Abstract
The transport sector produces 23% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. While the mitigation of climate change requires GHG emissions to be drastically reduced, the emissions from the transport sector are expected to grow. The purpose of this study is to produce alternative scenarios which meet the target of 80% CO2 emission reduction by 2050 for the Finnish transport sector and to analyse the carbon abatement potentials, costs and benefits of the required behavioural and technological measures. We found that the most cost-efficient measure for the society is to support a shift from private car use to shared car use through increasing car-sharing and ride-sharing. Aiming to reach the emission reduction targets solely through technological measures would require a rapid uptake of alternative energies and the society would not receive the possible benefits, including health benefits, energy savings and fixed car cost savings.
Highlights
Global CO2 emissions from transport are 9000 billion tons, which is 18% of man-made emissions and these are expected to grow by 60% until 2050 [20]
As the 80% emission reduction target sets the premise for the two scenarios, which reach the target, the backcasting scenarios are implemented as we study the possibilities to arrive at the desired target with alternative measures in two scenarios
It can be seen that the emission reductions in the recommendation scenario rely heavily on the reduction of energy CO2 content through the use of biodiesel, as the difference between the two scenarios is just 26% in terms of energy consumption, but 67% in terms of CO2 emissions
Summary
Global CO2 emissions from transport are 9000 billion tons, which is 18% of man-made emissions and these are expected to grow by 60% until 2050 [20]. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [19], emissions from transport may grow faster than on any other sector without aggressive and sustained emission reduction measures. In Finland, transport emitted 12.6 Mt of CO2equivalent, which was 21% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2016 [39]. As an EU member state, Finland is committed to reduce GHG emissions by at least 40% by 2030, while the long-term target is at least 80% decrease by 2050, compared to emissions in 1990 [10, 30]. There is an urgent need for identifying, evaluating and promoting measures with which emissions from transport can be reduced cost-efficiently
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