Land transport CO₂ emissions and climate change: evidence from Cyprus

ABSTRACT

The land transport sector is one of the major emitters of CO₂ and one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise. This study employs an environmentally-extended input-output model to conduct an economy-wide assessment of CO₂ emissions in Cyprus, associated with a 22% increase in the final demand for the output of the sector by 2030. Model results indicate that the land transport sector creates the third highest (direct and indirect) CO₂ emissions within Cyprus economy; for every 1 million euro increase in the final demand of the sector’s services and products, 407 additional tons of CO₂ are emitted. Considering that temperature in Cyprus is projected to increase by up to 4.5–5°C by the end of the century, our findings highlight the importance of the land transport sector in the transition of Cyprus to a low-carbon economy and the urgency of implementing in-sector cost-effective decarbonisation strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Land transport sector
• CO₂ emissions
• climate change
• decarbonisation
• environmentally-extended input-output analysis
• eastern Mediterranean

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions that greatly improved the final version of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

George Zittis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6839-5622

Additional information

Funding

This work has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 776661 (SOCLIMPACT project).