Powering the Future Summary Report - Parsons Brinckerhoff

Powering the Future Summary Report
Powering the Future Summary Report
UK energy consumption by sector
1. Transport
The transport sector consumes about 26% (59 MTOE)
of the fossil fuel supply to the UK economy. Road
transport dominates UK transport energy consumption
and any transfer of traffic from road to rail will strongly
affect energy consumption in the rail sector. Since
rail represents a small proportion of passenger and
freight movements, it would be radically affected by
any significant transfers from road transport. Because
of the modest scale of rail energy consumption and
its sensitivity to road transport strategy, detailed
consideration of this part of the transport sector is not
attempted pending clearer definition of overall transport
strategy.
In order to reduce CO 2 emissions from road transport,
the energy currently delivered from fossil petroleum
fuels will have to be substantially replaced by
alternatives.
Table 1 illustrates the main options considered for the
transport sector and shows which ones are included in
the reference scenario, the base case for evaluation of
alternative options.
We assessed measures to improve the performance
of internal combustion engines. While these would be
useful transition measures, none can deliver the radical
reductions in fuel consumption needed to meet the
2050 commitment.
Figure 6 shows the overall CO 2 reduction effects of
the options, including changes of emissions in the
electricity sector, where appropriate, compared to the
‘business as usual’ case. Electricity sector emissions
are based on indicative levels of 0.4 tCO 2 /MWh in 2020
and 0.1 tCO 2 /MWh in 2050.
Table 1 Selected measures for transport sector response to CO 2 emissions
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