News I Envision 2050: The Future of Transportation -Dr. Feng An: Oil Eliminated (iCET’s interview with ENSIA)
iCET President Dr.An recently took an interview with ENSIA and talked about China's transportation in 2050.
China's 2050 transportation will have zero tailpipe emissions and be composed of mainly unmanned connected cars. Social status and private mobility will be decoupled, allowing on-demand car sharing and carpooling to dominate private urban commutes. Individuals will be able to quickly order vehicles fitted to their commutes, resulting in limited need for urban parking spaces and blurring the distinction between public and private transport. In between cities, commuter and freight transport will rely mainly on new-energy-powered fast trains and bio-powered airships. International water freight will be dominated by high-speed ships powered through in-seas energy storage stations utilizing wave and solar energy.
This vision embodies China's major policy drivers today: reduce oil dependency, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality while maintaining social stability. Decision makers in China would like to see China’s transport oil consumption eliminated, reduce life-cycle carbon dioxide emissions per unit of distance by 85 percent, and curb inner-city PM2.5 air pollution to zero. Because China’s authorities hold enough regulatory and financial power to ensure market commitment to their directed goals, top-down approaches are of imminent importance.
In order to internalize the vision, national and local policy makers would: 1) steer industrial development, mainly by creating stringent standards and requirements that slowly eliminate combustion-engine-type vehicles’ profitability; 2) allocate and direct financial investments toward new-energy solutions, including global financial mechanisms and investments; and 3) carefully plan cities so that the daily average commute will be reduced to some 2 kilometers. Policy makers would require tailored tools based on global best practices, such as city transport emissions planning tool kits, information disclosure platforms that would reflect market implementation, clear and strict enforcement mechanisms, local pilots for evaluating new schemes and solutions, and cross-sector and multi-stakeholder workshops and roundtables in which problems could be raised and promptly addressed for ensuring smooth development.
Read the full story: http://ensia.com/features/envision-2050-the-future-of-transportation/