Keeping global warming to 1.5°C will require the transport and energy sectors to work together, explain Paul Hammond and Craig Lucas.
Human activity is the main cause of global warming, and to avoid catastrophe businesses, governments, communities and individuals all need to take action. It will require local, national and international co-operation.
Reducing or mitigating greenhouse gas emissions will be costly. But as the UK Met Office has made it clear, the cost of inaction, in terms of damage to human and natural systems, will be ‘many times greater’.
The transport and energy sectors are intrinsically linked in the challenge of keeping rising temperature to the 1.5°C above pre-industrial times that experts now say should be the global target.
The co-dependency between the transport and energy sectors, and its importance in tackling climate change, was highlighted last year. Burning fossil fuels is the largest contributor to global warming. Transport typically accounts for 60% of global oil demand. During 2020, the COVID pandemic led to global energy-related emissions falling by 5.8%, roughly equivalent to removing the entirety of the EU’s emissions from the global total. Over half of this saving was due to the fall in oil demand, which was in turn driven primarily by demand side shocks in road transport and aviation.
But it’s not that simple.
The problem of climate change can only be addressed if it is considered from a sustainable development perspective that addresses both greenhouse gas emissions and the economic and social dependencies of our global community.
Across the world, the energy majors employ millions of people – direct, indirect, induced jobs – and their commercial models are founded upon industrial energy consumption. That includes humankind’s love affair (including the authors’) with the internal combustion engine, and jet-propelled access to global markets and experiences.
Targets to 2050 on emissions and temperature warming set a vision to save the planet. At the transport-energy nexus, we are setting the objectives that will deliver the transition from a carbon dependent mobility system to a new, net-zero paradigm.
Getting to net-zero
Since 2008, the UK government has been committed to reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. However, this target was made more ambitious in 2019 when the UK became the first major economy to commit to a ‘net-zero’ target. The new target requires the UK to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050.
A shock was delivered to the UK transport sector in 2020 when an appeal court ruling questioned the validity of the UK's Airport National Policy Statement because, in their view, it had not fully considered the UK government's commitments under the Paris Agreement. While the Supreme Court overturned this finding the appeal court ruling in itself highlights the increasing importance society is now placing on the decarbonisation of the transport sector. The problem and associated solutions, compounded by the collapse of travel demand under COVID-19, looked intractable from a transport economist’s perspective.
There is clearly no quick fix to shifting the 800bn kms travelled each year in Great Britain – 83% by car, van or taxi – into a new mobility paradigm of re-mode, re-route, re-fuel or don’t travel as a means to address the climate emergency in transport. That’s not to mention the economic and social disbenefits and behavioural challenges associated with anything other than a transition.
At the same time as the Court of Appeal delivered its Heathrow ruling, the major carbon contributors and influencers in the energy sector were pondering their own shock – commercial, legal and moral – as the cliff edge for the planet and their businesses became apparent.
An energy transition is acknowledged by the huge amounts that BP, Shell, Total, EDF and others are investing in transport related projects, such as new fuels and electric vehicle (EVs) charging networks. It means that energy majors are having to understand transport and mobility in a way they have never needed to before.
It’s not enough just to supply fuel. In the net-zero world, you need to understand the energy-transport ‘system’ and provide customers with more holistic solutions. For example, if you want to run a hydrogen fleet you need the hydrogen supply as well.