Credit: Les Coleman.
renewable energy magazine
Transport: Avoid, shift and improve Achieving a targeted 51 per cent reduction in transport emissions by 2030 will require a complete reset of our behaviours, outlines Trinity College Dublin’s Brian Caulfield. reduce our emissions in this sector by 51 per cent. This is a very ambitious target and one that is not for the faint hearted, realising this reduction will require substantial investment and for us all to do our part. To achieve this change, we must overcome a number of substantial barriers, including: •
outside of our urban areas the average distances traveled to work are large;
•
the 2019 the CSO National Travel Survey found that almost 75 per cent of all trips in Ireland are made by car and almost 30 per cent of these are less than 2km;
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outside of Dublin population density rates tend to be low making it more difficult to service these locations by public transport;
If Ireland is to meet its carbon reduction targets for 2030, how we move and how we use various modes of mobility will change irrevocably. Transportation accounts for approximately 20 per cent of all CO2 emissions in Ireland. By 2030, it is planned that we would
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•
the demand for transport is expected to increase as our
population and workforce expand over the next decade, resulting in extra demand for transport services; and •
while it has increased in the past number of years our uptake in electric vehicles has been slow.
While some of the above are greater barriers than others and some, such as the short distances traveled, present themselves as opportunities, nevertheless the scale of the problem should not be underestimated. At a national level and an international level, the principles of avoid, shift and improve in relation to reducing emissions is being used to frame how we tackle this problem.
Avoid Policies that examine ways to avoid and reduce trips generally tend to be centered on methods to better plan our urban areas, to reduce the need for
