Abstract |
The transport sector remains at the centre of any debates around energy conservation, exaggerated by the stubborn and overwhelming reliance on fossil fuels by its motorised forms, whether passenger and freight, road, rail, sea and air. The very slow transition to alternative fuel sources to date has resulted in this sector being increasingly and convincingly held responsible for the likely failure of individual countries, including the UK, to meet their obligations under consecutive international climate change agreements. Electrification of transport is largely expected to take us down the path to a zero carbon future (CCC, 2019; DfT, 2018). But there are serious concerns about future technology performance, availability, costs and uptake by consumers and businesses. There are also concerns about the increasing gap between lab and real world performance of energy use, carbon and air pollution emissions. Recently, the role of consumer lifestyles has increased in prominence (e.g. IPCC, 2018) but, as yet, has not been taken seriously by the DfT, BEIS or even the CCC (2019). Societal energy consumption and pollutant emissions from transport are not only influenced by technical efficiency, mode choice and the pollutant content of energy, but also by lifestyle choices and socio-cultural factors. However, only a few attempts have been made to integrate all of these insights intosystems models of futuretransport energy demand and supply (Creutzig et al., 2018) or narratives of low carbon transport futures (Creutzig, 2015). Developed under the auspices of UKERC the Transport Energy Air pollution Model (TEAM) has been designed to address these concerns and uncertainties in exploring pertinent questions on the transition to a zero carbon and clean air transportation future. TEAM is a strategic transport, energy, emissions and environmental impacts systems model, covering a range of transport-energy-environment issues from socio-economic and policy influences on energy demand reduction through to lifecycle carbon and local air pollutant emissions and external costs. TEAM is a major update of UK Transport Carbon Model of 2010. To use the updated model for research purposes, please contact Christian Brand, noting that due to its size (the complete suite of modelling databases uses about 500MB of storage space) the model can only be made available by request. |