Over three-quarters of the UK's oil use is for transport.Here in the UK,
over three-quarters of our oil use is for transport. Most of these are going
into the cars, trucks, buses, motorbikes and trains that make up our surface
transport, but the aviation and shipping industries are also using vast
quantities of oil.
This has to change.
We can start by making travel more efficient
We all need to make smarter
choices to reduce our oil consumption. We can start today by reducing the
amount we travel and travelling more efficiently. In the city, we can leave our
cars at home and take the bus, tram, carpool or walk to the places we need to
get to. We can reduce business travel by using video conferencing.
When we do have to use vehicles, we need them to be as efficient as possible. There have been small improvements in engine efficiency over the last few decades, but any possible benefits have been cancelled out by manufacturers’ preference for larger, more powerful and more profitable models and the growth in the number of vehicles on Britain’s roads.
Once a symbol of freedom and speed, cars are now a blight on urban life. The massive increase in car numbers has reduced the benefit to each car owner – it’s well known that due to congestion, travel across London is as slow and frustrating today as it was in the Victorian era. And that’s true for most of Britain’s major cities and conurbations around the world.
When this loss of amenity is combined with the other serious problems caused by oil-fuelled transportation – noise, air pollution, cancers and respiratory problems for thousands of people – it’s clear that vehicles powered by internal-combustion are starting to outlive their usefulness.
Public transportation
An important part of the
challenge, then, is to improve public transport to the point where it becomes
the preferred option for the majority of the urban population.
By making public transport more efficient and easier to use, and making sure services are regular, local and accessible, we can get everyone where they need to go more easily - rather than hundreds of people clogging their cars around our cities.
Reinventing the car
No matter how much we expand
and improve our public transport, the car will be with us for the foreseeable
future. In the longer term we need to switch our cars over to hybrid and
electric vehicles powered by clean energy - but this is not going to happen
overnight.
In the meantime, we urgently need them to have the most efficient engines and designs. To make this happen it’s vital that European governments set strong targets that will force manufacturers to produce much more efficient vehicles – and to develop radically cleaner technologies.
The EU has committed to reduce CO2 emissions to 95g per km for a family car by 2020, but is coming under pressure from manufactures who want to introduce loopholes to weaken this target. We’re campaigning to make sure this doesn’t happen.
Electric vehicles
Eventually, all our surface
transport will need to be made up by hybrid or electrified vehicles powered by
clean energy. Our train system is already beginning to be electrified, and
electric cars and vans are quickly coming onto the market.
No longer the preserve of small specialist companies, major manufacturers are facing up to the fact that the oil age is ending and that their future lies in electric cars. Electric vehicles and connected industries are predicted to be a $300 billion business by 2020 – and create over a million jobs globally along the way.
With a typical range of 100-120 miles between charges and a full recharging time of 6-8 hours, models like the Nissan Leaf and the Renault ZE range meet many people's needs. And they look, feel and drive just like their petrol counterparts – except that they are silent, cheaper to run and don’t pump out climate threatening emissions.
And where these automotive giants lead, their rivals are bound to follow, spurring competition which will inevitably lead to increasing ranges and decreasing recharge times in the near future.
Flying
It’s going to be much harder
to get all our planes off oil. The only alternative the aviation industry has
come up with is biofuels. But there are lots of reasons why biofuels aren’t the
silver bullet solution that aviation would hope for (increased competition for
land used to grow food, raising food prices and driving rainforest destruction)
- so that means that we are going to have to limit the amount we fly, and make
sure planes are as efficient as possible.
Shipping
Globally, shipping is
responsible for between three and four per cent of CO2 emissions, but there is
considerable scope for this figure to be cut.
For example, new technologies like giant skysails and improved hull designs which reduce drag can, in the right conditions, cut a ship’s emissions by up to a quarter. And other simple measures such as reducing the speed at which ships travel and ensuring that they use the most direct route possible, can reduce their carbon pollution by another quarter, making a 50 per cent reduction overall.
