Project

Cities move to secure climate-neutral transportation

Swiss cities play a crucial role in protecting the climate. Especially, the emissions of the transportation sector can be influenced significantly by cities. EBP, together with the association of Swiss cities (SKM), drafted a study which provides policymakers and administrations with an overview of fields of action towards a sustainable development of this sector.

Although Switzerland’s transportation sector accounts for 32 percent of the country’s carbon emissions, it failed – in contrast to other sectors – in lowering its emissions in the past few years. Cities can accelerate a reduction of greenhouse gases with their traffic and infrastructure management in urban areas. Hence, cities can influence the composition of traffic and its volume not just on a local scale, but on a national one.

Options for reducing transportation-related emissions

On behalf of the SKM, EBP drafted a comprehensive study in order to enable policymakers and administrations to fully exploit their opportunities to reduce emissions in the transportation sector. The study provides a comprehensive overview of climate policy-related fields of action in this sector.

The study identifies a set of elven general approaches and assesses 47 further fields of action. Particularly, it focuses on the impact of potential measures and involved stakeholders.

Incentivizing emissions reduction

Many cities could significantly expand their funding initiatives to reach an emission reduction in the transportation sector. In contrast, further implementations to restrict the use of carbon-emitting vehicles require alterations on the cantonal and the federal level.

The importance of holistic measures

The findings of the study indicate that only implementing the simplest and most inexpensive measures is insufficient to reach the aimed climate-neutrality of the transportation sector in the year 2050. It requires sets of measures, which allow an achievement of the emission reduction goal , while considering every dimension and the effectiveness of the enforced measures must be monitored periodically.

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