Shouldn’t a government with a legally binding commitment to decarbonise commit to road traffic reduction?

It seems England is special. Scotland, Wales and Ireland all have targets set by their national governments to reduce car driven miles. England doesn’t.

Yesterday the RAC Foundation published an important piece of work that set the following exam question:

Is it necessary to have a net reduction in car driven miles in order to achieve a fall in total annual tailpipe emissions from cars to around 34.6 MtCO2e by 2030 (in line with the Committee on Climate Change’s ‘Balanced Pathway’ scenario)?

The answer, following 9900 modelled possible scenarios, is no. ‘Aha!’ say the politicians delighting at seemingly not needing to countenance a road traffic reduction target and the sense of oppression of freedom and of economic prosperity this might conjure up.

However, key to the exam question is the word ‘necessary’. If those politicians are gamblers they could bet on not needing road traffic reduction this decade. If, however, they are responsible stewards of the future who believe in the precautionary principle and want to assure the fall in emissions required in the exam question, then road traffic reduction is a requirement firmly on the table.

According to the report, there are some key variables that contribute to future uncertainty and form the basis of the modelled scenarios. Those which have the most impact on emissions are: individual car annual mileage; the rate of improvement of new ICE cars; the registration rate of new battery electric cars; the extent to which battery electric use replaces internal combustion use; and
the rate at which petrol and diesel cars depart the national vehicle fleet. The first of these has the most impact “by some margin”.

The report makes very clear – listen carefully all the gamblers! – “this is not a probabilistic model (a model that produces odds on a particular outcome becoming true)….All graphs show the range of the plausible outcomes, and no attempt to infer the likelihood of any specific outcome from these graphs should be attempted.” Do you hear that gamblers, “no attempt”.

In the press release for the new report, it is explained that:
“if the total number of car-driven miles stays steady or continues to grow, then [based on the modelling] battery electric cars would potentially have to account for some 35% of the total car fleet in 2030 (around 13.5 million electric cars compared to a projected 38.6 million cars in total), and these would have to account for at least 37% of all car miles driven.”

Professor Steve Gooding in the press release provides what I take to be the intended headline message to the media and in turn the public and politicians: “Based on current trends getting the car fleet up to 35% pure battery-electric by 2030 without reducing driven miles looks like a monumentally steep challenge, like climbing Everest on a bad day.”

#roadtraffic#emissionsreduction