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Title
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Energy transitions in transportation: Is it a technology or a policy-driven process?
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Author
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Abstract
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| Last decades observed an outstanding increase in traffic generated by mobility needs, both in passenger and freight. This is largely a consequence of the global trend of last years when we moved from a stock economy to a flow economy and with it substantial change was introduced in logistic processes and transportation became of the production process in most industry and also in services. Mobility was transformed into an opportunity factor both for industries (business opportunity) and for individuals (personal opportunity) and today transport is a key factor of any vigorous economy. However, transportation as we have it today is largely unsustainable. In the EU-25 transportation is the fastest growing source Of CO2. According to the EC White Paper on Transport (issued in 2001), transport was at the time responsible for 28% of EU's greenhouse gas emissions in 1998, of which 84% was generated by road transport. Despite this striking evidence of disturbance of the current technological paradigm of fossil fuels in which transportation is still largely supported and the fact that technology is dominated and ready to offer reliable alternatives we face a number of other '' soft '' barriers hindering the adoption of more sustainable sources of energy to support transportation. We show the evidence that for an energy paradigm to succeed the merits of technology do not suffice; instead four factors have to be well aligned with articulated actions: the sustainability factor; the technological; the market factors; and the policy factors. But it is on top of this common action of these factors the political process which takes the lead in the change process. Being so, the most critical element of the change process is how and when to succeed placing the change process in the political agenda. This means putting together a coalition and creating the momentum for a transport policy window. This paper discusses this issue and presents the structure of the process of opening the window opportunity for a change of energy paradigm in the transport sector, standing for the thesis that energy transition in transportation (a very likely elsewhere) is a policy-driven process. |
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Language
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English
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Source (journal)
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ASSESSMENT OF HYDROGEN ENERGY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
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Source (book)
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NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Assessment of Hydrogen Energy for, Sustainable Development, AUG 07-10, 2006, Istanbul, TURKEY
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Publication
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Dordrecht
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Springer
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2007
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ISBN
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978-1-4020-6441-8
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DOI
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10.1007/978-1-4020-6442-5_7
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Volume/pages
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(2007)
, p. 83-96
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ISI
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000251160800007
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Full text (Publisher's DOI)
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