- The Writer holds an MSc in Eurasian Political Economy & Energy from King’s College London and also an MA in European Studies from Sabancı University.
Road transport represents about 25 percent of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions while roughly 90 percent of all transport activities continue to depend on petroleum as an energy source. To diminish overall greenhouse gas emissions and reduce high dependency on oil imports as well as decarbonize the EU’s transportation sector, it has become essential that the EU develop alternative fuels to meet the targets set by the EU Commission’s 2011 Roadmap.
According to the Statistical Pocketbook of 2015, in residential, industrial and even in the energy sectors, the volume of greenhouse gas emissions has been declining in the EU compared to the transportation sector, which has seen a dramatic increase with a growth of 93 percent in aviation, 17 percent in road transportation and 32 percent in international shipping between 1990 and 2012.
Tackling growing emissions has become a matter of urgency for European countries and as a result, the EU has put concrete measures in place to set targets by initiating an emissions trading system, setting engine standards as well as promoting alternative fuels.
Despite the global shift towards the decarbonization of the transportation sector, which has accelerated in recent years particularly in the EU, the market uptake for the transition to low-carbon mobility is still facing numerous economic and technological challenges. One of the major impediments lies with the lack of appropriate and sufficient quantities of refueling stations and infrastructure for alternative engines.
The EU introduced the White Paper in Transport back in 2011 as a non-binding but long-term aspiring target for regulatory development. This attempted to set the ambitious target of keeping global warming well below 2 degree Celsius.
To address major obstacles that consumers face on a daily basis, the EU enacted a directive named The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure with the view of designing a policy framework to increase the accessibility of electric recharging points, as well as natural gas and hydrogen filling stations across the EU.
Alternative fuels to a large extent require better widespread infrastructure across Europe than is currently available. In the absence of a sufficient number of refueling stations, the majority of consumers would likely resist changing their conventional options to alternative fuel supplies, which as of yet have not been standardized. Furthermore, investors are unwilling to invest in alternative infrastructure whose future in the short term is deemed uncertain. While market demand remains low both from an investment and demand point of view, prices will be uncompetitive against conventional fuels with an established infrastructure.
To overcome hurdles to better alternative fuels deployment, the EU has been striving to establish a feasible policy to encourage investment and innovation in achieving low carbon transport technologies. And this includes an established network of electric charging stations to allow electric car journeys across Europe as a viable alternative to petrol stations.
The latest decarbonization policies suggest a shift in transportation towards more energy efficient and eco-friendly modes of production. To internalize the environmental externalities and realize this aim, push and pull factors have been widely employed. Regulatory and pricing measures as a push strategy have been at the top of the agenda of policymakers.
Additional taxation and strict regulatory measures as a means of reversing the attractiveness of conventional resource-intensive modes of transportation have started to change attitudes towards shifting towards more sustainable options. Contrary to push factors, pull factors are dependent on the availability of widespread infrastructure to meet market needs.
Setting fuel economy standards, improving traffic management and replacing conventional fuel vehicles with internal combustion engines with those of electric cars are some policy measures that are critical to the decarbonization process. The recent scandal that occurred in diesel emissions has cast a cloud over the reliability of internal combustion engines and its technology and has created the need for further improvement in the field.
To meet the commitments set by EU directives and to contribute to the modernization of the transport sector in the decades to come, a broader shift towards low-emission mobility has become a prerequisite. Despite the acceleration of decarbonization at varying degrees in EU countries, various opportunities for industries, car manufacturers and for innovative companies are available to set global standards toward decarbonization and eventually to export products that would contribute to sustainable low-emission mobility.
- Opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu Agency's editorial policy.