The transportation sector is currently at a juncture characterized by both great opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, the introduction of new technologies, new players and changing customer behaviours provide the sector with the potential to transform as a system, for new business models to develop, and for the different modes to provide more concrete responses to the challenge of environmental sustainability and carbon emissions reductions in the sector. On the other hand, factors such as the current depressed economic climate, scarcity of resources and system inertia inhibit the industry’s ability to respond effi ciently to these opportunities, delaying the introduction of technologies that would enable the transportation sector to reach its  environmental sustainability and carbon emissions reductions targets and its evolution to an innovative system.

Presently, more than 60% of the 87 million barrels of oil consumed every day power the world’s transportation sector, and liquid fossil fuels account for 94% of the energy supply to the sector, as shown in Figure 1. Fossil fuels are expected to remain the primary source of energy in the transportation sector for at least the next two decades: even in the most aggressive scenarios examined in the World Economic Forum’s work on Repowering Transport, 76% of the energy supply to the global transportation sector will be provided by fossil sources in 2030. To be successful in meeting the sector’s carbon emissions reduction targets and contribute to limiting global warming to less than 2°C, the transportation sector cannot continue to develop under a business-as-usual scenario because it implies a continued strong dependence on oil with a low share of renewable energy.
 

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