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A better way to curb emissions from personal transportation, which is responsible for 19% of all man-made CO2 emissions in the United States, is by improving the vehicle itself, says Henry Jacoby, a professor of management at MIT who studies energy use and climate change. "The bigger bang will come from changing the emissions per mile of the fleet we will have in 2050," Jacoby says. "If all new housing stock was very dense, you could cut total driving by 25 percent, but the things I'm talking about affect the other 75 percent."
Jacoby says that a number of measures toward this end are already under way, including government subsidies for cleaner-burning biofuels and plug-in hybrids, efficiency controls on new vehicles, and higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements. All these measures will have a greater impact on emissions reductions, and "just the recent tightening of CAFE standards has had a bigger effect than increased housing density would by 2050," he says.
A supplemental study released by the NAS concludes that an immediate 0.1 percent reduction in the weight of all vehicles nationwide would be 10 times more effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions than an immediate 0.1 percent increase in housing density nationwide. Kara Kockelman, an associate professor in the department of civil engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author of this study, says an expansion of public transportation combined with housing density increases could actually increase CO2 emissions if the current levels of usage persist.
"If we are adding someone to a bus system that already exists, that is great, but if you are doubling your bus service, in most cases that is a bad idea in terms of carbon reduction," she says. "If you could instead fill existing passenger vehicles or double the fuel economy of an SUV, you would get much greater CO2 reductions."
Jacoby says that recent legislation, such as the increase of CAFE standards, will go a long way toward reducing transportation CO2 emissions, but adds that to achieve significant emission reductions through all sectors of society, much more will need to be done.
Regulations, privacy and security concerns, and other issues could hold back developments.
David Victor explains why emissions trading alone won't be adequate to address global warming.
Last time I checked, heating and cooling buildings was about 40 percent of US CO2 emissions. Higher density development is more efficient because plants can be centralized and there is less wasted heat escaping from all the surfaces.
I haven't read the full report yet, but it would be a massive oversight if NAS only looked at the vehicular emissions side of bad land use in isolation.
I competely agree with the 3 previous commenters saying we need to do both. I also want to add Jacoby made a serious error in reasoning. He said, "If all new housing stock was very dense, you could cut total driving by 25 percent, but the things I'm talking about affect the other 75 percent." As if the 75% was the more meaningful figure.
What he failed to address is that 25% reduction is an absolute reduction to 0 extra carbon emissions caused by cars not driven. Whereas the 75% would not be a reduction to zero. It might be a reduction by 10% of the carbon emissions that would otherwise be released, by improving the efficiency of cars that drive that remaining 75% of miles. 25% of 0 is a bigger reduction than the resulting percent reduction of 10% of 75% (really 7.5% reduction in carbon).
Big logical error there...
Stay Home. Promote telecommuting (it's what my wife and I do), work from home jobs, telemedicine, teleconferencing, Internet 2, and online public education. (Harvard predicts half of all HS students will get all or part of their education online by 2019. Mine already do.) Help industry make food that lasts longer (irradiation) such that less waste is created, and fewer shopping trips are required. Super efficient deep freezes helps store larger volumes.
A rural environment is not all about energy use. It is about peace of mind. Many of us can't stand living in the city. We love nature. Isn't the wellbeing of citizens a consideration? Is it wise to try to pack people into cities who don't like the noise, crowds, dust, and lack of privacy?
Absolutely, telecommuting is THE short range solution.
There's almost zero up front cost and you get immediate results. There are many benefits beyond energy consumption and pollution. Highway congestion, construction, repair and parking also benefit.
What we need right now is a tax credit for employers whose employees telecommute offset by a tax penalty for those who resist - a penalty which increases 10X if they send the jobs offshore.
Sent from my home office.
I think you underestimate the positive impact that could have.
Note that 0.1% decrease in vehicle weight is about 4-5 lbs. Clean stuff out of your trunk, pump up those tires, or just drive naked to get at least those results.
If we can't be bothered with saving 2% here, which might be something we have the power to change, why should anyone else make changes? Stop passing the buck! It's the cumulative effect of every 1% here and 2% there that will make the real difference. This report only proves that the authors have no social conscience, feel no responsibility for the way they live their lives and believe the solution will happen without anyone bothering to change their own sensibility to their own responsibility for everyone else on the planet.
Next you'll have children writing reports on why they should be allowed to skip school, cause, in the end, they can mary someone rich, inherit their parents money and rely on the state to provide.
Hey I live downtown. No problem. I use my car once of twice a month. My employer pays the rent on my apartment so no problem at all. (The rent is equal to my entire after tax salary). All you have to do is find an employer willing to pay $2500 per month for your rent or alternatively provide you with an extra $30,000 per) I'm sure that's not a problem. Or so it seems from the previous comments. Just show some social conscience and get yourself accommodation downtown. If you can't find the money for the rent why just go and buy one for a million or two. As the previous commenters have indicated it's all really very simple. Failure to move downtown can be ascribed to nothing other than a lack of morality.
I must strongly disagree with the title of this article, and disagree with the slant of the article's overall content. I believe someone other than the author selected that title, for its shock value. It is a slap in the face for hundreds of thousands of astute city & regional planners in this country alone and at clear odds with many understood implications of sprawl (such as loss of arable lands & open space [for humans & other species], growing isolation of individuals and households, higher auto dependence resulting in higher death tolls due to crashes & obesity [as well as worsened air quality, overall], higher infrastructure costs, etc.).
Congress charged this Committee to look only at the vehicle-miles-traveled effects (& their associated energy implications) of land use patterns (primarily density), and I believe that no one on the Committee can agree that society should forget about curbing urban sprawl. As the report mentions (too briefly), there are many other carbon-saving benefits of curbing sprawl that are not covered by the Committee’s report (because they do not funnel through travel). These include smaller dwelling sizes (entailing less embodied energy [via materials] & requiring less heating & cooling), more efficient dwellings (thanks to shared walls & floors/ceilings), less treatment & delivery of water for big lawns, less pavement & fewer utility lines & other infrastructure (due to shorter distances between users), more efficient freight transport (not covered, though it is transport), and so on. Those savings will swamp the vehicle-miles argument, I suspect. And one simply cannot put a price on all the other benefits of smart growth (including reduced risk of immobility due to our excessive reliance on a single mode: imagine most US workers try to get to their jobs if OPEC dramatically lowers production).
I'm afraid that TechReview does us all a disservice here, by grossly characterizing a complex, yet globally & locally critical, topic.
Those in favor of business-as-usual will discover that the automobile has a bleak future. Peak Oil has occurred. As the global supply of oil diminishes and the demand for oil (from China and India) increases the Americans are going to look back in envy at the days when gasoline was "only" $4 a gallon.
Oil fuelled transportation (including ships, trucks, automobiles and airplans) has no future. It is quite likely that today's young children will live long enough to see the post-oil age and it won't be pretty.
There is another complicating factor, too: humankind has crowded along the coastline and the oceans are rising. Millions of people are going to have to find new homes as the ocean swallows low lying areas and renders other regions unfit for habitation.
Finally ... well, there's something else coming but it is too terrible to mention.
http://www.flickr.com/dmathew1
In Belgium for example, you can get around in the country on comfortable, clean and fast trains. In many of the cities for the short haul people actually enjoy going around on bicycles.
Without a transporation infrastructure like this, the US will be out of luck as the oil shortage begins. (In France their trains are electric and run on nuclear power.)
The scope here is too limited. As professional house builders we have repeatedly shown that heat savings of 90% are realistic and abandoning a/c altogether is practical. Transportation is amost as important as home comfort. Do not choose to forget the immense fossil fuel requirements of the asphalt, steel and concrete which allow our cars the routes to drive on. Suburban America will need permanent stimulus spending or it will have to change dramatically. We're off-the-grid, don't need a furnace, and can power an electric car from the wind. Incremental improvements aren't worth discussing at this late date.
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boustrephon
50 Comments
An interesting study. But I think they are missing the point. It is not an "either... or..." situation, it is a "both... and..." - the reduction in transportation energy has to happen and we also need to reduce travel distances. In any case, increasing urban density will happen because of the increase in energy prices. I don't think that government will have to do anything to encourage it. It is already happening as the property prices in the exurbs drop faster than in the cities.
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fwashbur
2 Comments
Re: No Subject
I totally agree. If we are to solve a complex and pressing issue, we must seek complex solutions. What increasing population density will solve only 2 percent of the problem? Great, let's take that 2 percent and add hybrids, and electric and CNG and biodiesel, and solar power both PV and other, and geo-thermal, and wind and hydro and wave, and algea and while we're at it let's clean-up the existing coal plants as much as possible. Everything we can think of, and everything we can do may not be enough, so let's stop looking for a silver bullet and attack the problem the good old fashioned American way - with an over-whelming barrage of firepower.
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