The longer the transport transition lasts, the more expensive it becomes: This is the result of a study by Agora Verkehrswende. The organization has compared three scenarios, which provide a clear recommendation for action.
How can Germany achieve the transport transition and how much would this cost? The organization Agora Verkehrswende has created three different scenarios with varying degrees of climate protection measures in the transport sector. The authors compared current transport policy with two alternatives in which investments in climate protection were made earlier and more ambitiously.
If more money were spent on the transport transition in 2025, money could be saved in the future, argues Agora Verkehrswende. From 2030 onwards, the government would have to spend less money on the transport transition than is currently planned for that time, according to the authors of the study. According to a study by Agora Verkehrswende e. V. cost the same as the measures currently planned until 2045.
Agora criticizes current plans
However, if the policy were not changed until 2030, the same emissions savings would be around 500 billion euros more expensive.
With current plans, the transport sector cannot become climate neutral by 2045, according to the authors of the study. Then “greenhouse gas emissions from transport would fall to 111 million tons by 2030 and to around 15 million tons by 2045,” the authors write. This means that transport policy will miss the climate target for the transport sector by 2030. The zero emissions target for 2045 cannot be achieved in this way either.
Agora transport transition
Agora Verkehrswende is a think tank and lobby organization that advocates for climate-neutral mobility. To this end, the organization develops recommendations for action, analyzes and strategies.
Agora Verkehrswende was founded by Stiftung Mercator and the European Climate Foundation. The last available data on the financing of Agora Verkehrswende comes from 2022. Accordingly, the two founding foundations provided 82 percent of the budget. The rest came from the Federal Environment Ministry.
The think tank is closely linked to the sister organizations Agora Energiewende, Agora Industrie and Agora Agrar. Agora Energy Transition and Transport Transition say they are working closely together to “harness synergies between the energy and transport transition.”
Three scenarios – different Cost
The authors of the study arrived at their results because they compared two constructed scenarios with a reference scenario. The reference scenario is based on the plans of real politicians. The scenarios in which more is done for the transport transition in 2025 and 2030 are initially associated with higher investments. A lot of money would be spent in particular on expanding public transport and purchasing electric vehicles.
All three scenarios assume the same amount of mobility. However, depending on the variant, this is distributed differently across the individual modes of transport. Public transport – i.e. bus, train, bicycle and walking traffic – plays a significantly larger role in the 2025 and 2030 scenarios in the long term than in the reference scenario, which is based on real politics. The importance of car traffic will even increase there by 2045.
If the federal government were to let everything continue as before, it would have to spend around 9.7 trillion euros on the transport transition by 2045. This includes indirect costs for climate damage as a result of further CO2 emissions. Despite this amount, it would miss the climate targets in the transport sector by 2045.
“Price is measured in money or greenhouse gases”
“If the federal government were to act according to economic logic, it would have to quickly pull out all the stops when it comes to climate protection in transport,” said Wiebke Zimmer, deputy director of Agora Verkehrswende. “The results of our study are clear. Political hesitation has a price. The price is measured either in money or in greenhouse gases, with all the associated risks.”