Transport energy in Britain: future trends and carbon dioxide emissions

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Abstract
Transport energy in the UK consumes approximately 55% of all liquid hydrocarbon fuels and accounts for 16.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions, the most important of the greenhouse gases. This paper examines the situation of one part of the transport sector, land-based passenger travel. Within this sector there is a dominant and growing trend in the use of private cars, the least efficient mode both in terms of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. While efficiency improvements are possible and identified in this paper, current trends do not suggest that these will come about without some government measures. The lack of a coherent transport policy is a severe constraint on these possible developments. More urgent consideration of transport energy is necessary because of its growing importance and the difficulty of substituting away from liquid fuels in the long term. This paper examines technical improvements in vehicles (road and rail), the potential for alternative fuels and for modal shifts. It constructs two different scenarios, TRAD and CONS, for projecting CO2 emissions to the year 2030 and concludes that significant reductions are possible but are only likely to come about through radical changes in transport policy.

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