Guest Post: Cutting transport emissions in Brighton and Hove: what is a priority and what is not?

Cutting transport emissions in Brighton and Hove: what is a priority and what is not?

 Guest Post by Rob Shepherd*

Nationally, the independent Committee on Climate Change reports that transport accounts for over a third of the CO2e emissions that we contribute to our climate disaster. By far the biggest share is road transport.

However, our ‘territorial emissions’ tell only part of the story. Our Transport CO2e is not just the CO2e emitted from road vehicles, it is also from transporting ourselves, our goods and food within and from other countries. What matters for the climate are our overall ‘consumption emissions’. Nationally, these are twice as high as our territorial emissions: about 800 MtCO2e, compared to about 400 MtCO2e in territorial emissions. Transport, now including aviation, again accounts for a significant share.

What then should be the transport priorities in and for the 32 square mile territory of Brighton and Hove? The City’s Carbon Neutral 2030 plan emphasised that:  ‘A shift to public transport and active forms of travel is needed to bring down carbon and nitrous oxide emissions, affecting everyone in the city. Switching from petrol and diesel vehicles to electric and hydrogen vehicles will save carbon emissions and improve air quality, as will a reduction in the length and number of vehicle trips.’ A detailed strategy was laid out as in Figure 1 for encouraging car journeys to move to walk-bike-bus.

 Figure 1

Brighton and Hove’s Transport and Travel Strategy

But does this strategy make sense?

 It sounds obvious that switching our journeys to walk-bike-bus will make substantial CO2e savings.

However, once you eliminate journeys that will not switch to walk-bike-bus (e.g. LGVs,  HGVs and Taxis) and car journeys unlikely to walk-bike-bus (e.g. the 80% of our car trips that are longer than 5 miles), you find you are chasing about 3% of our CO2e, not 30%. 

Look at the DfT's numbers closely and you may notice switching journeys from car to bus does not save CO2e: this is because buses emit seven or more times as much CO2e as cars, so they have to carry seven or more times as many people, and like most buses outside London, many of ours do not.

Electrification of buses and of refuse trucks will make a small contribution to ongoing emissions (though their manufacturing emissions need to be taken into account). However, we could save more transport CO2e by eliminating the main road congestion that has grown since 2010 (despite there being less traffic!). This can be achieved by redesigning road lay-outs (for example, allowing more opportunity for buses to overtake and be overtaken along the A259); and by creating bus interchange hubs outside the central congestion.

Beyond daily emissions, a fundamental problem is that the CO2e from manufacturing our vehicles (often greater than the CO2e driving them) is not called "Transport CO2e", yet to reduce the impact of our transportation on CO2e, we must think of it (and the cement maintaining our infrastructure) as transport: it is a big part of the "life cycle" CO2e of transportation.

It is said that when we spend £1,500 we cause 1 tonne of CO2e emissions. The amount may differ according to what we spend it on, but it is a useful guideline for manufactured items like washing machines, vacuum cleaners and motor vehicles (and perhaps more worryingly, for the costs of building and maintaining homes and roads).

If you think that way, you will know spending £20,000 on your new vehicle is much better than spending £40,000 and that delaying that purchase for a few years saves CO2e (as the years pass, less and less vehicle manufacturing energy comes from burning fossil fuels).

Repair rather than replace, is generally good advice.

It is also critical that we save CO2e quickly over the next few years. A low mileage driver switching to an eCar that takes 10 years to pay back its manufacturing CO2e, is no friend of the planet.

By the same token, should I let my Insurance Company spend £1,500 repairing a small dent in my car, or should I live with it? That saves as much CO2e as driving 5,000 fewer miles.

 So, we need to think differently.

There is a great deal we can do to improve road lay-out and manage bus hubs. I am keen on community vehicle share schemes (not commercial car schemes that manufacture more vehicles) to reduce manufacturing CO2e. We can do this ourselves.

But above all we must educate people (and councils) to THINK CARBON when making MAJOR expenditures   ... and recognise that minimising expenditure usually saves CO2e.

Most important, we must not be seduced into pursuing trivial CO2e savings rather than big wins that might save us and Councils money.

* * *

 *This is a guest blog by Rob Shepherd. Rob is a retired mathematician who has studied local traffic congestion, air pollution and carbon emissions, as well as our Council’s record in these areas.

Photo: Cathy Maxwell

Perspective pieces are the responsibility of the authors, and do not commit Climate:Change in any way. Guest posts are published to explore issues or stimulate debate. Comments are welcome.