EU’s Impact on Local Sustainability

The first steps towards a greener Europe

Over the last decades, Europe has been making great progress in optimising the transport sector. In fact, funding was made available to local companies to improve the sustainability of aircrafts, cars and other means of transportation and to municipalities, who are responsible for the environmental impact of the road network in cities. Despite this, many pressing problems still remain and governments are adopting contrasting measures in regards to atmospheric and noise pollution, road congestion and safety.

On the Italian roads we see more and more innovative vehicles. If before people would be very enthusiastic to see a Cinquecento, now it is exciting to see an electric vehicle or the latest generation bicycle. From this point of view, our country is making great progress. It is not only the design that determines the originality of these vehicles, but, above all, the lower environmental impact. Electric cars pollute less both from an environmental and acoustic point of view benefitting large Italian cities, where these problems are well known.

Even the European Commission, in 2011, intervened with international standards aimed at limiting this kind of inconvenience. Specific transport policy objectives were adopted with the White Paper “Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area — towards a competitive and resource efficient transport policy”. Within the White Paper, the complex objective of increasing mobility by reducing emissions is pursued through a wide-ranging strategy with a long time horizon. The goal is to achieve a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.

The document also suggests how these macro-objectives can be achieved by reaching a few important milestones. These include:

• halving the use of cars with internal combustion engine in cities by 2030;
• encouraging most people to use trains for medium-distance trips within 2050;
• increasing the use of low emission fuels in aviation;
• ensuring a 40–50% reduction is CO2 emissions resulting from maritime transportation.

In the transport sector, diesel fuel is what we consume most and which, however, is not entirely sustainable due to its greenhouse gas emissions. Their increasing concentration in the atmosphere causes significant changes in global temperatures and the earth’s climate, as well as potential damage to ecosystems, human settlements, agriculture and socio-economic activities. On the bright side, total national greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 17.4% from 1990 to 2017. The reduction began between 2005 and 2010 and continued further until 2017. The transport sector is the most responsible for the remaining emissions. For example, data shows that in Italian cities cars, motorcycles and freight vehicles are the most harmful to the atmosphere.

Among the consequences of urban air pollution there is also a strong impact on people’s health. According to ISPRA data, 3500 citizens died in 1998, about 3600 were hospitalised for respiratory or cardiovascular disorders and more than 31000 children were diagnosed with acute bronchitis as a consequence of air contamination. The same study shed light also on noise pollution, associating it to a series of auditory and attention conditions.

The problem becomes even worse in big cities like Milan, where carbon dioxide emissions and noise levels exceed the national average. On the other hand, Milan is in the top 5 of Italian cities for the greatest number of trips by bicycle but also by electric vehicles. Padova remains unbeatable, the winning city of the eleventh edition of the Giretto d’Italia — bike to work 2021 organised by Legambiente with the collaboration of CNH Industrial, Euromobility and VeloLove. On the podium, Padova was followed by Reggio Emilia, Bolzano, Pesaro and Piacenza, while Rome did not perform very well.

According to the study by the National Sharing Mobility Observatory in large Italian cities, one in three shared vehicles is an electric scooter. In total, in our country there are about 140 thousand and they are available to citizens. Rimini is nominated for four consecutive years as the “Cycle Municipality” because it is the city with the largest number of scooters. The many infrastructural investments that the city is carrying out to promote cycling and more generally sustainable mobility have reached excellent levels improving the possibilities and quality of transportation for residents and tourists.

To optimise the convenience of moving on electric vehicles, the municipalities are working towards the construction of cycle paths. Because these increase road safety and make it possible to drive such vehicles in multiple city districts. The demand from the municipalities, for the construction of infrastructures for bicycles or other vehicles, is concentrated in a few points:

• the organisation of campaigns to promote the use of bicycles in the city;
• the implementation in schools of road safety education and sustainable mobility projects;
• actions for the development of the use of bicycles in home-school journeys.

The division into categories of cycle paths is of fundamental importance: the local urban system with routes along the roads for access to the residence or to the services; a main urban system for the purpose of connecting urban centres and services; an extra-urban system dedicated to sporting-recreational itineraries.

The presentation of projects and the constant funding are determining the growth of paths suitable for electric bikes and scooters which are of fundamental importance in our country and for which the citizens are already showing great support. In fact, more and more people are using low environmental impact vehicles. It is clear that there is still much room for improvement, but we are definitely moving the first steps towards a greener Europe.

by Aleksandr Gubochkin