Can high speed rail offset its embedded emissions?

Jonas Westin and Per Kågeson ()
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Per Kågeson: KTH, Postal: Centrum för Transportstudier (CTS), Teknikringen 10, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

No 2011:16, Working papers in Transport Economics from CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI)

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the climate benefit of investments in high speed rail-way lines given uncertainty in future transport demand, technology and power production. To capture the uncertainty of estimated parameters, distributions for the annual traffic emissions reduction required to compensate for the embedded emissions from the construction of infrastructure are calculated using Monte Carlo simulation. In order to balance the annualized emissions from the railway construction, traffic volumes of more than 10 million annual one-way trips are usually required. Most of the traffic diverted from other modes must come from aviation and the project cannot involve the extensive use of tunnels. In sparsely populated regions it may be, from a climate point of view, better to upgrade existing lines and to try to make people substitute air travel by modern telecommunications, rather than investing large amounts of resources in enabling people to travel faster and more often.

Keywords: High-speed rail; CO2 emissions; Embedded emissions; Infrastructure investment; Monte Carlo simulation; Sensitivity analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q54 R42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2011-12-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp, nep-ene and nep-env
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:ctswps:2011_016

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