A holistic analysis of passenger travel energy and greenhouse gas intensities
Journal article, 2020

Transportation is a major energy consumer and emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Exploring the opportunities for energy savings and GHG emissions reductions requires understanding transportation energy or GHG intensity, which is defined as energy use or GHG emissions per unit activity, here passenger-kilometres travelled. This aggregate indicator quantifies the amount of energy required or GHGs emitted to provide a generic transportation service. We show that the range of observed energy and GHG intensities of major transportation modes is remarkably similar and that occupancy explains about 70–90% of the variation around the mean; only the remaining 10–30% is explained by differences in trip distances and other factors such as technology and operating conditions. Whereas average occupancy levels differ vastly, they translate into roughly similar levels of energy and GHG intensity for nearly all major transportation modes.

transportation

greenhouse gases

transport

​Transportation, Mobility, ITS services

Author

Andreas Schäfer

University College London (UCL)

Sonia Yeh

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Physical Resource Theory

Nature Sustainability

23989629 (eISSN)

Vol. 3 6 459-462

Areas of Advance

Transport

Energy

Subject Categories

Energy Systems

Environmental Biotechnology

DOI

10.1038/s41893-020-0514-9

Related datasets

A holistic analysis of passenger travel energy and greenhouse gas intensities [dataset]

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3727540

More information

Latest update

9/22/2023