Increased walking, cycling, and use of public transport can reduce our energy demand and GHG emissions, as well as making our urban environments healthier and more pleasant places to live. Active travel could bring health benefits through increasing physical activity and reducing air pollution.
Your Task
To be able to sell active travel to the ‘Dragon’s Den’ panel you will need to understand the problems and do some research into the claims made for active travel. Let’s start with the problem to be solved.
What’s The Problem?
Transport is the biggest emitter of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) in the UK. In 2017, 41% of UK energy demand and 37% of UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions were from transport. Surface passenger transport accounted for about half of transport energy demand, aviation about a quarter, and freight around a quarter.
Energy for transport is overwhelmingly derived from petroleum products such as petrol, diesel and kerosene. Fuel use and GHG emissions from transport have increased over recent decades, peaking in 2007 and declining a little since. Road vehicles use most of this fuel (70%); aeroplanes are another large user, with trains and boats using smaller amounts according to BEIS (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategies) in 2018. If we exclude lorries, cars and vans account for about 50% of all transport energy use.
The Solution
Radical changes will be required to the amount and to the way we travel and move goods in a zero carbon Britain. This is essential if we are to reduce energy demand. Changes are also needed to our transport system to make urban environments where most people live and work more pleasant as well as help us be healthier and more active.
This means we have to change the way we work, for example improved communication technology (video conferencing, Zoom etc) can make some journeys unnecessary. People are increasingly doing jobs where they can work from home for all or some of the time.