Cars driving high CO2 emissions

Europe’s increasing reliance on cars is threatening efforts to combat climate change, according to a report published on Tuesday.

A study from the international energy agency (IEA) claims that even though oil consumption has been declining since 1973 in every other sector, soaring transport demands mean that overall levels did not drop between the 1970s and the 21st century.

And IEA blames the transport trend primarily on the world's growing fondness of cars.

“The most important reason behind the growth in transport demand is the increased use of cars for passenger travel”, IEA said in a statement.

Car use is steadily increasing, and although cars are becoming more energy efficient the increased number and size of vehicles negates this improvement.

The report further claims that improvements in energy efficiency were driven by high oil prices, rather than concerns over climate change.

Between 1973 and the mid-1980s oil prices were up, driving manufacturers to look for ways of using less energy.

Once prices fell again this impetus was lost, and Europe saw a 13 per cent increase in emissions between 1990 and 2001.

“The report contains an alarming message,” said IEA’s Claude Mandil.

“Energy savings across all sectors and in almost all countries have slowed since the 1980s, as has the decline in CO2 emissions relative to GDP.”

“This shows that the oil price shocks… did considerably more to control growth in energy demand and CO2 emissions than energy efficiency and climate policies implemented in the 1990s.”

Electricity consumption meanwhile is being maintained at high levels by the increased use of equipment such as computers and air conditioning units.

“There is an urgent need to consider ways to accelerate the decoupling of energy and CO2 emissions from economic growth,” Mandil concluded.

The IEA study was based on studies in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Britain, as well as Australia, Japan, the USA and Norway.

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