The European Union will have to go beyond improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency if it is to meet carbon emission targets, a top European Commission official has warned – and it must promote other measures such as modal shift to rail and road tolls.
Deputy director general for the environment, Jos Delbeke, told a newspaper interviewer that soaring carbon emissions from vehicles have undermined achievements by industry and power generators.
He said a quantum leap was needed, and limits on aviation and shipping emissions and improved road vehicle efficiency, including vans for the first time, would not be enough. Transport emissions were up by 35% since 1990.
‘We have to manage growth and play much more on shifting mode of transport,’ he was quoted as saying. ‘I’m very much in favour of the principle of polluter pays, for example road tolls, which can be done electronically, to make them much easier for the user. Rail is the most attractive in the short term, but its market share is so limited, we’d have to double or triple its capacity.’
The issue is shooting up the European political agenda. The European Environment Agency recently produced a report calling for a complete change of policy direction.
CSS environment chair, John Wood, said meeting carbon targets would need more than a technological response and would necessitate policy changes, fiscal measures and investment, including modal shift and more public transport.
He said policy-makers and providers needed to consider packages of ‘soft measures’ to encourage behavioural change and avoidance of non-essential journeys as well as modal changes. ‘There needs to be a shift away from mobility as an end in itself to one of enabling accessibility,’ he said. ‘This is not just a transport issue but also a societal one.’
For society to manage on 80% less carbon would, he said, involve designing accessibility solutions and looking at land use patterns from a transport perspective.
Without significant public transport investment, areas of dispersed settlement and complex movement patterns offered challenges and needed road-user behavioural changes. These again raised questions of political and road-user will and funding.
A report last year by MTRU for the Campaign for Better Transport estimated transport actually accounted for 28% of UK emissions and recommended a package for reducing them by 25% by 2022, and 80% by 2050.
This included workplace travel plans, a big modal shift for freight, reduced journey lengths, more walking and cycling, and public transport investment.
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