review on statistics, mitigation polices, and modelling tools - unece

195 Pages·2012·2.19 MB·English

UNDA Seventh Tranche

Project E:
Development and implementation of a monitoring and assessment
tool for CO emissions in inland transport to facilitate climate change
2
mitigation

CO emissions from inland transport:
2
statistics, mitigation polices, and modelling tools

United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
Transport Division

October 2012

1
Table of contents
Table of contents ....................................................................................................................... 2
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 4
Executive summary ................................................................................................................... 5
1. Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 6
Background ............................................................................................................................ 6
Objectives of the study ........................................................................................................ 13
Structure of the report ........................................................................................................ 13
2. Sources of information ....................................................................................................... 15
Data requirements .............................................................................................................. 15
Historical data for the characterisation of CO emissions in transport ........................... 15
2
Future context and policy characterisation .................................................................... 17
Main sources of transport and CO emissions statistics and data ...................................... 18
2
Fuel usage, fuel characteristics and CO emissions ......................................................... 19
2
Transport activity and vehicle characteristics ................................................................. 29
Drivers of transport demand ........................................................................................... 62
3. Policy measures aimed at the reduction of CO emissions ................................................ 79
2
The context .......................................................................................................................... 79
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ................................... 80
The Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012) ..................................................................................... 80
Post-2012 climate change policy ..................................................................................... 81
CO emission mitigation polices in transport ...................................................................... 84
2
Policy instruments ........................................................................................................... 84
Classification of transport policies .................................................................................. 87
Application of CO emission mitigation policies in transport .......................................... 90
2
4. Assessing inland transport CO emissions and evaluating CO mitigation policy impacts in
2 2
transport with models ........................................................................................................... 108
Estimation and projection of transport activity, energy use and CO emissions .............. 109
2
Assessing historical emissions ....................................................................................... 109
Projections and the assessment of policy impacts ........................................................ 113
5. Synthesis and definition of the characteristics of FORFITS .............................................. 141
Statistics ............................................................................................................................. 141
Key parameters and analysis of the current data availability ....................................... 141

2
Recommendations......................................................................................................... 153
Characteristics and recommendations to develop ForFITS ............................................... 155
References ............................................................................................................................. 158
Annex 1 .................................................................................................................................. 194
List of countries and organisations that replied to the UNECE questionnaire .................. 194

3
Acknowledgements
This publication is the product of an UNECE activity, undertaken by the Transport Division,
under the overall responsibility of Eva Molnar (Director) and under the project management
of Romain Hubert.
The main author of this report is Pierpaolo Cazzola. Important contributions to the analysis
were provided by Miquel Gangonells.
The assessment also benefited from a number of other contributions, including:
 The work of Giorgos Mellios (EMISIA S.A.), developed under a consultancy contract
(and mainly focused on the analysis of the results of a questionnaire developed and
distributed by the UNECE);
 the inputs and the advice received from the reviewers of a concept document
containing ideas on the ForFITS development, including Panayotis Christidis
(European Commission), François Cuenot (IEA), Holger Dalkmann (EMBARQ),
Cristiano Facanha (ICCT), Alexander Körner (IEA), Sudhir Gota (CAI Asia), Timur Gül
(IEA), Françoise Nemry (European Commission), Michael Replogle (ITDP), John
Rogers (World Bank), Ko Sakamoto (ADB), and Marek Sturc (European Commission);
 comments and discussions resulting from an International Expert Meeting on
assessment of inland transport CO emission mitigation policies, held in Geneva on
2
April 24, 2012;
 inputs and comments from other UNECE staff, including Tiina Luige and Ould
Sid’Ahmed, as well as Madan Bandhu Regmi, from UNESCAP.
Assistance with editing and preparation of the manuscript was provided by Veronica Reeves.

4
Executive summary
The Transport Division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE),
together with all UN Regional Commissions, initiated a new project to enhance international
cooperation and planning towards sustainable transport policies that facilitate climate
change mitigation.
The project is funded by the UN Development Account (UNDA) for 3 years, from January
2011 to December 2013.
The project aims at developing an information and analysis modelling tool based on a
uniform methodology for the evaluation of the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO ). Since the
2
tool is meant to pave the way “For Future Inland Transport Systems”, it was named ForFITS.
It focuses on the inland transport sector (road, rail and inland waterways), while CO
2
emissions caused by international aviation and maritime transport are excluded from its
scope.
In order to define the features of ForFITS, this report illustrates the main data requirements
associated with the estimation of inland transport CO emissions, it looks at the overarching
2
strategies and targets set by countries for mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a
whole, it considers in more detail transport-specific policy measures suitable and frequently
adopted for CO emission mitigation, and it reviews the methodologies and modelling tools
2
currently used for the estimation of CO emissions. Building on this information, this report
2
also provides recommendations for the improvement of statistics related to transport,
energy and CO emissions and the development of the ForFITS model.
2

5
1. Introduction
Background
Virtually all the energy used in transport is obtained from the combustion of oil-based fuels
(largely diesel and gasoline): this is why GHG emissions in transport are predominantly CO
2
emissions. Transport is responsible for about 13 percent of GHG emissions (IPCC, 2007) and
22 percent of the total CO emissions from fuel combustion (IEA, 2011a).
2
In addition, according to a recent multi-pollutant assessment of the total climate impact due
to emissions from major anthropogenic economic sectors (Unger et al., 2009), the power
sector and on-road transportation are estimated to exert the largest net positive radiative
forcing1 effect on climate (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Sectoral net radiative forcing due to perpetual constant year 2000 emissions
Agriculture Near-term
(2020)
Animal husbandry
Long-term
(2100)
Aviation
Biomass burning
Household biofuel combustion
Household fossil fuel combustion
Industry
Off-road inland fuel use
On-road transportation
Power generation
Shipping
Waste/landfills
-200 0 200 400 600
Radiative forcing (mW/m²)

Source: Unger et al., 2009

1 Radiative forcing is defined as the net energy flux difference at the top of the atmosphere caused by
an imposed change in the pollutant loading relative to an unperturbed initial state. It was developed
to quantify human and natural influences on the climate system.

6
On-road transportation is predicted to be the economic sector responsible for most of the
net forcing in the near term (2020), and the second largest in the long term (2100)2. The
same study underlines that shipping has an overall net cooling effect both in the near term
and the long term, while the radiative forcing of the aviation sector is positive and consistent
with smaller (but quickly growing) fuel use, relative to other activities.
Figure 2. Share of transport CO emissions in selected world regions and countries
2
World
World (no bunker fuels)
China
India
Russia
Others
Japan
Middle East
Africa
USA
EU-27
Brazil
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Source: IEA, 2011b
Transport’s share in the total CO emissions from fuel combustion is not uniformly
2
distributed across the world. Figure 2 illustrates that transport-related CO emissions are
2
more prevalent in countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) region, where transport activity and its intensity are higher, as well as countries
where the electricity generation is predominantly obtained from low-carbon sources.
Transport-related CO emissions are lower than the global average in developing countries
2
and regions where a large portion of electricity is produced from carbon-intensive fossil
fuels.

2 This is because the sum of the effects of short lived species (i.e. the air pollutants co-emitted with
long-lived greenhouse gases like CO , CH and N O: tropospheric ozone and fine aerosol particles like
2 4 2
sulphate, nitrate, black carbon, organic carbon, all affecting global climate in complex ways involving
both warming and cooling) is estimated to have about the same as the CO effect, in road transport,
2
while the effect of the short lived species results in a lower net radiative forcing for other economic
sectors.

7
In absolute terms, the United States of America (USA) is the leading emitter of transport-
related CO , followed by the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU-27), the People's
2
Republic of China and the Middle East (Figure 3). Additionally, EU-15 emissions represent a
dominant share of EU-27 emissions.
Figure 3. Shares of CO emissions from fuel combustion in selected world regions and
2
countries
International
bunkers USA
16% 25%
Others
Brazil 12%
2%
EU-27
India
21%
2%
China
Russia
7%
3%
Africa
Japan 4%
Middle East
3%
5%

Source: IEA, 2011b
Since 1990, global CO emissions from fuel combustion in the transport sector increased
2
more than 40 percent (Figure 4). This increase is largely due to the growth of passenger and
freight transport activity, the lack of structural changes (such as shifts to more efficient
transport modes) and limited reductions of CO emission intensities within each transport
2
mode.
The growth of transport activity is underpinned by:
 a tendency to travel farther if people have access (either because of increased
income or other factors) to faster modes of travel;
 the allocation of a growing share of the available income to transportation in
countries with a motorisation rate lower than 300 passenger cars per 1000
inhabitants, only partly mitigated by the stability of the share of available income
allocated to transportation when motorisation rates are higher;
 the subsequent increase of the stock of light duty vehicles, which reached a number
of 800 million in 2005 (IEA, 2009a), driven by the growth of real household
disposable income, resulting an increase in passenger transport activity and a
decrease in the portion of passenger transport taking place through less energy-
intensive modes;

8
 the strong linkage between freight transport activity and economic growth, since
economic growth stimulates transport demand, creating opportunities for the
increased availability of transport options, which ultimately reinforces itself by
facilitating specialization and trade (IPCC, 2007a).
In addition, during the last several decades, consumers also showed a significant preference
for larger vehicles with more powerful engines.
Figure 4. Growth of CO emissions in transport and in total, 1990-2009
2
Russia Total
Others
Transport
Japan
USA
World
International bunkers
Brazil
EU-27
India
Africa
Middle East
China
-100% 0% 100% 200% 300% 400% 500%

Source: IEA, 2011b
The growth of transport-related CO emissions has been especially prevalent in rapidly
2
developing countries and world regions (namely in China, but also in the Middle East, India
and Brazil). However, CO emissions in the transport sector have also been growing in OECD
2
countries. In the EU-27, the increase of transport emissions is in stark contrast with the
mitigation of overall emissions that took place since 1990, which was driven by emission
reductions in other end-use sectors and power generation. In Japan and the United States ,
transport-related CO emissions also increased more than other sectors (but less than in
2
Europe, since the average income per capita in Europe led to lower motorisation rate
increases).
Notwithstanding the slow recovery in advanced economies, weakened and uneven global
activity, large increases in fiscal and financial uncertainty, and a slowdown in global
economic growth in 2011 (IMF, 2011), the global economy is expected to continue to grow
over the next decades, with the highest rates of growth in emerging economies (e.g. Ward,
2011 and Hawksworth and Tiwari, 2011). If real household disposable income continues to
grow at a faster rate than the real cost of transport, and barring a major shift away from

9
current patterns of energy use in transport, world transport CO emissions are projected to
2
attain nearly 10 Gigatonnes (Gt) by 2035 (IEA, 2011b).
Prolonging this trend would lead to more than 10 Gt by 2050 (Figure 5). If emissions of
GHGs, and, in particular CO , continue unabated, the enhanced greenhouse effect is very
2
likely to induce changes in the global climate system during the 21st century (IPCC, 2007b).
This would result in impacts that would likely impose increasing net annual costs for society
as global temperatures increase (IPCC, 2007c).
Figure 5 shows historical CO emissions, the projected emissions by the International Energy
2
Agency (IEA) and long-term CO mitigation targets for total and transport-related CO
2 2
emissions due to the combustion of fossil fuels (IEA, 2011b). Clearly (even if the
representation of years beyond 2035 is deliberately simplistic), maintaining the historical
rate of growth of CO emissions in transport is not compatible with long-term overall GHG
2
emission reduction targets, which would be compatible with an average global temperature
increase in the range of 2 °C to 3 °C.
Reducing CO emissions in transport has been widely recognised as a priority (and a
2
challenge) by all transport stakeholders: road vehicle manufacturers (e.g. OICA, 2010), their
components suppliers, the shipping industry (e.g. ICS, 2009), the rail industry (e.g. Sándor
and Obenaus, 2011), aviation-related businesses (e.g. IATA, 2009), companies working on
the construction and maintenance of transportation infrastructure (e.g. ENCORD, 2009),
energy and fuel producers (e.g. Shell, 2008), intergovernmental organisations, consumer
protection associations and environmental advocacy groups.

10