Environmental impact of transportation on Europe: view of science and industry
Climate change is a reality and an issue of increasing concern that is expected to become a more serious problem in the near future. One of the main causes of climate change is the environmental impact of human activities, particularly in developed countries like those in Europe and North America.
As this is an issue that affects all the population, governmental intervention is necessary, such as with projects embedded in European frameworks like ‘Horizon 2020’, which motivate industry and accelerate positive changes towards greener solutions.
A significant proportion of the research projects being now carried out in European universities are concerned with limiting the current environmental impacts of industry or reducing the effects of past activities.
More than 90 % of the world’s population is breathing in polluted air¹ . In addition, transport accounts for 26 % of global CO2 emissions² and is one of the few industrial sectors where the emission of pollutants is still growing. European companies like Volvo³ and Airbus⁴ are determined to develop new ways of reducing the footprint of transportation with regard to its impact on climate, as well as pollutants and noise emissions.
Some countries are implementing effective regulations to steer the mobility sector towards the use of renewable resources. The Netherlands⁵ and Norway⁶, for example, plan to ban the introduction of road vehicles using fossil fuels by 2025 ; while Norway aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from local shipping by 40 % by 2030 compared to 1990 levels⁷. Automated cars may reduce greenhouse emission by 60 %, as reported by McKinsey & Company⁸ .
Transport sectors such as aviation have experienced constant growth in their traffic (around 5 % every year), motivated partially by the considerably reduced cost of the average airplane ticket. However, the CO2 footprint of an average airplane is about 20 times larger that of a modern train⁹. Therefore, simple decisions made by individual citizens, such as how to travel during vacations, can have a significant effect on the environmental impact of their journey.
There are other approaches apart from technological solutions that can lower the demand for emission-intensive transportation. For example, a Swiss retailer removed imported fresh green asparagus from its shelves, because the impact of transporting it by air was 15 times greater than for locally grown asparagus¹⁰.
Cargo bicycles for last-mile deliveries are becoming popular in Germany, where 21,000 electrically assisted cargo bicycles were sold in 2017¹¹. A great deal of effort has also been put into the development of delivery bots, which should reduce the impact of deliveries on the environment even further¹² .
A large part of modern research in urban mobility is now focusing on the flying taxi concept¹³ , which could enable faster commuting¹⁴ and significantly reduce the emission of pollutants if electric propulsion systems are considered. On the other hand, safety and noise might become challenging issues if the number of flying taxis rapidly increases.
During ESOF 2018, a session on the Environmental impact of transportation on Europe was organised, which brought together industry and academia.
It aimed to combine the views and opinions of experts from European industry (Climate-KIC) and universities and research institutes (TU Delft and ETH Zurich). The chair of the Bridging Science and Business working group of MCAA, Pavlo Bazilinskyy, invited four speakers to discuss the impact of transportation on the climate of Europe. He and his co-chair Claudio Beretta from ETH Zürich were joined by Prof. Bert van Wee and Roberto Merino from TU Delft, Rahul Bansal from Climate-KIC, and Sophia Ganzeboom from ETH Zürich.
During the session, an important question was whether technology is the solution for lower contamination levels, or does people’s behavior play a major role?
Opinions were divided over this aspect. Some of the speakers believed that technology has to and will play the most important role in the change, while others believed that we must focus on encouraging people to use less contaminating means of transportation and change stereotypes related to the need for owning a car.
Despite the different points of view, they all agreed on the importance of accessibility of sustainable travel in order to make a real change. When the session was opened to questions from the audience they pointed out the importance of educating people about the use of sustainable ways to move between locations.
It was also mentioned that we should not forget about local transport and not repeat the mistakes of hub-based planning, as in the French railway system. The session was highly successful and the audience strongly engaged in the conversation.
One thing is clear: there is a need to rethink how we get from point A to point B, and we need to start thinking about it now.
References
⁴ Airbus. (2017). Climate action.
¹⁰ Zhiyenbek A., Beretta C., Stoessel F., Hellweg S. (2017). Ökobilanzierung Früchte- und Gemüseproduktion — eine Entscheidungsunterstützung für ökologisches Einkaufen. ETH Zürich, Institut für Umweltingenieurwissenschaften, John-von-Neumann-Weg 9, 8093 Zürich
About the author
Pavlo Bazilinskyy is a Marie Curie Fellow at TU Delft. He received his double MSc degree in Dependable Software Systems from the University of St Andrews and Maynooth University in 2014. Pavlo is a chair of the Bridging Science and Business working group of MCAA.
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