Street view from Dublin. Ireland has decided to reduce car usage by at least 20 per cent by 2030.Photo: ©Matthew Reeves/ Shutterstock.com
The need for new transportation goals and cheaper public transport
There is an urgent need for integrated policies that both electrify the car fleet and reduce car usage to meet climate goals efficiently.
The first fossil-fuelled car was built by Karl Benz in 1886. It marked the beginning of the era of the car and paved the way for over a hundred years of development of the internal combustion engine. About a hundred years later, the Swedish car company Volvo introduced its Volvo 140, which was the successor to the iconic Amazon, which became the first car in the world to be manufactured in over one million units. The development of both car usage and car production has been steadily increasing ever since.
Today, driving is a natural part of many Europeans’ everyday life and has until recently not caused any major concerns for either governments or citizens. Until now, that is, with the EU’s climate goals for 2030, as part of the comprehensive climate action package ‘Fit for 55’. Aiming to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent compared to 1990 levels, it has made governments realise that the climate goal cannot be achieved through electrification of the car fleet alone; something also needs to be done about car usage.
As a consequence, several European governments have now begun to worry about how to meet the European ESR targets (European jargon for emissions outside the EU’s emissions trading system, which largely consists of transport emissions) as they realise that electrification will not carry them the whole way.
In a recently published study by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, it was found that car usage needs to decrease by 21–47 percent to reduce road traffic’s climate impact by 70 percent by 2030, compared to 2010. This reduction target aligns with Sweden’s goal for the entire transportation sector. However, the current Swedish government faces challenges due to a significant reduction in the proportion of biofuel in the fuel mix, as previously decided by the Swedish parliament.
Several governments have begun setting goals to reduce car usage. Both Ireland and Scotland recently decided that their national car usage should decrease by at least 20 percent by 2030. Norway already established a zero-growth goal for urban car traffic back in 2012, and Stockholm aims to reduce car usage by 30 percent by 2030. Paris, although lacking a specific goal, decided, after a referendum, to triple parking fees for SUVs.[1]
Despite ambitious goals to reduce emissions from car transport in various countries and cities, much of the infrastructure planning remains separate from the national climate targets. Often, responsible authorities base their infrastructure plans on historical trends in car usage, which tend to increase over time, resulting in infrastructure that contradicts climate goals. Reducing emissions from transportation is, however, a simpler task than reducing emissions from sectors like agriculture or industry.
There are already well-established techniques for producing fossil-free fuels, and experts predict that electric cars will be cheaper than fossil-fuelled cars by 2027. Creating measures and policies for a more transport-efficient society is often more cost-effective compared to other climate strategies, as it can be achieved through legislation and sustainable planning. Decreasing car usage can be achieved through measures such as:
- Implementing road tolls and congestion charges
- Introducing car-free zones and environmental zones in cities
- Enhancing infrastructure planning
- Implementing measures to reduce parking spaces
- Removing subsidies for fossil fuels
- Increasing subsidies for public transportation
Last but not least, significant savings can be achieved by removing fossil fuel subsidies. In Europe, these subsidies amount to a staggering 137 billion euros per year, which exceeds the entire annual budget of the EU. If these funds were instead used to subsidise public transportation, it could provide 114 million people with free public transport for an entire year.[2] However, achieving this requires the development of new transportation goals and the implementation of measures to reach these objectives.
The author works as a research secretary at Formas. The views expressed in this article are his own.
[1] https://www.ivl.se/press/debatt/2024-01-25-sverige-behover-ett-mal-for-m... (web page in Swedish)
[2]Calculated on the basis that average public transport ticket costs 1200 euros per year.