Photo credit:
PRA, Wikimedia Commons
The phrase "transport emissions" refers to the idea that anything transported, whether it's food, raw materials for manufacture, finished manufactured products, or waste, has a cost expressed in terms of CO2 emissions. In other words, anything not grown, harvested, and/or manufactured within a particular local area has a cost to the environment in greenhouse gas emissions.
Transport emissions are typically not factored into the total cost of an item requiring transport. The Environmental Protection Agency has developed and compiled an extensive list of computer-generated models computing transport emissions.
A UK survey of greenhouse gas emissions from the road freight industry reveals a nearly 50% increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the period 1990-2002, and an 85% in emissions from the air transport industry. Neither international shipping nor international aviation is covered by the Kyoto Protocol today. A 2008 CICERO study suggests that the long term effects on global climate change are much greater from road transport than from air.
A 2003 report prepared by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change revealed that in the US, a third of greenhouse gas emissions comes from transportation.
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