Premium
Priorities, policies and (time)scales: the delivery of emissions reductions in the UK transport sector
Author(s) -
Anable Jillian,
Shaw Jon
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2007.00776.x
Subject(s) - economics , greenhouse gas , corporate governance , climate change , government (linguistics) , climate policy , natural resource economics , business , economic policy , public economics , finance , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , biology
The transport sector is consistently responsible for around 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries and is one of few sectors where emissions continue to increase as a result of apparently insatiable demand for road and air travel. This paper examines how the formulation of transport policy fits into the exposition of UK climate policy, focusing on three principal areas of tension: policy priority (congestion and carbon reduction); strategies to reduce emissions (technological and behavioural solutions) and timescale (short‐ and long‐term vision). We suggest that in overcoming such tensions government ministers will need to devolve significant policy formulation and implementation powers to an appropriate scale of governance – in this case the city‐region – to fashion a ‘convergence space’ capable of promoting meaningful action with regard to transport's climate impact.