The Commission has published its sustainability strategy for the EU, and it includes a cautiously-worded target for transport to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 60% in the period 1990-2050. This is the first time Brussels has put an overall reduction target for the whole transport sector on the table.
Paris is set to become Europe’s first city to test a complete ban on high-consumption vehicles entering the city centre. The test continues a trend aimed at improving urban air quality by limiting vehicle’s access to urban centres, but the EU’s environment commissioner insists there will be no review of the national pollutant emissions ‘ceilings’ until 2013 at the earliest.
EU transport ministers were this month meeting to discuss a revision of the trans-European transport networks (TEN-T) policy. The Commission has published a working document outlining options, with a suggestion that TEN-T policy focuses on a ‘core network’ of routes that would attract most of the available funding.
Two academics from California are suggesting that passenger travel may have peaked nearly 10 years ago. The two, Lee Schipper and Adam Millard-Ball, studied the demand for car ownership and general travel in eight leading economies (USA, CDN, GB , SWE, FRA, GER, JPN, AUS) between 1970 and 2008.
A win/win situation in which spending by the European Union achieves better value for money at the same time as promoting more environmentally sensitive solutions has been put forward by seven NGOs, including T&E.
Opinion by Jos Dings - T&E Director
Did we miss something? Last year, the European Commission didn’t propose a single new legislative measure to clean up transport. To be fair, it has been spending most of its time worrying about the future of the Eurozone. As a result, for T&E this was the sort of year where seeds for smarter transport policy were sown. We’re optimistic that next year could bring a decent crop of positive changes.
The gulf between the transport sector’s increased greenhouse gas emissions and cuts from other sectors grew again in 2008. And aviation and shipping’s share of transport emissions rose from 18% in 2007 to 24% in 2008. These are two findings from T&E’s latest report on transport emissions.
Opinion
By Nina Renshaw
T&E Deputy-Director
We had some welcome news from India earlier this month. Tyre manufacturers there are preparing to adopt the standards set in the EU regulation on tyre fuel efficiency, safety and noise, and getting ready to label their products, as that will be required for them to go on sale in the EU from 2012. Why is this welcome? Because it confirms what we have been saying for a long time – that strict standards in Europe are not a competitive disadvantage for Europe’s industry but set the pace for the rest of the world, thereby giving European companies a head start over their international competitors.
The Commission has confirmed it will publish a new white paper on EU transport policy next year. The announcement came as part of the Commission’s workplan for 2011, which is aiming to make resource efficiency a priority.
Annual data compiled by the EEA and submitted to the UNFCCC on the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions usually leave out emissions from international shipping and aviation (so-called “bunkers”).
To complement the 2008 data, T&E wrote an analysis which includes shipping and aviation figures and aims at clarifying the actual contribution of the transport sector to the EU’s CO2 emissions.