EEG is partnering with the High Volume Transport (HVT) applied research programme to conduct scoping studies on low-carbon transport systems with national policy makers in a range of lower- and lower-middle income countries (LICs and LMICs).

HVT is a five-year programme, also funded by DFID, which aims to generate evidence on the roles that different forms of high-volume transport play in promoting growth in LICs across Africa and South Asia.

Transportation accounts for about 20% of world CO2 emissions, around 60% of all global oil consumption, and around 27% of all energy use. While it has taken 100 years for the world to reach one billion cars, with increasing annual new sales it is expected to take just 11 years to increase to two billion (2030). Some estimate 127m new cars per year at 2035. Currently, the majority (56%) of the world’s motorised vehicles are owned by non-OECD countries, a figure that is likely to increase.

Mature economies’ attempts to decarbonise are leading to a land transport transformation. New fuels are replacing hydrocarbon-based fuels, with mobility and freight moving towards electricity, hydrogen, hybrids or other cleaner fuels, and rail and maritime also adapting.

The purpose of the new EEG and HVT scoping studies is to improve understanding of what LICs and LMICs are thinking about in terms of the implications and opportunities of these changes and to see where applied research into key opportunities and critical barriers of the transition to low-carbon transport would be welcomed.

For example, the potential impact on planning assumptions for energy and urban expansion, or learnings from other system transformations where uncertainty levels are very high and infrastructure investments are at risk of becoming inadequate or redundant.

The scopings will either be standalone or will be carried out in conjunction with scoping studies into the research questions on large-scale energy infrastructure. The focus will be primarily on national policy makers and other stakeholders in the transport sector (including vehicle manufacturers and importers, public transport operators, freight transporters, fuel suppliers, public and private providers and operators of related infrastructure such as road, rail and power, national and international financial institutions and development agencies, and academic institutions with active research in these areas).

The findings of these studies will be used to inform DFID’s thinking about future applied research programmes in this subject area.