Paper: Quantifying CO2 savings of cycling

A recent paper tries to quantify how much increased cycling can reduce greenhouse gas production. 

This study shows that if levels of cycling in the EU-27 were equivalent to those found in Denmark, bicycle use would help achieve 12 to 26% of the 2050 target reduction set for the transport sector, depending on which transport mode the bicycle replaces.

Most if not all projections and scenarios conclude that measures focusing on improvement alone will fail to meet EU mid-term and long-term climate change objectives. Improvement measures are only estimated to deliver a 20% decrease in transport emission by 2050, using 1990 levels as the baseline.

In addition to technological developments and innovations, achieving the EU’s objectives will require ambitious plans which foresee an EU-wide modal shift away from individual motorized transport. Ordinary bicycles, pedelecs and bicycle-share schemes, on their own and in combination with mass transportation, all have the potential to further contribute to a much needed modal shift.

Above, where they mention "improvement measures" they mean improvement GHG efficiency within the transportation sector. Other strategies they see are avoiding, shifting and shortening.

Avoiding or reducing trips can for instance be done through integration of land use and transport planning.

Shifting is moving transportation from high GHG modes (like automobiles) to low ones (like biking and walking). Shortening is encouraging shorter trips. 

Cycling permits shorter trips, allowing a cyclist to cover a shorter distance yet still arrive at the same destination. Even when origin and destination are the same, the bicycle and, say, the car often take different routes, with the car trip being a few percentage points longer than a bicycle. This difference is because systems do not always have the same network density.

But cycling also and more importantly allows for shorter trips because of a destination switch: the concept of constant travel time budgets reveals that a change of travel time will be compensated for by a change of destination.

Reaching the EU's goals will likely require all of these strategies. In other words, fuel efficiency alone is going to get us there. 

 

Comments

[Tyson Brown]

In other words, fuel efficiency alone is

not

going to get us there.

[Jonathan Krall]

This part was funny:
"Cycling permits shorter trips, allowing a cyclist to cover a shorter distance yet still arrive at the same destination. Even when origin and destination are the same, the bicycle and, say, the car often take different routes, with the car trip being a few percentage points longer than a bicycle. This difference is because systems do not always have the same network density."

In the US the opposite is true. For example, my car-commute (back when I still had a car) wss 7 miles, but my bike commute (back when I had a commute) was 9 miles.

This problem is so common that I've long thought of the extra length of convoluted routes I ride as a tax.