Interview
Transport and the challenge of energy transition
Aurélien Bigo is the author of a thesis on the following subject: “Transport and the challenge of energy transition.
Explorations between past and future, technology and sobriety, acceleration and slowdown”. His work (thesis, abstract, video of the defense, articles) can be consulted on the website of the Chaire Energie et Prospérité, of which he is a research associate.
Why is it essential to change transport modes in order to achieve France’s carbon neutrality objectives?
Today, oil still accounts for just over 90% of the energy consumption in the transport sector. This makes it the most fossil-fuel dependent sector in France. It is also a slow learner in the fight against climate change: its emissions have stagnated in recent years, even though successive strategies forecast falling emissions in the future. In 2019, emissions were 16% higher than the target set in the 2015 national low-carbon strategy. This is a huge gap for such a short period of time. This same strategy now sets a revised target of carbon neutrality for France by 2050, and 0 oil consumption for all land transport. This is a major transformation to be achieved in just 3 decades. To achieve this, we need to combine strong ambition on the 5 levers available to the transport sector:
- moderation of transport demand
- modal shift towards energy-efficient modesincreasing vehicle occupancy
- improving energy efficiency
- decarbonizing the energy used
To make it simple, we need to combine:
- energy sobriety actions, which reduce energy consumption through changes in land-use planning, transport organization or behavioral changes
- and the development of technologies that also reduce energy consumption, and replace oil with decarbonized energies (electricity, hydrogen, biogas or biofuels), provided that these energies are produced sustainably, which is not always the case.
In what way is the current political and economic context favorable to this evolution in the transport sector? Has the COVID crisis accelerated things?
The Covid crisis has in fact accelerated a number of fundamental trends that we’ve already seen emerging in the transport sector in recent years. This is the case, for example, with the development of telecommuting, e-commerce and cycling, all of which have been boosted by the crisis. Their effects on emissions are not always easy to assess right now. Because the crisis also brings with it its share of uncertainties about the possible persistence of observed phenomena. For example, will we see :
- a continued flight from metropolitan areas in the years to come?
- a relocation of certain strategic sectors?
- an acceleration of Made in France and local trade?
- a fairly rapid recovery or, on the contrary, a long crisis for the airline industry?
Much of this will depend on the way public policies, economic players and citizens deal with and support these developments. Thus, the crisis can be seen both as a threat to see environmental issues overshadowed, or on the contrary, as an opportunity to initiate the profound transformations that are needed.
The recovery plan, which defines strategic orientations and mobilizes substantial funds, is key here. Efforts to “green” the recovery plan are to be welcomed. Unfortunately, they remain largely insufficient, at least for the transport sector, to align with the objectives of the national low-carbon strategy (SNBC). What is clear in the SNBC, and even more so in the recovery plan, is the technological gamble on transport, while sobriety measures are very weak or even absent.
The revival of the air transport sector, for example, is betting on a hydrogen-powered aircraft from 2035, and settles for a 2.5-hour limit for journeys transferred to rail.
In the automotive sector, the shift to electric vehicles is fortunately being supported, but without ensuring that this does not involve heavy vehicles with large batteries, which could limit the potential benefits on climate.
The ambition therefore seems to be to return as quickly as possible to pre-crisis traffic levels, including for these high-emission modes, despite the fact that changes in transport demand have been the main factor in emissions growth in recent years.
Measures that came out of the Citizens’ Climate Convention showed that citizens are well informed about the threat of climate change. They are ready for a number of changes that will lead to more sober use of cars and planes. What remains to be done is to get the whole population to share these ideas, and above all to put them into practice politically, as many of the measures proposed by the citizens’ convention have been rejected or severely curtailed.
In the air transport sector, groups of researchers, NGOs, students and employees in the aeronautics industry are daring to face reality, and are working together to consider a path out of the crisis that will reconcile climate issues with the transformation of the sector (particularly in terms of employment)… a process that should be led directly by the French government, if it were to take its own climate objectives seriously.
How are our European neighbors dealing with it? Any concrete examples of successful decarbonization of transport abroad?
I don’t think there is any example of global, consistent strategies to date, including abroad. Every country in the world is heavily dependent on oil for transport. What’s more, the most virtuous countries in terms of transport emissions per capita are not those that have succeeded in the energy transition for transport, but rather the least developed countries. Developed countries, on the contrary, have experienced trends quite similar to France in terms of the 5 factors mentioned above.
On the other hand, we can observe countries that are particularly at the cutting edge on certain issues, and from which we should draw inspiration. Here are a few examples:
- the Netherlands and Denmark on the use of bicycles
- Norway, for the development of electric vehicles, supported by very strong tax incentives (on emissions and vehicle weight)
- Sweden on carbon taxes and aviation
- Switzerland on the regulation of heavy goods vehicles and the development of railways
- Spain on regulating city speeds, and the Netherlands on lowering freeway speeds.
The challenge is to successfully combine these different developments to achieve the very ambitious targets set in France and in the Paris Agreement, which are necessary to keep our planet liveable in the decades to come.
What role do companies have to play in this? What new skills and expertise do companies need to call on to achieve these green mobility objectives, particularly at operations management level?
Companies have a multi-faceted role when it comes to transport. For companies in the sector, it is first and foremost a question of defining a strategy that is consistent with international and national climate objectives. This strategy is based on an assessment of the emissions linked to the company’s activity, and the directions to be taken to align with the necessary emissions reductions. It’s a question of decarbonizing activity through technology, but also – and this isn’t usually sufficiently considered – of thinking about changes in the organization of transport that will reduce energy consumption.
- How can we bring living and working places closer together?
- How can we bring production and consumption places closer together?
- How can we enable as many people as possible to use active modes of transport or public transport?
- How can we enable goods to be transported by rail?
These questions also apply to non-transport companies, which also generate logistics and passenger flows. Increasingly, companies are also having to consider employee mobility. For the home-workplace, mobility plans can enable to:
- introduce a sustainable mobility package
- facilitate carpooling between employees
- set up secure parking facilities and exchange areas to facilitate cycling.
For work-related travel, cycling can also be encouraged, for example by providing a fleet of electrically-assisted bicycles. Car fleets can be converted to electric power, with light vehicles whenever use permits. Air travel can be reduced, by using videoconferencing, or by giving preference to rail for all journeys of less than 5 hours or which can be made by night train, for example. As with public policy (see the reports of the French High Council for the Climate on this topic), the climate issue needs to be integrated at the heart of governance, strategic decisions and actions, if we are to be effective and rise to the challenges.
Isolating these issues in the sustainable development or CSR department alone will result in failure. It also requires a good understanding of the issues from all stakeholders, which requires dedicated training sessions. This can be achieved through collaborative workshops such as those organized by the Climate Fresk to understand the challenges of climate change. These sessions need to be complemented by an understanding of the environmental issues specific to the company, and the levers that can be activated to move the company’s actions and business sector towards greater sustainability.
