Sustainable Transportation, Renewable Energy and Climate Change:The Data/Information Dimension

摘要

Several Nations have long recognized that a sound transportation system is critical to the wellbeing of their societies and economies. The complexity, interconnectivity, and high cost of the transportation infrastructure construction, operation and maintenance necessitate long lead times for the sustainable transformation of current transportation systems. Also, the recent advancement of the transportation and information technology, and renewable energies adds a new dimension to the challenge facing the process of transportation policy formulation, particularly in developing countries. Although the transportation sector accounts for a large share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, this share is expected to continue to grow over the coming decades. Some developing countries are registering an annual growth in per-capita vehicle ownership of 15 to 20 percent. And despite the transport sector’s importance to global GHG emissions, the focus of GHG mitigation efforts by the multilateral and bilateral actors, and the international carbon market, have generally been outside the transport sector. At present, there is a lack of adequate data on potential GHG savings as well as on the costs of various urban transport operations. Most of the available data/information in developing countries is anecdotal or reliant on data from more developed economies with urban characteristics that are fundamentally different from those in developing countries. The scarcity of high quality transportation related data/information, particularly in developing countries,requires the undertaking of a sound assessment of the existing transportation indicators and data/information infrastructure. Of concern from a climate change perspective is that GHG emissions are increasing most rapidly from private road vehicle use. There is a sound justification for supporting actions to improve the quality of data and information on renewable energy and related GHG emissions from urban transportation systems in developing countries, including the introduction of alternative fuels and alternative fuel vehicles. A transportation system becomes sustainable only when all links in its chains and their related impacts are firstly identified and fully understood. This will facilitate the successful deployment of prototypes and effectively putting in place and operating the required infrastructure at a wide scale. This paper will review and highlight deficiencies and prospects of transportation data/information issues as related to renewable energy and GHG, and will present policy recommendations, with specific focus on developing countries.