According to a new study, a speed limit of 120 kilometers per hour on Germany’s autobahns and autobahn-like roads will save more than twice as much CO2 as previously thought. Such a speed limit could save greenhouse gas emissions of 6.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents, the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) announced on Monday.
This contradicts the argument of Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP), according to which a speed limit would hardly save emissions. Germany is the only country in Europe that does not have a general speed limit on motorways. In the other EU countries, the maximum speed is usually 120 or 130 kilometers per hour. Clearance and the FDP continue to reject such a limit.
2.6 million tons accepted so far
Until now, the Federal Environmental Service assumed that a speed limit would save 2.6 million tons of CO2. According to the authority, the new calculations are based on floating car data for the entire motorway network in Germany and a traffic model for the whole of Germany.
“The higher CO2 savings compared to previous studies are due to the fact that the consumption of the vehicles was determined more accurately and a change in route choice and traffic demand were now also taken into account,” explains the UBA. The calculations also include shifts to other modes of transport, such as rail.
Further savings through additional speed restrictions
According to the study, an additional speed limit of 80 kilometers per hour on non-urban roads would increase the savings potential to eight million tonnes of CO2 equivalents, according to the UBA. By combining both speed limits, greenhouse gas emissions from passenger cars and commercial vehicles in Germany could have been reduced by a total of about five percent in 2018.
If implemented from 2024, Tempo 120 on federal highways and Tempo 80 on non-urban roads could save a total of about 47 million tons of CO2 equivalents by 2030, the UBA calculated. The savings did not solve the climate challenges in transport, “but they are no small matter either,” emphasized UBA president Dirk Messner.
Worth three million electric vehicles
To achieve the same reduction as with the speed limit, three million more pure electric vehicles would have to be on German roads with the average mileage, the UBA chairman explained. If their purchase had been subsidized by the environmental bonus, it would have cost the state more than 13 billion euros.
Messner stressed that the measures taken so far by the federal government are not enough to meet the binding annual targets for traffic under the Climate Protection Act. The annual missed targets in traffic in 2030 amount to 271 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents.
Minister wanted “restraint” from the state
The speed limits “could close this climate protection gap between the currently projected emissions trend and the binding targets by about one-sixth,” the UBA president argued. Wissing had only emphasized in the weekend’s “Bild am Sonntag”: “The speed is the personal responsibility of the citizens, as long as others are not endangered. The state must exercise restraint here.”
Source: Krone
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