Sustainability performance assessment of the transport sector in European countries

Abstract

The transport sector plays a fundamental role in the European Union economy and its efficiency is fundamental to strengthen the region's environmental and economic performance. Unfortunately, the sector still remains heavily dependent on oil resources and is responsible for a large part of the air pollution. The European Union has been promoting various initiatives towards sustainable transport development by setting targets in the sector such as the ones proposed in the 2011 White Paper on transport. Under this context, this study aims at evaluating the environmental performance of the transport sector in 28 European Union countries, from 2015 to 2018, towards the policy agenda established in the strategic documents. The assessment of the transport environmental performance is made through the aggregation of seven sub-indicators into a composite indicator using a Data Envelopment Analysis technique. A variant of the Benefit of the Doubt model is used to determine the weights to aggregate the sub-indicators. The results obtained indicate that the European Union countries have been improving their transport environmental performance in the last two years of the time span under analysis, i.e., 2017 and 2018. Regarding the inefficient countries, results suggest they should improve the transport sustainability mainly by drastically reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-based propulsion, increasing the share of freight transport using rail and inland waterways and also the share of transport energy from renewable sources.

Sustainable Transport in the European Union: Exploring the Net-Zero Transition through Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Gaussian Graphical Modeling

“…Transport sustainability across the 28 EU countries was assessed, by [22], through a composite index obtained from the aggregation of seven sub-indicators corresponding to the environmental dimension. The analysis carried out through DEA and the Benefit of the Doubt model covered the period 2015-2018 and showed an improvement in environmental performance by the end of the time frame (12 efficient units targeting 6 countries and their environmental performance in different years) [22].…”

“…Interest in assessing the sustainability of the transport sector has constantly increased over the past decade, this interest being even higher, at the EU level, as sustainability allows monitoring progress in achieving climate targets [22]. To address this challenge, many studies have approached the sustainability of transport modes in relation to its economic, environmental and social dimensions [3,23]; other papers have included additional dimensions of sustainability, related to political and spatial issues [24,25] or technology aspects [26]; meanwhile, some studies have focused exclusively on its social and environmental pillars [22,27]. With the concept of sustainable development at its core, most commonly in line with the definition of the Brundland Commission report in 1987 [28], a "special attention has been paid to sustainable transport" [29] (p. 1).…”

“…Taking into consideration its different dimensions, the progress of transport sustainability has been assessed, from a systemic perspective, through a collection of indicators [3,23] or a composite index [22,29], while another part of the literature has focused on transport emissions as the core of sustainability and investigated the influence exerted on gas emissions by different determinants, such as policies, environmental technologies, value-added and infrastructure investments [30], energy efficiency and decarbonization policies [7], innovations in transport, green taxes and trade globalization [31], GDP, environmental technologies and renewable energy [32]; and economic growth, energy consumption and urbanization [33]. It should be noted that previous studies have approached transport sustainability in a predominantly classical manner, with investigations aimed at identifying appropriate measures for monitoring and improving transport performance [3,22,23,29] or at quantifying the isolated influence of different factors on transport emissions [7,[30][31][32][33].…”

Study on Transportation Logistics Industry development under economics: The case of HCM, Vietnam

“…European Union countries have been improving their Transportation Logistics environmental performance between 2017 and 2018. For less efficient countries, improving Transportation Logistics sustainability is achieved mainly by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-powered engines, increasing the share of freight transport by rail and inland waterways as well as the share of transport energy from renewable sources [21]. Transportation Logistics has a positive effect on business enterprise activities in the Mekong Delta region.…”

Assessing the Impacts of Electric Vehicle Penetration in Curaçao’s Power Network

“…The exhaust emissions from CEVs have been linked to a range of health and environmental problems [1]. According to [2], a report conducted by the European Union as of 2022, 76.7% of CO 2 emissions are caused by road transportation; of this portion, 59.5% of the total road CO 2 emissions are caused by cars, and this sector is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels [3]. This is one of the reasons that led to an increase in the popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) in recent years, even leading some CEVs manufacturers to produce and promote them.…”