Abatement costs for carbon dioxide reductions in the transport sector

In the process of developing policy instruments to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) it is important to know the abatement costs. The purpose of this report is to examine the abatement costs for measures that reduce the emissions of fossil carbon dioxide from the transport sector. Interviews were made with Swedish companies that may affect these emissions. Six measure categories have been examined. Only measures that the companies have implemented or are planning to implement are included in the study. The data provided by the companies have formed the basis for calculations of abatement costs and reduction potentials. The abatement costs and reduction potentials depend to a large extent on the assumed fuel prices and emission factors. Fuel prices including taxes (but excluding VAT ) and emission factors based on LCA -data from literature are used in the report. A sensitivity analysis with other fuel prices and emission factors, reflecting the importance of these input parameters, has been performed. In this study abatement costs for 26 carbon dioxide reducing measures, grouped into six different categories, have been calculated. The majority of the measures are included in the categories 'investment in new vehicles' and 'ecodriving'. The overall result shows that efficiency measures are cheaper than fuel-shift measures. The cheapest fuel-shift measure (low blending of bio fuels) has a negative cost (about -1500 SEK / ton CO2) when taxes are included, while most other fuel-shift measures are considerably more expensive. Most efficiency measures had abatement costs far below 0 SEK / ton CO2. The abatement costs for fuel-shift measures are much higher in the transport sector than in the energy sector, under comparable circumstances. No national reduction potentials have been calculated for the measures in this study, neither has any MAC -curves been constructed. This was not in the scope of this study. Further studies are recommended to include these aspects, preferably based on the measures in this report. In addition to descriptions of abatement costs, descriptions of the road transport categories and the measures provide valuable insights into the transport sector. The differences between the road transport categories, e.g. between road freight transport and buses, provide different possibilities to implement carbon dioxide reducing measures.

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