CO2 reduction costs and benefits in transport: socio-technical scenarios

The transport sector produces 23% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. While the mitigation of climate change requires GHG emissions to be drastically reduced, the emissions from the transport sector are expected to grow. The purpose of this study is to produce alternative scenarios which meet the target of 80% CO2 emission reduction by 2050 for the Finnish transport sector and to analyse the carbon abatement potentials, costs and benefits of the required behavioural and technological measures. We found that the most cost-efficient measure for the society is to support a shift from private car use to shared car use through increasing car-sharing and ride-sharing. Aiming to reach the emission reduction targets solely through technological measures would require a rapid uptake of alternative energies and the society would not receive the possible benefits, including health benefits, energy savings and fixed car cost savings.