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Your choice of transport affect everybody

Transport represents one of the most polluting sectors and it is responsible for almost 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. GHG emissions from the sector have more than doubled since 1970, reaching almost 7 Gigatonnes CO2 equivalent, and freight counts as 17% of it. According to the latest IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel for climate change) report, the amount of transport emissions is destinated to increase in the next decades due to the growth of freight activities. In fact, despite the introduction of more efficient means of transportation and new policies, an increase in GHG emissions has still been observed because there has been an increase in general consumption.

A greenhouse gas is a gas that absorbs and traps heat in the atmosphere contributing to the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is a natural process that has been altered by human activities in the last decades causing an increase of about 1.0°C of average global temperature compared to pre-industrial levels. The principal contributors of CO2 produced by human activities come from the combustion of fossil fuels where the energy, transportation, and industry sectors are the main emitters.

Air freight represents the most polluting means of transportation while rails and ships are the most “environmentally friendly”. Even though ships represents the less polluting system of transport it still contributes to about 2-3% of the total GHG emission which is an equivalent to 796 million tonnes a year. This amount of emissions is the same as Germany’s total CO2 pollution.

The figure below shows an example of the carbon footprint of the transportation of 1 ton of cargo from Coral Springs in Miami, USA to Lyngby, Denmark. The calculation compares the variations in CO2 equivalent emission between land and air freight and land and water freight.