Greenhouse gas emission budgets and policies for zero-Carbon road transport in Europe

ABSTRACT

Following the Paris Agreement, virtually all countries worldwide have committed themselves to undertaking efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. Within the European Union (EU), the recent ‘Fit for 55’ policy package proposes ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies for all sectors as part of the EU's contribution to limiting global warming. Yet, it is unclear whether the proposed policies are sufficient for the EU to limit global warming to 1.5 °C and it remains an open policy problem how to translate global temperature targets into sector-specific emission budgets and further into sector-specific policies. Here, we derive GHG budgets for transport in EU27 and obtain GHG mitigation pathways for Europe consistent with 1.5 °C global warming. We do not provide a comprehensive assessment of the ‘Fit for 55’ transport package but we discuss the main policies for road transport in light of the GHG emission budgets, their level of ambition, and suggest amendments to these policies as well as improvements to the ‘Fit for 55’ package. Our results suggest that parts of the ‘Fit for 55’ for transport are still not ambitious enough to align with a 1.5 °C scenario.

Key policy insights

• A Paris-compatible residual carbon budget for EU transport is 10–12 Gt CO₂.

• The budget implies net zero emissions for EU transport by 2044–2048 latest.

• We find the current ‘Fit for 55’ proposal for transport is not ambitious enough.

• A faster phase-out of cars and trucks with combustion engines is required and there is a need for ambitious standards for fast charging e-vehicles.

• CO₂ pricing of transport is not a substitute but a complement to fleet targets.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon budgets
• road transport
• climate change mitigation
• electric vehicles

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by EU's HORIZON 2020 projects PARIS REINFORCE (Grant No. 820846), STORM (grant number 101006700) and the German Environmental Agency (FKZ 3718 41 113 0). Mistra Carbon Exit is also acknowledged for funding of FS.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by H2020 Energy [PARIS REINFORCE project (grant number 820846), STORM project (grant number 101006700)]; Umweltbundesamt [grant number FKZ 3718 41 113 0] and Carbon Mistra Exit (Frances Sprei).