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Dynamic stock model based assessment of carpooling in passenger transportation carbon emissions: Will avoided trips and material credits help?
Journal
Sustainable Production and Consumption
Date Issued
2022-09-01
Author(s)
Das, Deepjyoti
Kalbar, Pradip P.
Velaga, Nagendra R.
Abstract
India's domestic climate policies in Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) supporting the Paris Climate Agreement and regional plans miss focus on the indirect impact of materials in the material-intensive transportation sector and sharing transportation such as carpooling. This is one of the first studies to assess the contribution of avoided trips, detours, and materials from carpooling in achieving different decarbonization targets from 2018 to 2050 by developing a novel Dynamic Stock Model (DSM). The model analyzes the dynamics of fleet technological variations and material stock with related uncertainty in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. The results show that carpooling can reduce Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from trips by 0.27–1.34 Mt. However, detouring masks the benefits of increasing car occupancy during trips and increases CO2 emissions by 0.23–1.12 Mt. Increase in carpooling from conservative to extensive level increases savings from avoided materials accounting for a decrease of 4.99–24.93 Mt. of CO2 emissions, which is approximately 19 times of savings from avoided trips. The combined reduction in CO2 emissions of 4.76–23.81 Mt. from avoided trips and materials will not achieve the regional climate targets of 45.60 Mt., 26.6 Mt., and 30.40 Mt. for 2 °C, 1.5 °C, and INDC, respectively, by 44–252 %. Thus, the primary focus of policy should be on reducing material emissions rather than trip emissions by increasing recycling efficiency and reducing aluminum usage in lightweight vehicles until 2050. Future studies should exhaustively analyze other low-carbon interventions in the transportation sector using the developed DSM.
Volume
33
Subjects