Transport: Evolving EU policy towards a ‘hard-to-abate’ sector

Transport has been dependent on fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The growth in traffic, especially due to EU liberalisation, has led to increased air pollution. although the EU has adopted different market-based mechanisms to reduce negative environmental externalities from transport continued transport growth has eliminated the effect of these policy measures. Thus, transport represents an acute challenge for the EU if it is to meeting its 2050 climate goals. The different transport modes face different challenges and some transport modes like road and rail are closer to meeting the targets compared to aviation and waterborne transport. Overall, this chapter identifies the key challenges in decarbonising transport by emphasising the deeply embedded path dependencies in the fossil fuel infrastructure that surround all transport modes and analyses the role of actors, both policy-makers and external stakeholders, in creating a new low carbon path for EU transport policy.