Overview

Transport plays a crucial role in European citizens’ daily life. It is a key driver since it both secures the fundamental right to mobility in our modern society and enhances the overall competitiveness of the European economy.

However, transport activities and in particular its continuous growth, have significant environmental impacts. Indeed, transport accounts for:

  • around a third of all final energy consumption in the EU member countries;
  • more than a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions.

This implies that transport produces a serious environmental impact which is further worsened by the intensification of transport volumes: 1.9 % annually for passenger traffic and 2.7 % for freight transport, according to the TREMOVE model. This growth is undermining the positive effects gained by the technological and logistical improvements in energy consumption of the various transport modes.

International Conventions and Protocols (i.e. the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, the EU directive on national emission ceilings and the Kyoto Protocol) require Parties to calculate and declare the levels of atmospheric emissions produced by various sources in their own national territory. Several guidelines have been published in order to help expert panels and reporting agencies to exactly calculate emissions for the various sources and sectors.

Within this scenario, there is a strong need to get access to reliable information to be ready available and also easy to be updated in order to run and maintain transport and environment models developed at European or national level, so to provide with sound solutions at policy-making level.

This is the reason why the overall objectives of the “EX~TREMIS” project are:

  • to provide the most comprehensive database of specific energy consumption, emission factors and total emissions covering the 27 EU Member States for rail, maritime and air transport for the years 1980-2005, together with projections for their development up to 2030;
     
  • to provide a web-based interface to allow public access to the database and the projections.