On assessing climate effects of electrifying the transport sector

Björn Carlén (bjorn.carlen@vti.se) and Svante Mandell
Additional contact information
Björn Carlén: VTI, Postal: Centrum för Transportstudier (CTS), Teknikringen 10, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

No 2012:11, Working papers in Transport Economics from CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI)

Abstract: Shifting transportation to electrified modes, e.g., rail, is a politically attractive way of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transportation sector. There is a vivid debate about the effects such a shift has on GHG emission and how these should be assessed and appraised. We argue that this debate largely originates from differences in how the debaters characterize the situation at hand, in particular how markets are organized and which policy instruments are in place. To shed light on this, we start by identifying the appropriate assessment approach in a hypothetical situation without any climate or energy policies and then gradually add realistic circumstances into the equation. Our main conclusion is that evaluating the climate impacts from a transportation shift is a highly complex task in the initial situation. The closer we move towards a climate-policy architecture of the current EU-type, the simpler the task becomes. Given a comprehensive global climate treaty, there is no need for any special treatment of the GHG effects since all relevant effects then would be internalized in producer and consumer prices.

Keywords: Climate; Transport; Cost-benefit analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H54 Q51 R42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2012-05-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.transportportal.se/SWoPEc/CTS2012-11.pdf (application/pdf)

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:hhs:ctswps:2012_011

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers in Transport Economics from CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI) Centrum för Transportstudier (CTS), Teknikringen 10, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CTS (cts-info@kth.se).