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Business & Economics

Assessment of Road Transport Technologies Based on GHG Emission Reduction Potential and Costs
Dalia Streimikiene

ABSTRACTThe aim of the paper is to assess energy technologies in road transport sector based on costs and impact on climate change and to indicate the most competitive transport technologies taking into account international post-Kyoto climate change mitigation policies into account. The main tasks of the paper are: to develop the multi–criteria framework for comparative assessment of energy technologies in road transport and to apply MCDM methods for the transport technologies assessment. The interval TOPSIS method is employed in order to tackle the uncertain criteria. The assessment framework allows comparing road transport technologies in terms of their environmental and economic impacts and facilitates decision making process in transport sector. The main indicators selected for technologies assessment are: private costs and life cycle GHG emissions. The ranking of road transport technologies based on private costs and GHG emissions allowed prioritizingthese technologies thus mitigating GHG emissions at the lowest costs. However the extent, capacity, and quality of road infrastructure affects the overall level of transportation activity, which in turn affects how much energy is consumed by vehicles and the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted. The paper presents the impact of transportation infrastructure on GHG emissions from road vehicles and policy implications of performed assessment.

KEYWORDS: road transport, fuel, energy, GHG, MCDM, uncertainty.

JEL classification: Q01, Q48, Q51, Q28, Q44.