Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Effects of Transport Infrastructure Plans
on Climate Change. Application to the Spanish
Strategic Transport and Infrastructure Plan
2005-2020 (PEIT)
Elena López, Andrés Monzón, and Panayotis Christidis
Introduction
The inclusion of strategic environmental effects of transport infrastructure plans in
assessment methodologies is increasingly required by the research community,
decision-makers and relevant stakeholders. One of these strategic effects is the
measurement of their contribution to climate change. This contribution is considered
critical because of its sustainability implications
[1, 2]
.
First, the climate change phenomenon is directly linked to energy consumption
and directly related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These are strategic envi-
ronmental aspects of great interest due to both the need to comply with international
environmental commitments and the urgency to reduce energy consumption, which
has a greater economic component.
In the past few decades there has been an increased concern for assessing the
environmental effects of transport and developing mechanisms to report their evo-
lution, such as the periodic 'Transport and Environment Reporting Mechanisms'
(TERM) Reports
[3]
. At the EU level, the transport sector is the primary driver of
the growth in total energy consumption, which is likewise directly linked with total
emissions
[3]
. These concerns have also been stressed in the mid-term review of the
Transport White Paper
[4]
, which calls for integrated actions in order to achieve a
European sustainable transport system.
However, the important efforts devoted to environmental abatement policies
have not achieved the expected reduction targets. In fact, the high rate of increase
in transport demand is outstripping the rate of improvement in environmental tech-
nology for transport
[5, 6]
. The result has been a significant increase in greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions from transport, which threatens European progress towards
E. López and A. Monzón
TRANSyT-UPM: Centre for Transport Research, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid,
Madrid, Spain
P. Christidis
European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies
(JRC-IPTS), Seville, Spain
