driving road decarbonisation with traffic restrictions or setting price elements based on the environmental externalities of mobility. Is it because we politicians don’t want to tell our voters what to do? While advances in renewable power generation and propulsion technology will deliver significant progress, this will not suffice. I would really like to see more comprehensive and holistic policy and measures. It cannot be the technology alone. On the contrary, we will need brave visions and straight-forward steps on every single field: improved spatial planning highly relying on the use of public transportation, better information services for travel planning and comparison, and incentives towards more responsible choices.
It’s good that our eyes have finally been opened – thanks to Volkswagen. While urban mobility is a massive contributor to CO2 emissions and also a producer of a huge amount of nitrogen oxides and harmful particles, it’s also a field where these questions are easiest to solve by promoting the attractiveness of public transport and by improving the conditions for walking and cycling.
It is also worth noting that smart and sustainable mobility is definitely not of interest only to the big cities or metropolises in Europe. Instead, in many cases, it is precisely the smaller cities and towns which have the privilege of shorter distances and thus can easily promote sustainable solutions based on local conditions.
“It’s good that our eyes have finally been opened – thanks to Volkswagen. While urban mobility is a massive contributor to CO2 emissions and also a producer of a huge amount of nitrogen oxides and harmful particles, it’s also a field where these questions are easiest to solve by promoting the attractiveness of public transport and by improving the conditions for walking and cycling”
Also persistent work to introduce new environmentally-friendly energy sources and strong effort to foster the electrification of transport are still needed. Decarbonisation it is We have been fighting the constant growth of CO2 emissions since early 1990s, yet the CO2 emissions from transportation are still growing in Europe. Since 1990 CO2 emissions from transport has grown by 29% in OECD countries and by 89% in non-OECD countries. The European Commission is now preparing its communication on decarbonising the transport sector. It is something I look forward to with excitement but also with trepidation. I really hope that the Commission’s attitude is ambitious enough. The “Project Europe” has recently been sailing from crisis to crisis and this has done harm to the decision-making ability of European institutions. There are some indications that the College of Commissioners lead by Jean-Claude Juncker is becoming more and more careful: the Commission tries to safeguard that their proposals will be adopted and all troublesome measures and objects of possible political resistance are highly avoided. This might be a politically risk-free way forward but it is not the way to transform Europe’s transport system to a new, zero-carbon era or to protect ourselves from ever increasing pollution from transportation. It certainly isn’t the way to save our planet. Revolution can start from grass root level Although the shift towards greener and more sustainable transportation seems to painfully slow in EU strategies and initiatives, it is worth remembering that the revolution doesn’t have to wait for EU regulators to be pioneers. There is a human being in every single car. Lots can be done on individual, municipal and regional level, just by re-thinking our own choices as individuals, as members of households and as residents.
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