Reducing the climate impact of transport - technologies and policies for road transport

Assessing impacts of policies and strategies to reduce CO2 emissions from road transport requires an integrated modeling approach. System Dynamics suits perfectly as methodology to simulate the dynamics determined by feedbacks between transport, energy, economic and environmental systems. The ASTRA model incorporates these capabilities. The paper at hand describes the structure and the dynamics of the ASTRA model and zooms into the vehicle fleet model. The dynamics considered in the technological diffusion model is explained in detail. The novelty is the explicit feedback modeling between diffusion and sales of certain technologies and their costs, when the costs move down the learning curve. Finally, the paper presents a set of different scenarios which should create a common understanding on the complexity of the transport and energy system and the potential contribution of policies and technologies to reduce the carbon footprint of car transport.