Carbon Aware Travel CHoice (CATCH)
CATCH is a project that aims to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of the urban transport sector by increasing awareness of the impact of travel behaviours and by demonstrating how behaviours can be changed. Its vision is to create a website that will become the natural place to look for mobility related emission reduction advice and information. |
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The transport sector accounts for 23% of all energy related CO² emissions and is the only sector from which emissions are continuing to increase (IEA, 2009). Urban areas are currently responsible for 67% of international energy use, and this is expected to increase by 73% by 2030 (IEA, 2008). There is therefore the need for concrete strategic actions to be taken at the local level to reduce CO² emissions.
TRL is a core member of the CATCH project team, working with international partners to facilitate such actions in the transport sectors of cities. It aims to do this by creating a website for policy makers, individuals and other city level mobility stakeholders that;
- enhances and increases awareness of the environmental impacts of mobility and potential solutions to their management
- enables individuals to make informed climate-friendly travel choices
- empowers public transport operators, city managers and other mobility stakeholders to more readily and accurately incorporate environmental opportunities and challenges into their planning and innovation processes
- identifies the change in climate-friendly behaviour resulting from the introduction of financial measures or incentives targeted on GHG reduction. These measures might include taxes, user charges, carbon trading schemes, incentive/reward schemes etc)
- links the knowledge platform to fiscal measures provided by taxes, charges and carbon trading schemes to ensure that the combination of such measures and the knowledge platform encourages behavioural change
- ensures that new mechanisms for funding and impact (e.g. carbon offset and trading, clean development mechanism) will be exploited, integrating the global dimension of GHG reduction with individual behavioural change
- enhances the transparency and public understanding of government and corporate climate change policies and thereby increases trust
Please visit the project website www.carbonaware.eu which will evolve over the course of the project.
For more information please contact Anne Binsted (abinsted@trl.co.uk).
