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The transport sector: consuming more energy despite efficiency gains

Posted on: July 13, 2009 10:16 AM, by Jonas Meckling

The transport sector accounts for about 60 per cent of the world's final consumption of oil with road transport taking a large chunk of this. While motor vehicles have become more efficient over the last decades, these efficiency gains have largely been offset by increases in vehicle miles travelled. There are more cars on the road, and people travel more. In environmental economics, this is referred to as the re-bound effect. Not only industrialized countries are experiencing this, but also major emerging economies such as China, as they are going down the path of fossil-fuel based transport. What are the options to reduce energy consumption in the transport sector and/or to run transport on more sustainable forms of energy? What role could, for instance, biofuels, electric vehicles and mass transit play in this context?

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Comments

Here's how I'd tackle it. First raise the CAFE to 40MPG. That's easily attainable with current technology.

Next I'd look at the freight transit system. I've said before I want to see electric vehicles with ranges of 300 miles, and recharge times of 30 minutes or so. All technically feasible but lets tackle one of the bigger polluters out there, the tractor trailer setup.

Electrify them. At 65MPH you'd need to re-charge every 4.6 hours. That would be an acceptable compromise for big vehicles in my eyes. It would mean pushing out infrastructure but dragging in electricity is relatively cheap.

Then tackle public transit like buses, etc. For most urban buses you'd only need to recharge once every day or two with a 300 mile range.

Finally move into the public sphere because now you've established the infrastructure for charging. But on the consumer side, put charging stations at supermarkets. That's where many of us spend 30 minutes or more on a fairly regular basis.

Then there would be home charging systems.

But I definitely see the future of transport in electric vehicles. We had them once before, in the very early years of the 20th century. Edison had trucks running all around NY that were purely electric vehicles.

We can do it again.

Posted by: Tony P | July 13, 2009 11:41 AM

The best choice would be a change in life style.

Posted by: romunov | July 13, 2009 12:54 PM

Currently the electric solution simply breaks down for trucks. Cars are made lighter and lighter to superficially improve range, just cram the occupants into lighter and smaller packages and hope they don't notice, but trucks have a problem, much more of their weight is the payload and the battery sizes become extremely large and heavy. At the moment both the 300 mile range and 30 minute recharges are pipe dreams. There's a lot of things that we'd like to see, but physics is not as cooperative.

Posted by: jay | July 13, 2009 1:13 PM

Consider the possibility that the transport sector is using more energy because of efficiency gains. Jevons was the first economist to note this effect, in his day, with respect to coal. Since then, economists have figured out that this can occur in a broad variety of circumstances:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

If the goal is to decrease oil use, then raising CAFE standards is the wrong thing to do. There is no a priori reason to think that that would lead to less rather than more oil consumption. (The naive thinking relies on the false notion that number of miles traveled or amount of cargo shipped is a constant.)

Posted by: Russell | July 13, 2009 3:01 PM

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2008/05/22/087791.html

Whooââff !

Posted by: humorix | July 13, 2009 3:06 PM

Russel, if fuel costs are the only expensive, then the case for Jevon's is pretty strong. But, other costs probably won't scale downwards with better fuel efficiency, so perhaps Jevon's won't kick in, as users ought to be responding to total cost to operate, not just the cost of fuel.

Posted by: bigTom | July 13, 2009 3:39 PM

The converse isn't true. The presence of other expenses doesn't preclude the Jevons effect. In Jevons's day, there were plenty of expenses to running the rails besides coal: rails had to be laid, engines and carriages had to be built, and operations was labor intensive.

Economists have put some effort into modeling when gains in the efficiency with which a resource is used increases rather than decreases the use of the resource. Not being an economist, I am not familiar with those models nor up to date on current thinking with regard to fuel efficiency. I'm merely pointing out that it is wrong to assume an inverse relationship between efficiency and utilization, and that there are circumstances where the relationship is positively correlated. Which was famously observed with regard to the primary transportation fuel a century and half previous.

As they say, that was then and this is now. But it should give some pause to the notion that raising CAFE standards necessarily means burning less fuel.

Posted by: Russell | July 13, 2009 4:18 PM

What about raising the cost of fuel, by taxing? You can do this slowly over time. Since the idea is to use less oil, then raising the price would encourage use of alternative sources, public transportation, etc. without rasing the price of the vehicles themselves. Much of the rasied revenue could be used towards research into alternatives, public transporation, etc.

I know this may be politically infeasible, but may be the most effective way to reduce use of oil.

Posted by: Jim | July 13, 2009 5:37 PM

Tony P:
"Here's how I'd tackle it. First raise the CAFE to 40MPG. That's easily attainable with current technology."

Would really like to know how it is you think that comment is even close to true. Maybe you'd like to clue us ninnys how that a 40 mpg CAFE can be "easily attainable". Seems that's all we hear these days "Oh just put up more solar panels, that'll fix everything." "Windmills. Now that's the answer." These simplistic asides do not do justice to the many engineering and technical professionals striving to solve that "easily attainable" goal.

I know; maybe we'll use that magic additive that lets cars run on water that the gnoos keeps talking about.

Posted by: LionDancer | July 13, 2009 9:41 PM

Tax fossil fuels at the point where they are dug up. First, it means that you catch all users of the stuff. Second, it discourages production. Will it increase imports? Sure! Buy their coal at today's prices, and sell our coal to them at tomorrow's.

Reduction in use will not, will not occur without lifestyle change. Living closer to work - boarding up the exurbs, taking public transport, eating seasonal food.

Posted by: Paul Murray | July 14, 2009 12:48 AM

LionDancer -

Here in Europe, there are plenty of small cars with mpg >60mpg; and even diesel variants of standard cars with mpg of ~50mpg. So noet 'easily attainable', more 'already attained'.

However, I would add that trying to mandate fuel economy is a mug's game - putting up gasoline taxes dramatically (to at least $4/gallon) and abandoning CAFE would be far more effective. Drive whatever you like.. if you can afford to fill it.

As far as the 300-mile electric car goes, this is quite simple. Take a standard 100-mile-range electric city car. Add a diesel generator on a trailer.. hey presto you have the range of a normal car. If you only do long journeys occasionally, this is a perfectly workable solution.

Posted by: Andrew Dodds | July 14, 2009 7:21 AM

Two words: Canal. Freight.

Posted by: Dunc | July 14, 2009 8:41 AM