The UK’s Climate Change Committee

What does a world leader on climate policy have to say about transportation?

Jan 05, 2021

Welcome to Decarbonizing Transportation. Every two weeks, we go deep on one topic and present the latest decarbonization news at the bottom of the email.

I’m co-organizing a Transportation Research Board event this Friday at 4pm ET (free and open to the public). This is a relaunch of the climate change subcommittee, and it features a great speaker lineup, including Beth Osborne and Costa Samaras. We’re organizing the event to raise the profile of climate issues at TRB and build community among those who care deeply about the climate problem in transportation. Submit a video of your best decarbonization idea here before the event.

The UK’s Climate Change Committee - what does a world leader on climate policy have to say about transportation?

The UK is often cited as a world leader on climate policy, a reputation they’ve been burnishing in the lead up to hosting COP 26 this fall. A critical piece of their approach is a set legally binding emissions targets that are laid out in 5 year ‘budgets’. Budgets are calculated years in advance to provide enough time for policy to steer in the right direction.

One of the reasons this budgeting process is so critical is that it prevents countries from setting a long term target - like ‘net zero by 2050’ - and then kicking the can down the road for the next administration to address. Budgets ensure that what the government does tomorrow is consistent with their long term goals. As you might imagine, that makes life much more difficult, which is why so few countries hold themselves to this standard. Because it’s so rare, it’s worth getting to know how it works. There’s an excellent explainer on UK carbon budgets here.

Given how impressive their overall process is, I thought it was worth diving in to what the UK’s Climate Change Committee has to say on transportation, currently the UK’s largest source of emissions. How do they envision transport emissions falling to meet a ‘net zero by 2050’ target?

There are basically three strategies they outline in a detailed report: ‘demand reduction and modal shift’, ‘vehicle efficiency’, and ‘zero-emission vehicles’. That’s not surprising, since that’s more or less the full set of tools at any country’s disposal to reduce emissions, as we’ve outlined before. The more interesting question is the relative contributions of each.

Like we’ve seen in other proposed pathways to zero (see Boston & Toronto), zero emission vehicles end up as the largest contributor to decarbonization. The chart below shows modeled emissions reductions over time - light green (the biggest wedge) is zero emission cars, light blue is zero emission vans, and orange is zero emission heavy trucks.

You can see from the chart that zero emission cars are more ready for mass adoption in the short term than heavy goods vehicles, which only pick up steam in the 2030s. Similarly, conventional fossil fuel vehicle efficiency (the red wedge) can make a pretty significant impact in the short term, but its importance fades as the number of gasoline cars on the road dwindles.

Clearly, zero emission vehicles are only truly ‘zero emission’ if they are powered by a 100% zero carbon electric grid. That’s another exciting thing about the UK - they’ve been making incredible progress in greening their electric power supply (someday they might match Quebec). The authors of the report do a good job of making clear how that helps make EVs a steadily more powerful decarbonization tool over time. You can see all of this nicely summarized in the chart below.

But wait - isn’t the most direct way to lower emissions just to stop driving so much? The report models that, too: ‘demand reduction’ is the purple wedge in the first chart. They estimate that everything you might do to lower car travel - more walking and cycling, more carpooling, more transit, more remote work, etc. - could lower car kilometers travelled by 12-34% by 2050. That’s significant - but at its most dramatically ambitious it only resolves a third of the problem.

And it’s far from certain. Interestingly - and unlike many similar reports - the authors consider the very real risk that the opposite happens. Car travel could increase. Some of the new technologies most talked about in mobility exacerbate this problem. Because electric vehicles cost much less to drive, they’re likely to lead to an increase in total kilometers travelled: the report estimates a 10-30% bump. They estimate autonomous vehicles could lead to another 5% boost in driving demand.

Whatever you think of the specific solutions the Committee on Climate Change proposes, the UK provides a process for setting targets and following through on them for all of us to emulate.

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