Energy futures for the US transport sector

This paper explores how advanced transportation technologies and alternativ e fuels, together with policies aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions and energy use, can help address the energy challenges facing the US transporta tion system over the coming decades. Three scenarios of future transportati on energy use are constructed to represent alternative views of the urgency with which the federal government and the American people will view these challenges, and the policy interventions they will seek. The analysis concl udes, first, that US transportation energy use and greenhouse emissions wil l increase virtually unchecked without policy intervention or unforeseen la rge, long-lasting fuel price increases, and second, that policies that stim ulate technology development and deployment can substantially slow this gro wth-though not without a considerable time lag due to the slow turnover of the vehicle fleet and limits on the rate of technology development and depl oyment. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.