Transport & Environment (T&E) is a European organisation that deals with transport. It has a keen eye on the decarbonisation of mobility and its reports always arouse the interest of those who fight for the reduction of emissions from motorisation. The latest report of a few days ago, however, has quite new contents. According to the document, in the next few years the EU should invest 39 billion euros per year to see things change.
The basis of everything is the need to reduce investments in traditional infrastructures such as roads and airports and instead focus on energy networks, charging points, social infrastructure. These are crucial projects to give substance to all the other sustainable mobility programs. Enough with road networks and air junctions, therefore, to make room for renewable plants, renewable power plants, sustainable structures. T&E also says that we need to increase private investments. They represent 87% of the total invested so far and can increase further if governments create the conditions to do so. One tool indicated as useful is the current European Battery Fund, considered a crucial element to have a production chain of accumulators made in Europee.
Emissions to fall in 2023
According to the study, we must also insist on decarbonisation of aircraft and ships that travel around Europe and are responsible for approximately one third of polluting emissions. But will the halt to the construction of road and airport structures really give rise to a less polluted future?
The proposal is suggestive but does not take into account the inhomogeneities that exist between European countries. Goods travel on the roads, there are European projects including the PNRR that plan to modernize the road network, environmental disasters make it urgent to build new roads and safer bridges, in cities the speed of travel must be limited. Of course, investments in sustainable structures must grow but on the existing Europe is very heterogeneous.
The European Commission, for its part, has published updated data on emissions, which have fallen by 37% compared to 1990. A percentage that represents "the largest annual decline in recent decades, with the exception of 2020, when COVID-19 led to emissions reductions of only 9,8%".
Returning to the T&E report, what effects will it have on the Commission's decisions? A glimmer of hope, at least of evaluation, comes from the words of the future Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen: “Technology neutrality is a central concept, an integral part of the freedom of Member States to choose their energy mix in line with our Treaties. All renewable and low-carbon energy solutions will be needed.”
