COUNTING CARBS: YOU CAN’T MASTER WHAT YOU CAN’T METER

Abstract:

This study was commissioned by the Asian development bank to improve the tracking and forecasting of CO2 emissions from road transport. Presently in Asia today data on vehicles, vehicle use, passenger and freight mobility are extremely poor. While there are reasonable data on consumption of fuels for all road transport at the national level, little is known by region other than sales of fuels.  As argued elsewhere, strategies to reduce the growth in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels used in transport must confront not only total fuel sales, but the components of transport activity that multiply to give emission, namely total Activity, modal Structure, modal or vehicle  Intensity, and Fuel content as it pertains to CO2 emissions. This “ASIF” decomposition is discussed in a number of lights.  First, as a tracking tool, the decomposition confronts the analyst with the need to understand how each component is growing (or shrinking).  Second, ASIF can serve as the basis for better forecasts and scenarios of future transport activity and emissions. Most important, while many CO2 control strategies rely on improving fuel efficiency of vehicles or raising their load factors, the expected growth in motorized transport volumes in Asia portends to outstrip the downward impacts of efficiency and load factors.  At the same time, effective transport policies applied to both goods and passengers, particularly in urban settings, could reduce the growth in vehicle activity markedly. And careful land use linked to urban development could reduce the need to travel even further, while new approaches to logistics could reduce the number of veh-km required to move goods between and within urban areas. The challenge for Asia is that almost none of the parameters described above is known well enough to be able to stimulate or regulate changes and monitor outcomes. In short it is not possible to count carbs in Asia. Without better measurement, mitigation strategies will be hamstrung because stakeholders will not be able to measure progress – or backsliding.  Using a series of examples from both Asian developing and developed countries, this paper will propose a strategy for counting carbs (and other emissions) in transportation activity, one that could link to other development strategies and existing data collection to maximize both the analysis of options and the tracking of success