trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

very slow decrease after the year 2020. However, the rising cost of oil supports the increasing use ofbiofuels.5. DiscussionAs noted in the beginning of the paper, transport serves the needs of the economy. The traditional pulpand paper industry was widely seen to be in decline in Finland, which might reduce freight volumes.However, new mining initiatives could bring a lot of heavy loads, particularly to railways. CertainlyFinland aims to high technologies, such as nano- and bioindustries, but it is uncertain where the newgrowth is coming from, and whether it means less material-intensive economy in the future. Somescenarios include very high freight volumes, but these could result from increasing transit, e.g., betweenRussia and central Europe.In terms of passenger transport, traffic volume growth rates are reduced in many scenarios andmodal splits will change mostly in favour of public transport and soft modes. Domestic aviation has aseemingly low growth potential. There is a clear difference in the experts’ views in respect with freightand passenger transport. As most of the experts indicated that the service economy and other type ofnon-material economic growth are essential in the future, this is a rather confusing result.The passenger transport volumes and CO 2 emissions in the scenarios are shown in Figure 2. Thenational emission targets are shown in the figures for 2020 (-15% from the 2005 level) and for 2050 (-80% from the 1990 level). It should be noted, however, that the emission targets have been set for thewhole transport sector, not passenger transport alone, in the case of the 2020 target, and for the societyas a whole in the case of the 2050 target. In addition, our figures only consider the actual CO 2 , whereasthe reduction targets normally apply to all greenhouse gases. Finally, we only consider domestictransport, and our calculations do not follow the IPCC guidelines exactly. Even with these reservations, itis notable that only two of the seven scenarios are able to reach the emission targets.430