Abstract:

Transportation projects are changing how people and goods move, world-wide with direct and indirect impacts on global and local air pollutant emissions. Measuring the direct impacts of projects involving fuel or technology switch in particular vehicles is relatively straightforward. However, measuring changes in fuel use – and resulting emissions – that occur from indirect impacts from transport projects is a complex procedure. This paper summarizes the first steps this project (supported by USAID) has taken, with potential application to Asian cities.

Many projects claim to restrain the growth or even reduce those emissions, through regulatory obligations, market incentives or the willingness to comply with international commitments. Projects must be compared with the counterfactual, no project at all, to judge impact. The challenge is both to quantify the potential restrain in emissions offered by different projects, develop criteria for using this restrain in project selection, then verify outcomes once projects have been undertaken.

What makes this challenge difficult for Asia is two wheelers, whose real fuel consumption and local emissions are poorly known. Another difficulty is that rapid motorization, whether to two-, three-, or four wheelers is raising fuel use and CO2 emissions rapidly, masking the restraint from projects and policies.

Restraining CO2 emissions in traffic in Asia is seldom a driving factor for transport or environmental policies. Yet it is important because it is easier not to emit – through wise planning and provision of alternatives to carbon-intensive individual motorization -- than to try to change CO2 intensive transport patterns once they are established. If successful, this project will give local and global authorities a tool to gauge the CO2 impacts of their transport policies (or lack of policies) and allow CO2 and local emissions impacts to become part of the transport and environmental planning process.

Presentation: http://www.cleanairnet.org/baq2006/1757/docs/SW32_1.ppt