2. General Trends Controlling Transport Growth and Demand
In the UNECE region, liquid fuel consumption per capita in the transport sector increased by 12 per cent in the period 1993–2008. Consumption peaked in 2007, when per capita consumption was 0.965 TOE. In 2008, Luxembourg and the United States of America were the highest per capita consumers while Tajikistan the lowest (UNECE, 2012). In the UNECLAC region, the transport sector’s energy demand represented 27 per cent, 31 per cent and 35 per cent, in 1990, 2000 and 2010 respectively, of total supply (simple non-weighted averages) and was the largest single energy consumer in many cases. Its relative weight in the energy matrix is a function, on the one hand, of the configuration of the transport sector’s own energy demand, level of activity, modes of transport used, the size of the vehicle fleet, etc., and, on the other hand, the relative weight of other sectors, especially the electricity-generating and industrial sectors, which are equally large energy consumers in some countries (Kreuzer and Wilmsmeier, eds., 2014). The Latin American countries can be divided into three groups: (a) low-consumption countries, which display varying patterns but in which, with the exception of the Dominican Republic , the transport sector has increased its level of energy consumption significantly; (b) intermediate-consumption countries (consumption levels between 2,000 and 20,000 ktoe in 2010), in which consumption levels also increased, but less sharply (Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela); and (c) high-consumption countries in which the sector’s energy use rose steeply (Brazil and Mexico) (Kreuzer and Wilmsmeier, eds, 2014). The absolute and relative intensities of energy use by the transport sector in the Latin American countries are determined by the exogenous factors of levels of economic activity, income levels and population growth and by the sector-specific factors of the distribution of modes of transport and their efficiency in a broad sense—which includes the technologies embedded in the equipment in used, the level of use (load factors), the condition of the railway system and others. Key issues in Latin America and the Caribbean are the rapid expansion of the vehicle fleet, particularly of vehicles used for personal transportation at a time when the roadway network has not kept pace with that expansion has turned mobility into a challenge and a high-priority issue in terms of comfort, transit times and air pollution for the governments of many cities. This is especially so in Latin America. Another evident trend in Latin America is the rising use of diesel fuel by automobiles, chiefly because the price of diesel is usually lower than petrol and because the use of sport utility vehicles is increasing when most of these vehicles are diesel-fuelled. The total petrol and diesel oil consumption in road transport in 2012 in the UNESCWA region reached about 391 million tons of oil equivalents. Although national proportions vary, the transport sector accounts for 30 per cent of total regional fuel consumption. The use of fuel in transport sector is as high as 50 per cent of total consumption in Iraq, while at the lower end it is 19 per cent in Oman and in the United Arab Emirates. The transport sector in the UNESCWA region relies on oil and oil products as its primary source of energy. Hence, oil and oil-based products supplied 98.4 per cent of energy consumed in the transport sector in 2011. 23 Natural gas use in the transport sector represents a small fraction, 1.6 per cent (2011) of the total energy mix. The total GHG emissions associated to the transport sector account for 22 per cent of the total CO2 emitted; 85 per cent of which is attributed to inland transportation.24
23
www.iea.org/statistics/statisticssearch/report/?country=Oman&product=balances&year=2011
Environment 2007 – International Conference on Integrated Sustainable Energy Resources in the Arid Regions, 28 January to 1 February 2007, Abu Dhabi. 24
29