A holistic analysis of passenger travel energy and greenhouse gas intensities

Andreas W. Schäfer () and Sonia Yeh
Additional contact information
Andreas W. Schäfer: University College London
Sonia Yeh: Chalmers University of Technology

Nature Sustainability, 2020, vol. 3, issue 6, 459-462

Abstract: Abstract Transportation is a major energy consumer and emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Exploring the opportunities for energy savings and GHG emissions reductions requires understanding transportation energy or GHG intensity, which is defined as energy use or GHG emissions per unit activity, here passenger-kilometres travelled. This aggregate indicator quantifies the amount of energy required or GHGs emitted to provide a generic transportation service. We show that the range of observed energy and GHG intensities of major transportation modes is remarkably similar and that occupancy explains about 70–90% of the variation around the mean; only the remaining 10–30% is explained by differences in trip distances and other factors such as technology and operating conditions. Whereas average occupancy levels differ vastly, they translate into roughly similar levels of energy and GHG intensity for nearly all major transportation modes.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0514-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:3:y:2020:i:6:d:10.1038_s41893-020-0514-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-0514-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().