challenge

In post-Industrial Revolution societies, mobility has acquired such a determining role, as a key driver of individual achievements and an enabler of social progress, that it has been recognized as one of the universally acknowledged human rights. However, the ever-increasing trend to greater mobility has brought about a situation in which considerations of sustainable development might call for restrictions on the continued growth of the global mobility of people and goods. According to IPCC, the transport sector accounted for 13.1% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions in 2004 (IPCC, 2007a). When projecting the mobility habits of industrialized economies onto developing economies, it is easy to understand the shortcomings of our present mobility patterns and means, mainly stemming from the sector's almost complete reliance upon physically finite and economically volatile fossil resources. With international action on climate change aiming at significant emissions abatement in order to prevent the Earth's surface temperature from increasing by more than 2°C, the long-spared transport sector will have to be placed alongside primarily targeted energy-intensive sectors such as power generation. This chapter covers a large range of issues related to the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector, from the strong growth trends of global mobility and the transport sector's heavy dependency on oil, to the assessment of transport's carbon footprint and the options for economically incentivising emission abatements.