Analyzing sectoral policies for deep decarbonization: the case of national freight transportation

Reaching the Paris Agreement goal requires transformative systemic change in all main emitting sectors of the economy, including freight transport. Nonetheless, current national strategies and efforts to mitigate this sub-sector's emissions are far from sufficient. This is at least partially due to a mismatch between the required decarbonization transformations and existing policies. This misalignment can be mostly explained by two factors: (1) existing research rarely captures the integrated view of all transformations required to fully decarbonize the sector and instead focuses mostly on technological solutions; (2) current policies do not adequately reflect the complexity of the transformations. Through this research, we developed a novel approach to improve policy analyses and help transport policy planners boost decarbonization ambition and action at national level, based on an innovative analytical structure to gather in-country expert opinions. The framework structures the analysis of policy instruments in the light of all stakeholder-oriented areas of transformations for the sector and associated barriers as well as enablers of sectoral deep decarbonization. This approach was then applied by national research teams in eleven countries: Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, South Africa and the United States to test its use and relevance. This paper introduces this method and presents cross-country comparison results around a specific area of sectoral transformations to illustrate how such an approach can benefit national ambition and action.

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Publication Details

Journal
Climate Policy
Published
2025-04-08
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2025.2485192
Citations
2
Primary Topic
Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.73

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article

Analyzing sectoral policies for deep decarbonization: the case of national freight transportation

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2 citations
Climate Policy
Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies
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Analyzing sectoral policies for deep decarbonization: the case of national freight transportation

Ryna Cui, Mark Gjerek, Alicia Zhao, Harro van Asselt, Amin Hassani, George Vasconcelos Góes, Sidsel Ahlmann Jensen, Rico Merkert, Jordi Tovilla, Márcio de Almeida D’Agosto, Catherine Hall, Ricardo Delgado Cadena, Daniel Neves Schmitz Gonçalves, Hilton Trollip, Nnaemeka Vincent Emodi, Henri Waisman, Yann Briand, Dipti Gupta, Frederic Rudolph, T. K. Hernández, Maria Rosa Munoz, Lauren Harry-Villain
article en
2 citations

Abstract

Reaching the Paris Agreement goal requires transformative systemic change in all main emitting sectors of the economy, including freight transport. Nonetheless, current national strategies and efforts to mitigate this sub-sector's emissions are far from sufficient. This is at least partially due to a mismatch between the required decarbonization transformations and existing policies. This misalignment can be mostly explained by two factors: (1) existing research rarely captures the integrated view of all transformations required to fully decarbonize the sector and instead focuses mostly on technological solutions; (2) current policies do not adequately reflect the complexity of the transformations. Through this research, we developed a novel approach to improve policy analyses and help transport policy planners boost decarbonization ambition and action at national level, based on an innovative analytical structure to gather in-country expert opinions. The framework structures the analysis of policy instruments in the light of all stakeholder-oriented areas of transformations for the sector and associated barriers as well as enablers of sectoral deep decarbonization. This approach was then applied by national research teams in eleven countries: Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, South Africa and the United States to test its use and relevance. This paper introduces this method and presents cross-country comparison results around a specific area of sectoral transformations to illustrate how such an approach can benefit national ambition and action.

Climate Policy
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (BR), The University of Sydney (AU), Sharif University of Technology (IR), University of Cape Town (ZA), The University of Queensland (AU), University of Eastern Finland (FI), Universidad de Los Andes (VE), Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (FR), Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy (DE), Finland University (FI), Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales (FR), University of Maryland, College Park (US), Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IN)
Agence Nationale de la Recherche, Horizon 2020
Decent work and economic growth
Openalex Percentile: Top 32%
Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies
0.73
DOISourceOpenAlex
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