Drivers of transport consumption

  • Increasing consumption of transport since 2000 by 35 Mtoe at EU level.
  • Change in traffic of passenger and goods ("activity effect") contributed to increase the energy consumption (by 80 Mtoe).
  • This effect was counterbalanced by energy savings (i.e. change in the efficiency of cars, trucks, airplanes, etc.) which contributed to decrease the energy consumption by around 50 Mtoe.
  • Few impact of modal shift, i.e. change in the share of each transport mode in the total traffic (decrease of 4 Mtoe).
  • Other effects (behavioral effects and "negative savings" in freight transport due to low capacity utilization) has also a very limited impact and slightly increase the energy consumption (by 2 Mtoe).

Drivers of energy consumption variation in transport at EU level