Sustainable Transport in France Is a 75% Reduction in Carbon Dioxide Emissions Attainable?

Today numerous published works conclude that transport seems to be completely coupled to economic and export-import growth. Therefore, as a direct consequence of economic development, transport is one of the major final energy consumers and one of the most important sources of carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions. Consequently, continuous increases in emissions by the transport sector pose an environmental problem. This paper assesses possible solutions through scenario building in a backcasting manner by using the Transport Issues in the Long Term model. In particular, three scenarios that address how technology and various public policies can contribute to a sharp reduction in CO(2) emissions are evaluated. Furthermore, estimates of infrastructure investment needs as well as insight into how transport budgets (time and monetary) could evolve in each of the following three scenarios presented are proposed: the Pegasus scenario, in which strict technology standards are promoted; the Chronos scenario, in which green multimodalities are promoted; and the Hestia scenario, in which the decoupling of transport and growth in the gross domestic product is promoted. Each scenario allows the types of results that can be obtained through different policy mixes to be quickly comprehended. In sum, a realistic technological hypothesis shows that a 50% reduction in emissions from the 2000 level is a clear possibility and that the remaining 25% needed to reach the total French target emissions reduction of 75% is possible through the use of different types of policy mixes.