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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Francisco Gallego; Juan-Pablo Montero; Christian Salas |
| Abstract: | In an effort to reduce air pollution and congestion, Latin American cities have experimented with different policies to persuade drivers to give up their cars in favor of public transport. Two notable examples are the driving restriction program introduced in Mexico-City in November of 1989 –Hoy-No-Circula (HNC)– and the public transport reform carried out in Santiago in February of 2007 –Transantiago (TS). We develop a simple model of car use and ownership, and show that policies that may appear effective in the short run can be highly detrimental in the long run, i.e., after households have adjusted their stock of vehicles. Based on hourly concentration records of carbon monoxide, which comes primarily from vehicles exhaust, we find that household’s responses to both HNC and TS have been remarkably similar and consistent with the above: an expected short-run response followed by a rapid (before 11 months) increase in the stock of vehicles. |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ioe:doctra:407&r=tre |
| By: | Wang-Helmreich, Hanna (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy); Lochner, Stefan (Energiewirtschaftliches Institut an der Universitaet zu Koeln) |
| Abstract: | Greenhouse gas emission reductions are at the centre of national and international efforts to mitigate climate change. In road transportation, many politically incentivised measures focus on increasing the energy efficiency of established technologies, or promoting electric or hybrid vehicles. The abatement potential of the former approach is limited, electric mobility technologies are not yet market-ready. <p>In a case study for Germany, this paper focuses on natural gas powered vehicles as a bridging technology towards low-emission road transportation. Scenario analyses with a low level of aggregation show that natural gas-based road transportation in Germany can accumulate up to 464 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emission reductions until 2030 depending on the speed of the diffusion process. If similar policies were adopted EU-wide, the emission reduction potential could reach a maximum of about 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent. <p>A model-based analysis shows that the comparative cost advantage of natural gas relative to petrol and diesel per energy unit is not significantly reduced by the increased gas demand from natural gas vehicles. Capital costs for the transformation of the transport system to natural gas are therefore accompanied by lower fuel costs. Specific emission abatement costs of natural gas based mobility decline over time. After between 15 and 20 years, they are projected to be relatively low or even negative when a maximum rate of diffusion of natural gas vehicles is assumed. |
| Keywords: | Emission reduction potential; Road transportation; Natural gas vehicles; Abatement costs; Low emission mobility; Alternative fuels |
| JEL: | L92 O33 Q41 Q54 |
| Date: | 2012–01–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:ewikln:2011_014&r=tre |
| By: | Krautzberger, Lisann (Energiewirtschaftliches Institut an der Universitaet zu Koeln); Wetzel, Heike (Energiewirtschaftliches Institut an der Universitaet zu Koeln) |
| Abstract: | In the last decades transport activities persistently increased in the EU27 and were strongly coupled to growth in GDP. Like most production processes, they are inevitably linked with the generation of environmentally hazardous by-products, such as CO2 emissions. This leads to the question of how to promote a sustainable transport sector that meets both environmental protection targets and economic requirements. In this context, the objective of this paper is to compare the CO2-sensitve productivity development of the European commercial transport industry for the period between 1995 and 2006. We calculate a Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index to investigate the effects of country-specific regulations on productivity and to identify innovative countries. Our results show a high variation in the CO2-sensitive productivity development and a slight productivity decrease on average. Efficiency losses indicate that the majority of the countries were not able to follow the technological improvements induced by some innovative countries. |
| Keywords: | European transport industry; Carbon dioxide emissions; Productivity growth; Malmquist-Luenberger index |
| JEL: | L92 Q47 Q53 Q56 |
| Date: | 2012–01–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:ewikln:2011_013&r=tre |