How can we Minimize Emissions from Transport?

Can Iceland be a Leading Nation in Sustainable Energy for Transport?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This month, we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty that has successfully halted emissions of ozone-damaging chemicals. The treaty has little to do with transport, but it provides a lesson on science, technology and society that I think is relevant for us today. In short, science told us in the late 20th Century that the ozone layer was in peril, and we needed to stop using certain chemicals in refrigerators, spray-cans and other devices. Soon, a powerful lobby started to argue against international rules to solve the ozone problem, and warned that such rules would bring us a grim future of rotting food and smelly armpits. Now, 20 years later, the Montreal Protocol has largely succeeded in its mission, the ozone layer is on the mend, and refrigerators are humming in kitchens worldwide like never before. What happened? Technology came to the rescue. New ozone-friendly chemicals replaced the old ones, brought from the laboratory to the market with a push from the Montreal Protocol and the regulation and incentives it spurred.

This year, we are presented with a stark warning by the IPCC, a UN science body, telling us that global warming is real, that it is happening right now and about to get much worse unless we halt the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. These emissions are tied to almost all human activity: agriculture, energy, industry and – not least – transport, which is in many countries the sector where emissions are rising fastest. So, can technology once again ride to the rescue? I certainly hope so, and one is bound to feel a certain kind of optimism looking at the agenda of this conference. Speakers will make the case for hydrogen vehicles, methanol, methane and electric cars. My own hybrid Toyota is apparantly yesterday’s news, as the future will bring me a car I can plug in when I come home, along with my mobile phone.

It is clear that the UN Climate Convention and efforts by governments and business has caused a spur in research and development of climate-friendly technology. Governments should not pick winners, but stimulate R&D and create incentives for dissemination of existing low-carbon technologies. The Icelandic government has supported research in hydrogen and other fields, but we need to increase our efforts in this regard, and we need to make emissions control a central objective in our policy of taxing vehicles and fuels.

One hopes that the cars presented here at this conference will help us solve the climate problem. But there is another way to tackle emissions in transport, which is to look at our lifestyle. There are now more passenger cars per capita in Iceland than in the United States. It is difficult, if possible at all, to find a city in Europe where more people commute by car than in Reykjavík. Almost half of the surface area of Reykjavík is used for transport infrastructure. And traffic jams at rush hour are a popular complaint these days in this small northern metropolis.

We can change this. We can walk and bicycle for shorter trips, to no detriment to our health: Indeed, there are few better things we can do to improve our health than to exercise more. We can use public transport more often for commuting. We might even think of designing urban space with people, not steel and chrome, as our core concern.

We should not worship the passenger car, but there is no need to demonize it. It can bring us quickly and efficiently to the places we need or want to be. It is a shelter from the storm in Icelandic winters and a most helpful servant. Icelanders tend to like their cars and the convenience they bring. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. The Earth can not deal with hundreds of millions of new CO2-belching cars in the next decades, but it does desperately need the new exciting technology that is the subject of this conference.

Can Iceland be a leading nation in sustainable energy for transport? Certainly. We already have hydrogen and methane cars on the streets and fuel stations to refill them. We have climate-friendly energy and we have scientists and entrepreneurs who are adamant about advancing clean cutting-edge technology. We can provide carbon-free electricity to the entire car-fleet of the Reykjavík area, if it converted to plug-in hybrid technology and reloaded at night – without having to construct new power plants. Now, there is a beautiful vision for an environment minister.

But Icelanders also have one of the biggest car fleet per capita in the world. We tend to like big cars, even for small chores. We have increased emissions from road transport by some 30% since 1990. We need to make a turn. We need cooperation between government, business and the general public if we are to move Iceland along the road to truly sustainable transport.

For such cooperation we need ideas and a meeting of minds. The organizers of this conference has done an admirable job of bringing green minds and green cars to Iceland. Events such as this are important – they help bring a cleaner future into focus in the eyes of decision-makers, the media and the general public. Let us hope that the gas-guzzler is going the way of the ozone-killing spray can. But let us not just hope. Let us work together to put Iceland in the forefront in the race towards climate-friendly transport.

Thank you,