Urban Mobility and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Status, Public Policies, and Scenarios in a Developing Economy City, Natal, Brazil

André Lopes Toledo,Emílio Lèbre La Rovere

doi:10.3390/su10113995

Abstract

This study aims to deepen the understanding of the role of the urban mobility sector in the current and future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of a middle-sized city of Brazil, which is also a developing economy. With the cross-reference between road and rail mobility data, governmental mobility planning, the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emission quantification methodology, and the creation of scenarios for up to 10 subsequent years, it is possible to verify that individual motorized transport accounts for 60% of the total emissions from the urban transportation sector, with the largest amount of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) emissions per passenger among all of the forms of mobility. However, in the case of this study, government mobility planning, by not encouraging more energy-efficient transport and non-motorized modes, ends up aggravating GHG emissions in the scenarios considered for 2020 and 2025. In turn, the mitigation scenarios proposed herein integrate public transport and non-motorized transport solutions that would reduce the total of equivalent carbon dioxide (tCO2eq) by at least 45,000 tCO2eq per year by 2025. This cross-referencing of the environmental impact of government mobility policies can be replicated in other cities in developing countries that do not yet present municipal inventories or emission monitoring.

Highlights

The International Energy Agency (IEA) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [1,2] data and estimates report that the transport sector accounts for a significant share of worldwide energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
Following the strong urban growth of this region, the transport sector in Latin America contributes 35% of GHG emissions, which is higher than other regions worldwide, with the highest emission rate growth among all of the sectors of the economy and with the greatest difficulties in implementing GHG emission reductions [3,4,5,6]
After the collection of both available and requested public data, the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) methodology was adopted, based on the methodology applied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC), which was used to calculate the municipal inventory of urban transport emissions between 2012–2015 [10,40]

Summary

Introduction

The International Energy Agency (IEA) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [1,2] data and estimates report that the transport sector accounts for a significant share of worldwide energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For example, with South Asia, another developing region that is climatically vulnerable and experiencing a strong urbanization process [7,8], the transport sector, which accounted for 27% of total emissions in 2005, should reduce its share in 2030 to 19%, due to the intense increase in emissions from electricity generation, from 30% to 46.6% of total emissions [9]. The GHG Emissions Inventory, which reveals the current state of emission levels and their sources, is the first step in analyzing city emissions, using a predetermined systematic method [10]

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Conclusion