Live Debate: Can Europe de-carbonise transport?

Tim King: We have become totally profligate in the way in which we convert primary fuels into useful energy. Roughly one tenth of the energy we burn as primary energy ends up as useful energy. Now, thermodynamics means that we can’t convert all of that into useful energy but we can certainly massively improve the ratio.

So whatever we do, whether we look at a figure like this in which we’re trying to reduce emissions from road transportation, we can divide it up into fuel consumption; that means the efficiency with which we use the energy and carbon footprint of the fuel that we’re using. So the first is fuel consumption – energy efficiency in terms of taking primary energy and putting it into the actual transport mechanism. There the big wins lie in terms of engine efficiency, weight reduction and design, design including reducing air drag – air drag for road vehicles and for air vehicles as well. If we now look at carbon footprint of the fuel, again we can move from that high carbon sector we’re in now down to the low carbon sector, not with a magic wand, not with a silver bullet, but by taking every possibility.

Biofuels in their advanced form are converting not the carbohydrate part of the crop but the cellulosic, the waste part of the crop, into fuel. There we have a big potential win. So the second generation biofuels is a larger arrow. Electricity and possibly hydrogen – these are all ways in to the future. Of course, if we switch to electricity, we then have to look at how we produce the electricity on the grid. If you have an electric vehicle and you drive it in Britain or the United States, you will find you’re producing much more carbon dioxide than if you drive the same electric vehicle in France, simply because French electricity largely comes from nuclear energy and has a very low carbon footprint.

Zolton Kazatsay: In 2050, de-carbonisation, according to our approach, must be complete or almost complete, which means that in the case of the transport sector, de-carbonisation should reach or should be somewhere close to the 100%, which is more or less in line with the figures which we heard but probably we were a bit even more optimistic in reaching this target. But it’s not going to be easy and we have to be aware of certain challenges. We have to be aware of certain difficulties which can come from partly the law of physics where you have certain limitations and you have to be aware of them. But we also have to bear in mind that the transport sector, as it is, it’s a rather complex activity which has an impact on every other sector of the economy, many parts of your individual life. And here in point three – triggering behavioural change using bottom-up and top-down policies. This is exactly one of the key points where you and the policy makers should be ready to change attitude, should be ready to change the way of thinking and reach a certain different stage than the one what we reached during the last two thousand years, if we want to date back the beginning of the traditional and organised transport means to the birth of Christ.

According to our ideas now, we have three specific benchmarks in the new transport policy; one of them is certainly the de-carbonisation, but we also have to deal with the other issue which is the internal market. Without a properly functioning internal market, we cannot talk about an efficient and proper transport policy and a proper transport development being in place. The third issue is infrastructure. Transport, as I told you, is a rather complex activity where infrastructure, different modes of transport, which are ensuring the transhipment of goods and passengers between the different modes of transport, are to be at the right place at the right time. But at the same time, we also have to deal with other further elements of the transport sector which are technology development, technology.

Tim King: Now we’re going to move into some sectoral views on things and we’ll start with Michael Nielsen since we’re with the road transport sector.

Michael Nielsen: If we look at what we have done already, it’s important to look at what we did on toxic pollution. There were a lot of technology on toxic pollution, for instance. So that has already been reduced, depending on the particles that you look, between 88% and 98%, over the last twenty years. So there has been a tremendous technology there that has achieved this saving. So, of course, it can be done. Looking at CO2, it’s also been decreased by 36% over the last thirty years by the commercial road transport industry, so something has been done.

The International Road Transport Union has adopted a resolution that we voluntarily commit to reduce CO2 by 30% by 2030. So that, combined with the 36% we achieved, we are approaching some figures that matter.

How do we think this is possible? There is a range of things, I totally agree, that needs to be done. One is investment still in innovative engine technologies, vehicle technologies and also stop maybe, or at least have an integrated approach when it comes to toxic pollution and include CO2 in that equation.

We believe that training can contribute a lot – driver training. Train them in environmentally friendly driving, make sure that you even measure potentially the way they drive so you can steer that as well. We believe that that as well has the potential of reducing the emissions.

Traffic management, ITS, is another potential that can give us opportunities to save Let’s say, be more efficient in the way we transport. We are efficient in the way that we transport passengers – you have longer buses, you can put more passengers into the buses; you have longer trains, you can put more passengers into the trains; you have longer trains for goods; you have bigger vessels; you have bigger planes. Why should we not have potentially bigger trucks so we can put more goods in the trucks as well so we can transport more with less CO2 used? That’s an innovation that’s an efficiency gain that potentially can be done. That’s a low hanging fruit.

So that’s at least part of the things that we’re looking at and we’re trying to push for. One of the things that we’re trying to push for in the passenger transport sector is to double the use of collective passenger transport, with bus and coach. Double the use of that – and that was mentioned by earlier speakers as well – and try to get collective passenger transport to be more attractive. Try to make collective passenger transport to have the same benefits as traditional public transport by buses in cities. Why should a coach not be able to use a bus lane, for instance? Why should not a truck not be able to use a bus lane? Why should a truck or a coach not be able to get pre-emption [identification 9:15] and avoid stopping and thus emitting more CO2.

Matthew Ledbury: Since 1990 emissions in every sector, apart from transport in Europe, have gone down. In transport, they’re going relentlessly upwards. The increase since 1990 is round about 25%, the increase each year is about 1.3% or 1.4%. One of the reasons I’m disheartened hearing about all the potential technological improvements is because the speed of increase of usage wipes out the technical benefits that we get. Emissions are still going upwards and showing no signs of changing.

In terms of where we should go, I think there’s two or three points that I’d like to make. The first thing which I think is crucial is the issue of pricing and how transport’s actually charged. One of the reasons why we have transport growth on the scale we do is because – if I’m being blunt and it’s not a very popular thing to say but I think it’s worth saying – transport is basically too cheap. We don’t internalise the external costs of transport. People don’t actually pay for what transport costs. In practical terms, what it means is that the demands for transport constantly rise, governments are constantly under pressure to come up with new infrastructure, which in itself then stimulates new demand. So levels of transport continue to rise. If we’re serious about reducing emissions, one of the first things we’ve got to do is to start to price properly so we can actually start to manage demand more effectively, and make sure that people actually pay the proper costs of what their journey is incurring.

If we’re serious about reaching these targets in 2050, then to be honest, we have to throw pretty much everything we’ve got at it, because at the moment, everything’s going in the wrong direction. Certainly from the rail perspective, we’re quite happy to do everything we can. We’re increasing our efficiency, we’ve got a target to reduce our specific emissions by 30% by 2020, and we have the big advantage that by being more efficient, if more people and more freight was transferred over, it’s an easy way to actually reduce emissions without actually having to reduce levels of transport overall.

So, basically, by making better use of what we’ve got and by making some more decisions on the political benefit, I think those are the ways in which, in addition to the technological changes we need, we will actually hopefully get towards the targets we need in 2050, but there’s some big steps that are needed.

David HendersonThank you. Good afternoon, everybody. My name’s David Henderson, I’m from the Association of European Airlines so I guess that makes me the bête noire here, because maritime isn’t here, and it came as a great encouragement to us to learn about a year or two ago that they were even worse than we were.

The problem is, of course, that we are a growth sector. Historically, we have grown at, let us say, 6% a year and historically, our year on year improvement in fuel efficiency has been of the order of about 1½%, maybe 2%; so our CO2 has increased in the area of 3%, 4% per year. And, of course, we’re talking about very long time horizons here and if you apply exponential growth over forty years, you can prove just about anything, including that air transport is going to suck up every last permit for CO2 by a given date – if it’s not 2050, it’ll be 2060 or 2043, or whatever.

We in AEA developed about six or seven years ago what we called an emissions containment policy, which meant that we hadn’t solved the problem but we were looking to make a start on it. We identified four pillars of action and basically, I guess it’s the same four pillars that most of the other sectors would have probably identified as well. One is operational, which covers a multitude of areas – how you use the acceleration and the brake, essentially; how you maintain your aeroplane in terms of keeping it nice and shiny; making sure that it doesn’t carry any excess weight. It’s all simple, straightforward stuff.

A second pillar is infrastructure and we’ve already heard that the infrastructure, particularly in Europe, is woefully lacking in two areas. One in airport capacity and the other in air traffic management or, as it used to be referred to, air traffic control. Europe is a mass of little air spaces, all individually controlled.

We have in place a major European programme to harmonise and to go some way towards unifying the air space; it’s called a Single European Sky, and it has achieved the political backing, the legal framework it needs. We’re moving into the implementation phase and things frankly are not moving quickly enough. There are enormous savings to be made on all sides in terms of money, in terms of delay and in terms of environmental impact. The sooner we begin to see benefits flowing from the Single Sky the better.

The third pillar is technology and clearly, we have seen leaps and bounds over the various generations of aircraft; you might say we’re currently on our fourth generation of jet aircraft. Each successive generation brings very large improvements in fuel consumption and, consequently, in CO2. We are witnessing, at the moment, an introduction of another generation of long haul aircraft, the Superjumbo Airbus A380 and the rather smaller, but very, very efficient, Boeing 787. What we’re not seeing at the moment is a similar revolution in short haul aircraft, and this is something which will be hopefully occupying Airbus and Boeing very much in coming years.

Apart from that, we’re looking of course to new materials, new engine technology but very, very much to new fuels, and we do see that second and subsequent generation biofuels will be very, very important to us. So we are extremely anxious that development in that area continues as quickly as possible.

First of all, for the next ten years, we are pursuing a year on year 1.5% increase in fuel efficiency and, consequently, emissions efficiency. From 2020, carbon neutral growth; in other words, a cap, leading to an eventual reduction by 2050 of 50% in net CO2 from aviation. Now these are very challenging targets, particularly the last one. We do need support on the infrastructure side and we most definitely need support and progress on the technology side.

Tim King: I turn now to Martin Rocholl from the European Climate Foundation. What comes across to me is a lot of reliance on technological innovation, a lot of haziness about the speed with which technological innovation might produce results. What do you make of it for what its potential effect on greenhouse gas emissions may or may not be?

Dr Martin Rocholl: Now, let me run you through a few challenges I would see in the next five years for us to decide. One is we need to set Europe on the track for a 100% de-carbonised power sector. If the electricity is not fully de-carbonised to produce, the whole thing of shifting to new technologies makes no sense in the transport sector. We think we can achieve that. We’re actually presenting a road map study on 13th April here in Brussels where we can show we can actually do that; a study that was developed together largely with the industry and therefore, I think it’s very interesting to look at.

I think a challenge for society is how do we push technology development, and I’ll go to the individual car here and the battery car. My fear is that, at the moment, battery cars who have a range of maybe 150kms, if we push them as much as we are intending at the moment, with like a 7,000 Euros subsidy per car, we are pushing for a development that is the third family car for the rich family that is allowed to have that for a nice image reason and gives them an incentive to drive into town by car and not by subway any more because they find a free parking space with a plug in. That’s I think a wrong development. On the other hand, we do need to push forward battery development. In short, I would at the moment go for technology support, research support, and maybe support for plug-in hybrids who actually really replace the family car and not just add another car onto the road. I think that’s where the technology development could take place.

Even more important is I think that we do not forget the absolute necessity to set fuel efficiency standards in Europe. The 130gms that we have just decided per kilometre in the average is not at all sufficient to get us on the track of the vision that has been painted out here by everyone. The minimum we need to reach is what the legislation foresees – that’s 95gms per kilometre by 2020, but that’s under revision in 2013, and I’d be very interested to see if everyone around this room joins us in keeping that target. I think this is absolutely essential.

Tax breaks for aviation – why is there a VAT tax break for aviation tickets? Why don’t we pay for kerosene taxes? Biofuels – a really important debate – are we going to include indirect land use change? The fact that if you grow more biofuels, some people will move and remove forests, for example, in order to still grow their crops. Do we include that in the biofuels regulation, yes or no? That will be a key decision to be made in the next year when we decide about the question if biofuels actually become sustainable and do something good for the environment and the climate or not.

I could go on and on. If you want to really push forward behavioural change, then make the car pay what it does in damage to the environment. So will we have higher fuel prices, yes or no? Take the upcoming discussion on the EU budget and the structural cohesion funds. Will the billions spent by European taxpayers’ money actually be spent in a climate proof way? So help the infrastructure that is connected to the low CO2 emissions or not?

Luis Scoffone: So efficiency and behavioural change are the most immediate elements that we have at hand to reduce significantly the carbon in the transport sector in Europe. To answer one of the questions that was put forward before: what can we do with the technology that we have today? Yes, there is about a billion cars in the world, but imagine what could be if every one of those cars emit or actually have a CO2 in the range of the latest technologies that we have? If we go further, in the future we are going to have even better internal combustion engines, but with today’s technology, if policy can actually facilitate that option of that existing technology, the amount of production of carbon is going to be substantial as well.

Of course, behavioural change is probably the most important. We always tend to say in the office, with a bit of humour, that we need to change the car, we need to change the fuel and we need to change the driver; and the most difficult one is to change the driver. So yes, there should be policies that ask me not to own a car, that I should walk more rather than using a car; use more public transport instead of using a car. So those behavioural changes, of course, we have to accept that for a majority of us, convenience is a very important motivator. So we will need actually to be able to create conditions for actually being prepared to accept other ways of mobility that are less carbon intense.