Behaviour change and land use planning need stronger role in transport carbon reduction plans, says report

The Department for Transport’s carbon-reduction strategy overstates technology, ignores the carbon produced in order to make biofuels, and understates the role that behaviour change and land use planning can make in carbon reduction.
These are the results of independent analysis of the strategy carried out for Campaign for Better Transport.

The Government published its UK Low Carbon Transition Plan in July 2009. The Department for Transport’s response to meeting its climate change targets to 2020 as part of this plan was set out at the same time in Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future. Keith Buchan, director of MTRU, analysed both plans for Campaign for Better Transport.

Richard Hebditch, the group’s campaign director, said: 'The Department for Transport thinks technology can save us. The department’s wrong. Its belief in the power of technology and biofuels means that the strategy is dangerously reliant on assumptions that are, at best, highly questionable.

'We know, and the Government knows, that people will drive less if they have good alternatives. The Government must send a clear message that it will prioritise behaviour change to meet its carbon-reduction targets.'

There are many failings with the assumptions that went into the low-carbon transport plan. The department:

• Has based its carbon reduction targets almost entirely on technology, the effectiveness of which is highly uncertain and which takes many years to work its way into the vehicle fleet
• Overstates the benefits of biofuels by not accounting for the carbon produced when growing and transporting the fuels, with findings that are potentially in conflict with the Renewable Fuels Agency
• Overstates the benefits of biofuels by not accounting for the carbon produced when growing and transporting the fuels, with findings that are potentially in conflict with the Renewable Fuels Agency
• Overstates the benefits of biofuels by not accounting for the carbon produced when growing and transporting the fuels, with findings that are potentially in conflict with the Renewable Fuels Agency
• Demands a level of evidence for smarter choices far higher than for technological measures in the Impact Assessment, which then feeds into the overall tone of the policy recommendations
• Is wrong to estimate that impact of ‘smarter choices’ would only be in urban areas in the Impact Assessment, which therefore underestimates the impact
• Underestimates the impact of smarter choices and speed limit enforcement because the modelling assesses their impact after technology measures, whereas both can be implemented now and have significant evidence of impact
• Places too much value on small journey time savings, which means that the Impact Assessment downplays the potential for enforcing the national speed limit