An analysis of trends in passenger and freight transport energy consumption in India

This primary objective of this paper is to examine the causes for the change in energy consumption in the transport sector in India. The pattern of energy consumption and their causes for change are benchmarked against select countries. A mathematical model that decomposes changes in energy consumption to various factors has been used. The changes in the energy consumption are attributed to growth in transport volume, structural change or modal shift, and energy intensity. The analysis is conducted for passenger and freight transport separately. Results indicate that the growth in transport volume has been the main cause for increase in energy consumption for both passenger and freight transport in India despite the decline in energy intensity of various transport modes. Though not surprising for a growing economy like India, this poses a challenge for the future. Currently, India is a low carbon economy. However, the choices that the economy is making, as it is growing, are towards energy intensive options particularly in transportation and building sectors. There is a need for policy framework to steer the economy towards making appropriate choices that are environmentally sustainable and also do not jeopardize economic growth aspirations. In case of passenger transport, the trend is comparable with other countries studied in this paper (US, Canada, China, Japan, UK) except France. For freight transport, the contribution of the increase in transport volume to changes in energy consumption is far higher in India than that amongst the countries compared, though all countries except Japan have shown a positive contribution of increase in volume to the changes in energy consumption. The large contribution of the transport volume to the changes in passenger transport energy consumption is due to increasing shift towards personalized modes of transport (such as cars, two wheelers) in India and decrease in passenger occupancy per vehicle. The growth in freight transport energy consumption is a reflection of the high growth of the economy. The problem, however, is that a large part of freight is transported using road unlike that in some other benchmarked countries. Future policies aimed at containing energy consumption in the transport sector would need to focus on the modal structure which would require more use of rail for transportation of freight and public transportation systems for passenger transport. This would, however, require huge inefficiencies to be overcome before consumer choice shifts towards rail or public transportation system. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.