Driving transport towards clean air in Europe

A new study, commissioned by The Transport Alliance for Clean Air (TACA),  looks at how transport in Europe needs to change in order to meet the new European air quality standards for NO2 and PM2.5 in 2030, and the WHO recommended concentrations for 2040.

European air quality standards for 2023:

• NO2: 20µg/m³
• PM2.5 10µg/m³ 

WHO recommended concentrations for 2040:

• NO2: 10µg/m³
• PM2.5: 5µg/m³

TACA – a group of companies and associations from the transport and mobility space, which includes Cycling Industry Europe, Decathlon, Micromobility for Europe, Ingka IKEA and Uber – believes that tackling air pollution should be driven by the private sector helping authorities to strengthen controls over transport emissions.

The study modelled a variety of future scenarios for five cities: Paris, Milan, Warsaw and two ‘synthetic’ cities representing typical large cities, one in western European and one in the east.

Four packages of transport measures – or pathways – were modelled for this study, each one with a slightly different focus and ambition level:

1. ICE Update – focuses on upgrading the Internal Combustion Engine fleet to the latest Euro standards for light- and heavy-duty vehicles, without relying on an accelerated uptake of EVs.
2. Accelerated EV –  focuses on upgrading parts of the ICE fleet to EVs. 
3. Alternative Modes – focuses on reducing trips made in passenger cars and vans. For passenger cars, trips are transferred to car sharing, active and public transport, and to a set of vehicles collectively described as ‘electric light mobility’.
4. Going Further – combines the measures from all of the above.

It was found that achieving targets for NO2 would take less intervention than that of PM2.5. Any one of the above interventions would see EU limit values and WHO guidelines for NO2 being met in 2030 and 2040.

PM2.5, however, is more challenging, requiring the more ambitious transport measures in ‘Going Further’, including a reduction of traffic levels of between 10% to 50%, depending on the city. 

The study provides four recommendations of how policy should be focussed to meet the PM2.5 targets:

1. Low-emission zones should be designed to phase out diesel and older ICE vehicles from 2030 and only allow the circulation of EVs and Euro VI trucks by 2040.
2. Scrappage schemes are needed to accelerate the transition to EVs.
3. Limited traffic zones need to be rolled out in large cities to reduce car and traffic levels by 25 to 50% for cars and by 5 to 25% for vans depending on the cities and the years, targeting transit trips in priority.
4. Public transport and shared and active mobility need to replace 25% of car journeys by 2030 and 50% by 2040. For vans these figures are 5% and 25% respectively. This will mean the reallocation of road space to facilitate transport modes other than cars.

The full research can be read here.

Photo: Vitali Adutskevich