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Area and context of research
The intended area of research is UK road transport policy as it relates to climate change.Transport policy has a significant role to play in ensuring the UKachieves its targets fortackling climate change. The agreed international target, set by the Kyoto Protocol,requires a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) of 12.5% below 1990
levels by 2008-2012. Further, the UK Climate Change Act (2008) set targets to reduceGHG emissions by 80% by 2050 and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, one of the mainGHGs, by 26% by 2020, again compared to 1990 levels. Budget 2009 introduced the firstcarbon budget and the legally binding target for the reduction in CO2 emissions has been
increased from 26% to 34% by 2020 (HM Treasury, 2009). Road transport is the secondlargest source of CO2 emissions in the UK, accounting for 22.4% of the total in 2007.Research into this sector is particularly important because CO2 emissions from roadtransport are increasing, despite falling total CO2 emissions (Department for Transport,
2009).
Previous studies have considered the effects of road transport policy on congestion andair pollution. Discussion of climate change itself has often been secondary to theseconsiderations. Recently the focus appears to have increasingly been on reducingcongestion alone. The research being proposed will add to our existing knowledge, as it
will focus primarily on the specific climate change effects of transport policy. Theanalysis will contribute to our understanding of the effectiveness of current policymeasures to reduce CO2 emissions from road transport, providing recommendations for
https://www.51lunwen.org/ResearchProposal/future policy decisions in this area.
Key Literature
Potter and Parkhurst’s (2005) article on transport policy and transport tax reform providesa comprehensive overview of key issues pertaining to the research topic. They consider a
range of policies that have been both proposed and used to deal with the goals of raisingrevenue, discouraging growth in car use and promoting the purchase of more fuelefficient, and thus cleaner, cars. Consideration of two main sets offactors is offered. The
first of these is factors which have led to increased car use. These factors includedecreasing costs associated with car use and increasing costs of public transport. Thisunderlines the importance of establishing effective means of reducingcar use andtherefore CO2 emissions. The second area is political issues relating to transport policy.
For example, the fuel protests of 2000 exemplify the direct relationship between politicalactivism and government policy. They consider the impact that political pressures havehad on transport policy and its change in focus towards reducing congestion, with
detailed discussion of a national road pricing scheme aimed at dealing with this issue.
Their conclusion is relevant to the research topic as they identify the risk that moving
away from vehicle based taxes toward road pricing poses to achieving a reduction in
emissions.
A further article that can be drawn upon for research into this area is Owens’ (1995)
article on pricing and planning in transport policy. Owens considers the economic theory
underlying transport policy and how the external costs that are ignored by individual
rational consumers result in an outcome that is not optimal for society. Continuing on
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