NDC Opportunities in the Transport Sector

Driven by gross domestic product (GDP), population, and urban growth, demand for transportation of people and goods is surging. However, current attempts to meet this demand are unsustainable. Emissions from the global transport sector are still growing rapidly, and road fatalities, air pollution and a lack of physical activity pose large threats to human health and safety worldwide. In addition, many residents around the world lack equal access to opportunities such as jobs, education, and healthcare. To combat these crises and others, transformation is critical.

Why the Transport Sector Matters

In 2021, the global transport sector – which includes road, rail, sea, and air travel - emitted approximately 8 GtCO2e, accounting for about 14 percent of direct global GHG emissions. These emissions are projected to continue rising if a change in course is not implemented. Indeed, after industry, the transport sector remains the world’s second-fastest-growing source of GHG emissions. Moreover, today’s global transport sector is responsible for some 2 million deaths around the world each year, mostly due to harmful local air pollutants emitted during motorized travel as well as road crashes. Transformation of the global transport sector will thus be required for getting on track to achieve our global climate goals. It will require fair, equitable, and rapid change on the roads, in the sea, and in the air, while simultaneously delivering widespread benefits in improved public health and safety.

Consensus in the literature points to a mix of supportive policy measures which can be undertaken in order to catalyze such transformation:

	Avoid vehicle miles traveled by designing cities in such a way that motorized travel is less needed, implementing planning measures to bring goods and services closer to where people live and work.
	Shift toward more space- and fuel-efficient and less carbon-intensive modes of transport, such as public transport, walking, and cycling. Interventions to catalyze these shifts include expanding safe and affordable public transit infrastructure (e.g., trains and metro systems) and installing high-quality bicycle lanes and pedestrian walkways.
	Improve the space-, material-, and fuel-efficiency of vehicles on the road, and in the sea and air, to reduce the emissions-intensity of motorized transport forms which will continue to be necessary for transporting people and goods. Transformations to improve such vehicles include electrifying private and public road vehicles (e.g., passenger cars, trucks, buses, and two-and-three-wheelers), and investing in sustainable aviation fuel to decarbonize air travel and zero-emissions fuels to decarbonize maritime shipping.

Notable Recent Developments

Since the last round of NDCs were submitted, a variety of developments have demonstrated the feasibility of and advantages associated with implementing transport policy aligned with these needed transformations.

Within the “avoid” and “shift” categories of required transformations, examples tend to be more local in scale, such as the city of Bogota’s large-scale construction of nearly 600 kilometers of protected bike lanes, and policy in Paris to replace parking spaces with improved cycling infrastructure, leading to significant reduction in car trips within the city center. In addition, while more investment into public transport is needed, some countries and cities are taking action such as investment into public transport operations stemming from the global pandemic, projects such as Dakar’s first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor have opened, and there is growing acknowledgement to address the popular transport systems (e.g. minibuses) that dominate many cities in low- and middle-income countries. Such interventions are aligned with the Global Stocktake’s call for countries to accelerate emissions reductions, from road transport through a variety of pathways, including shifts to public transport and safe cycling infrastructure.

Within the “improve” category, recent developments also demonstrate exciting progress underway at different local, national, and international scales of action. The average annual growth rate of passenger electric vehicles was 65% over the past five years, and global two- and three-wheeler fleets are electrifying rapidly. Furthermore, at COP27 in 2022, 10 countries signed an agreement that they would aim to sell only zero-emissions medium- and heavy-duty vehicles by 2040, with a further 26 countries joining in the years since. Simultaneously, the United States proposed stringent new emissions standards for cars and trucks that are designed to ensure that two-thirds of passenger car sales and a quarter of heavy-duty truck sales in the United States are electric by 2032.

How to Incorporate Transport-Related Targets in NDCs

Building on recent momentum, the next generation of NDCs provides an important opportunity for countries to communicate policies and actions they intend to deploy to continue to drive progress toward the transformations needed in the global transport sector.

Setting high-level targets

According to scenarios from the IEA which demonstrate how global net-zero emissions can be achieved, the energy usage in the transport sector will need to decline by 10% by 2030 and 25% by 2035, with an energy mix that goes from a 5% share of greener sources to 20% in 2030 and over a third by 2035. Furthermore, many have highlighted the need to double the share of fossil fuel-free land transport (constituting over 70% of transport emissions) by 2030.

Governments should set ambitious sectoral targets in the transport sector to advance toward the needed shifts. Such high-level targets should be contextual to each country’s context. These high-level targets can also be complemented by sub-sectoral targets embracing a comprehensive approach seen through avoid-shift-improve strategies.

Countries can strengthen or add the following sub-sectoral targets:

• Ambitious GHG targets for the transport sector, such as reducing transport GHG emissions by a certain percentage by 2035 from a base year.
• Non-GHG targets addressing the transport sector, such as:
  • Modal share targets (e.g., a certain percentage of trips within cities that should happen by walking, cycling or public transit).
  • Targets for kilometers of high-quality public transit (e.g. BRT, LRT, metro).
  • Targets for walking and cycling infrastructure (e.g. kilometers of protected cycling infrastructure, bicycle share systems or standards for inclusion of pedestrian infrastructure).
  • Vehicle electrification targets (for light-duty vehicles, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, buses, and two- and three-wheelers, as relevant).
  • Electric vehicle charging infrastructure targets.
  • Phase-out targets for internal combustion engines.
  • Fuel efficiency targets and policies on export and import of used vehicles.
  • Targets to phase out fossil fuel subsidies for transport, coupled with policies to offset any economic impacts on vulnerable populations.
  • Where applicable, targets to address informal transport modes such as minibus taxi systems or two- and three-wheelers, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
  • Alternative fuel targets (for sustainable aviation fuel and zero-emissions shipping fuel, as relevant).
  • Goals to link the transport sector to renewable energy and away from fossil fuel power sources.