DDP Transport

Mobility Decarbonization Pathways

Background and issues

The transport sector represents today 23% of all energy-related global emissions and curbing these sectoral emissions is essential to implement global pathways consistent with the ?well below 2C? climate goal of the Paris Agreement. The analysis of sectoral transformations implied by current NDCs shows that the transport sector is one of those where the ambition is particularly insufficient in the light of the requirements of md-century Paris-compatible transformations.

Ambitious reductions of transport emissions require an alignment of national plans, global sectoral roadmaps and strategies of the private sector. Emission cuts will come from an in-depth assessment of country-specific technological, social and economic drivers of mobility and emissions.

Sectoral roadmaps, investigating the potential evolution of these drivers in a collective low-emission context, should serve as a guide to the evolution of the boundary conditions of the national analysis at a global sectoral level. And extensive engagement with stakeholders and experts of the sector, notably companies active in the sector, is a key necessary condition for the definition of relevant and implementable emissions objectives and associated strategies.

Objectives

This project aims at applying the methodological principles developed in the DDPP to the analysis of decarbonization pathways in the transport sector. Key methodological principles shared with the broader DDPP approach include: country-scale analysis grounded on the specificities of national circumstances, long-term analysis with a 2050 horizon to inform short-term decisions, transparency and granularity of the assumptions and results to enable knowledge sharing and facilitate conversation with different groups of stakeholders.
 
Applied to the transport sector, this project aims to develop analyses of the decarbonization of the sector encompassing all levers of transformations. Beyond the conventional focus on technological improvements, this means developing a systemic analysis of all determinants of transformations of the transport sector, including the evolutions of behaviors, lifestyles, infrastructures and spatial organization.
 
The analysis will aim to reveal the concrete consequences of these transformations on key indicators characterizing mobility patterns like modal shares, time spent, distance and budget dedicated to this activity. These studies are built to support engagement with sectoral experts and decisionmakers on the levers that are actionable for policy actions towards transport emissions reductions in their local context.
 

Passenger transport

In 2017, research teams from France, Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom began work on analysing the levers for decarbonation of passenger transport, constructed an innovative method for developing deep decarbonation trajectories for the sector by 2050 compatible with the Paris agreement and applied it in their four countries.

Since 2018, the methodological framework of the DDP Passenger Transport has been discussed within the research network of the DDP initiative and presented at various international working meetings. Among others, it has been used by other partners within the DDP LAC (Latin America and Caribbean) project and within the DDP BIICS project.

Meanwhile, since COP23 in Bonn and the Movin’On summit in 2018 in Montreal, the DDP initiative has been collaborating with four other international initiatives to inform decision-makers on aspects of sustainable transition in the passenger transport sector. All these initiatives make their tools available in the Transport Decarbonization Toolbox.

Learn more about the DDP pathway building tool to build deep decarbonation trajectories for passenger transport to 2050

Freight transport

In 2018-2019, the French research team decided to develop a similar methodology for freight transport and to apply it to France.

The pathway design framework adapted to build freight scenarios and the first implementation example in France have been presented at COP25 in Madrid in 2019 and will be further discussed in 2020.

More information

Event

  • 28 April 2021: Launch event of Community of Interest on the decarbonization of the freight and logistics sectors, with experts. An event organized with our partners, Slocat and MovinOn. 
  • 4 & 5 October: Second closed workshop of the Community of Interest on the decarbonization of the freight and logistics sectors, with experts. An event organized with our partners, Slocat and MovinOn.