Commitment of governments and companies to low-carbon mobility

The Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI, i.e. Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales) is an independent leading research institute regarding sustainable development governance. Its main missions centre on identifying the conditions and proposing tools to put sustainable development at the heart of international relations and public and private policies.

In 2014, the transport sector represented 23% of all energy-related global greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2015, States have committed, according to the Paris Agreement, to limit global increase in temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century compared to pre-industrial levels, to pursue every effort not to even limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and to aim for carbon neutrality in the second half of the 21st century. Achieving these goals requires significant reduction of transport-related emissions.

The Michelin Corporate Foundation decided to be a partner in IDDRI’s work to develop and implement an innovative approach to scenario design in several countries with a view to thinking about mobility transition in a decarbonised and resilient economy. The purpose of this work is to help pointing out ambitious transport-related national strategies by identifying the physical transformations needed to accelerate the transition.

Within its research community network created as part of the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, four international teams in Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and France have already implemented this approach by conducting studies on passenger mobility decarbonisation that is compatible with their national development objectives and the Paris Agreement (“Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project”). First results of this work were thus issued and presented at COP23 in November 2017; they generated considerable interest, ahead of the forthcoming new Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) that all States, Parties to the Paris Agreement, must submit by 2020 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

As part of its “Deep Decarbonization Pathways” initiative, IDDRI has partnered with other complementary international initiatives to encourage countries, cities and companies to use their methodologies and tools: the “Paris Process on Mobility and Climate (PPMC)”, the “Decarbonising Transport” initiative of the OECD International Transport Forum, the WBCSD “Sustainable Urban Mobility” initiative, and the “Science Based Targets” initiative. The “Deep Decarbonization Pathways Tool”, a mobility transition simulation tool, was thus presented for the first time at Movin’On in June 2018 in Montreal.