Modelling Malta’s road transport system to evaluate carbon dioxide emissions and the biofuel potential : a tool for policy-making

Abstract

The Maltese road transport sector accounts for a significant part of Malta’s annual CO2 emissions. Like all EU member states, Malta has a number of obligations emanating from the 2020 Climate and Energy Package, including a target of 10% renewable energy (RE) share in transport [1] as well as a ceiling of +5% GHG emissions by 2020 (reference 2005) for sectors covered by the effort sharing decision (ESD) [2]. In order to assess which policy measures are best suited to enable Malta to meet these targets a model was devised which projects future fuel demand to determine the amount of CO2 released as well as the quantity of biofuel necessary to meet the RE target. The aim of this study was to analyse the parameters which determine fuel consumption by road transport in Malta with particular focus on private road transport, and integrate these in a model to project the fuel energy consumption and associated CO2 released by this sector in 2020. The study then superimposes the effect of biofuel blending on the net CO2 inventory for passenger cars and concludes that even if the average passenger transport demand keeps growing at a rate of 1.97% per year (average for 2005-2011), the net CO2 emissions by this sector would still fall below their 2011 levels under all six scenarios.