Last year, one in 50 new cars were fully electric, and in the UK, the stats jump to one in 14, which seems great, right? Well, unfortunately, it’s not. Even if all new cars purchased from here on out were electric, it would still take up to two decades to replace the world’s fleet of internal combustion engine models.
Plus, the emissions savings from replacing all those fossil fuel cars with zero-carbon alternatives won’t feed in fast enough to make an impact when we need it by – the next five years. The real solution to tackling the climate and air pollution crisis entails halting motorized transport altogether, particularly private cars, ASAP – ideally by switching to active travel like cycling, e-biking, and walking.
Bottom line; by solely focusing on EVs, we slow down the race to zero emissions because EVs aren’t truly zero-carbon. Manufacturing them, mining the raw materials for their batteries, and generating the electricity to charge them produces emissions.
The transport sector is perhaps the most challenging to decarbonize because of its heavy fossil fuel use and carbon-intensive infrastructure (roads, airports, vehicles), which has embedded car-dependent lifestyles across the globe. The best way to reduce transport emissions quickly is to swap cars for bicycles and walking worldwide. Active travel is healthier, better for the environment, cheaper, and no slower than congested urban streets.
A new study calculated how much carbon could be saved daily by practicing active travel and what its role is in reducing emissions from transport overall. The researchers observed around 4,000 people living in Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Orebro, Rome, and Zurich over two years.
Each participant completed 10,000 travel diary entries, recording all the trips they made daily and what mode of transportation they used (taking the kids to school by car, going to work by train, riding the bus into town, etc.). The researchers calculated the carbon footprint for each trip. They found that those who cycled daily had 84% lower carbon emissions than those who didn’t.
But even if the average person shifts from car to bike for one day a week, it would make a substantial difference. The team found that active travel one day a week cuts a person’s carbon footprint by as many emissions as sending 800 emails, driving a car for 10km, or eating a serving of lamb or chocolate – or 3.2kg of CO2.
For an urban resident, the single-day cycle trip per week over a year reduces their carbon footprint by half a ton of CO2 – the equivalent of a one-way flight from New York to London. If just one in five urban residents in Europe did this for the next five years, it would cut emissions from all car travel by approximately 8%.
They also found that cycling emissions can be ten times lower than driving an EV and 30 times lower than an ICE car. To get these numbers, the researchers compared each travel mode’s life cycle, including the carbon generated by manufacturing the vehicle, fueling it, and then disposing of it.
Almost half of the drop in daily carbon emissions during lockdowns last year came from reductions in transport emissions. Many people switched to cycling to avoid people and abide by social distancing requirements. Moving forward to a future when social distancing won’t be necessary anymore, people should stick with active transport and try not to fall back on old carbon-intensive ways.
