English cars vs Dutch bikes: an international comparison of the

energy costs of commuting

RGS-IBG

28th August 2013

Robin Lovelace

Background• Peak oil, obesity, climate change, recession• Energy: 'master resource', affects all

Energy use transport: fundamentals

• It's "nature's money"• Various ways of measuring it• Direct (fuel) and indirect: fuel, vehicle and road

construction (Lovelace, 2011)• Average per unit distance - refine after 1 estimate

Data and methods• Dutch data taken from Statistics

Netherlands and English data from Casweb: official data

• Method uses estimates of vehicle energy use per km (Fels, 1975)

• All analysis + visualisation in R• E = distance * efficiency * number• 'Best estimates' (MacKay, 2009)• Result reproducible: RPubs

documents + uploaded .zip folder• RMarkdown runs code 'live'

England vs the NetherlandsAttribute England Netherlands Units

Population density 407 406 ppl/km2

GDP 50,000 46,000 $/capita

Income inequality 34 (UK) 31 Gini Index

Wellbeing 0.875 (UK) 0.921 UN HDI

Sources: UN Economic Commission for Europe, CIA Factbook, World Bank

National-level comparisons

Average energy costs per one way trip to work in English regions (2001) and Dutch provinces (2010)

Headline figures

• The average commute is more energy intensive in NL

• By 10%: 34 MJ/trip in England vs 38

MJ/trip in the Netherlands

• Southern English regions (except London) have higher populations and energy use

• Populous and urbanised NL provinces: lower energy use

Explanation I - mode

Explanation II - Distance

• Average distance in UK: 14.8 km • Netherlands average: 17.7 km • NL distance: 27% further

Explanation III - Infrastructure

~2600 km of motorways in NL, ~3700 km EN (Eurostat, 2013): around 150 km vs 70 km per million people: more than double!

Credit: pricetags blog

Credit: Michelin

Data inconsistencies and caveats

• 2001 vs 2010 data • NL data highly aggregated, percentages and

averages• EN data provides actual counts, high spatial

resolution available, but distance not yet available in 2011 Census

• Euclidean vs route distances are an issue• Assume same car fleet efficiencies • Best approximation (MacKay 2009), not 'final

answer'

Scales of analysis

Regional scale misses complexity of pattern

NL data not available on this: no census

Same spatial patterns across countries?

Distance changes over time (EN)

Shifted very little since 2001 (DfT, 2011).

Conclusions

• Higher energy use in Netherlands for commuting is unexpected

• 'Good' transport policies do not automatically prevent 'bad' outcomes

• Links with 'green bling' effect of renewables

• Are bicycles a diversion?• Sustainable transport policy should be

'joined up'

Key references• Defra (2012). 2012 Guidelines to Defra / DECC’s GHG Conversion

Factors for Company Reporting: Methodology Paper • DfT. (2011). Commuting and business travel factsheet tables.• Dropbox .zip folder with all code + data for reproducible results and

feedback• Fels, M. F. (1975). Comparative energy costs of urban

transportation systems. Transportation Research, 9(5), 297–308.• Lovelace, R. et al. (2011). Assessing the energy implications of

replacing car trips with bicycle trips in Sheffield, UK. Energy Policy, 39(4)

• MacKay, D. (2009) Sustainable energy without the hot air. UIT Press. (Entirely free online).

• robinlovelace on RPubs: reproducible code and output for EN, NL and compared

Contact me: rob00x-at-gmail.com, youtube.com/robinlovelace, robinlovelace.wordpress.com

Input energy use data: "Something we prepared earlier"

Direct and indirect costs of different transport modes. Direct energy costs from Defra (2012). Indirect energy costs calculated from a variety of sources.

Mode shifts in short term (EN) (DfT 2011)

Habitual behaviour linked to housing, high intertia to change (Understanding Society dataset)