Analyzing sectoral policies for deep decarbonization: the case of national freight transportation

Abstract

Reaching the Paris Agreement goal requires transformative systemic change in all main emitting sectors of the economy, including freight transport. Nonetheless, current national strategies and efforts to mitigate this sub-sector’s emissions are far from sufficient. This is at least partially due to a mismatch between the required decarbonization transformations and existing policies. This misalignment can be mostly explained by two factors: (1) existing research rarely captures the integrated view of all transformations required to fully decarbonize the sector and instead focuses mostly on technological solutions; (2) current policies do not adequately reflect the complexity of the transformations. Through this research, we developed a novel approach to improve policy analyses and help transport policy planners boost decarbonization ambition and action at national level, based on an innovative analytical structure to gather in-country expert opinions. The framework structures the analysis of policy instruments in the light of all stakeholder-oriented areas of transformations for the sector and associated barriers as well as enablers of sectoral deep decarbonization. This approach was then applied by national research teams in eleven countries: Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, South Africa and the United States to test its use and relevance. This paper introduces this method and presents cross-country comparison results around a specific area of sectoral transformations to illustrate how such an approach can benefit national ambition and action.