Transport and Sustainability
Introduction
Transport has considerable environmental impacts. It creates problems of urban air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. There is also the problem of determining who is the most important urban road user; the private car, public road transport, or cyclists and pedestrians.
The ultimate energy service provided by transport energy is mobility. However, there is a fundamental issue of whether or not all of the physical movement of people (expressed in passenger-kilometres) is actually necessary. Could those journeys that are necessary be made in less energy and pollution intensive modes?
This course includes a detailed consideration of current transport technologies, starting with petrol and diesel engines, looking at the efforts to reduce their environmental impact since the 1990s. The urgent need to cut global CO2 emissions and to reduce the UK’s reliance on imported oil means that the days of fossil-fuelled vehicles are numbered. One option has been the use of lower-carbon fuels, particularly biofuels, but the future of transport is likely to be electric.
This course explains the technologies of battery-electric hybrid vehicles, full battery electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles, where the electricity is produced from hydrogen fuel. The final section of this course also looks at those transport modes that may be the most difficult to decarbonise – shipping and aviation.
Table 1 provides an overview of the content of this free course.
| Section | Content | What to look out for |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the free course | |
| 1 The transport energy challenge | The wide range of issues that influence transport policy. | Local air pollution, climate change and energy security are all major factors. |
| 2 Transport’s environmental impacts | NOx, particulate and CO2 emissions from transport in the UK. | The large energy consumption and pollution emissions from the transport sector. |
| 3 Is your journey really necessary? | Moving to the most energy efficient and least polluting modes of transport. | The hierarchy of modes of transport. |
| 4 Petrol and diesel engines | How petrol and diesel engines work. Why diesel engines have slightly higher energy efficiency than petrol engines. | The reasons for the shift from petrol to diesel engines. |
| 5 Petrol and diesel emissions | Typical emissions of vehicles under ‘driving cycle’ and real-world conditions; ways to reduce NOx and particulate emissions. | The importance of ‘real world’ emissions testing. The Volkswagen scandal. |
| 6 Lower-carbon fuels | An overview of CNG, LPG and biofuel vehicles. | The differences between types of biofuel. |
| 7 Hybrid and electric vehicles | Information on hybrid and pure electric vehicles, and fuel-cell powered vehicles. | Any type of new technology (fuel or battery driven) requires a properly established supply infrastructure. |
| 8 The path to fully decarbonised transport | Exploring the possibilities for future low carbon transport. | The problem areas of shipping and aviation. |
| Conclusion | A brief summary of the course |
This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course T213 Energy and Sustainability [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .