With COVID-19 bringing the world to a halt for a couple of months, it provided only a temporary relief to the accumulation of CO2 levels.
Transportation is considered to be one of the biggest sources of air pollution, particularly carbon emissions, and the global lockdowns and reduction in mass commuting have shown us what cities and towns can look like with reduced traffic.
COVID-19 should serve as a reset button for us to reinvent transportation and to start reducing emissions in the long- term.
Malta registered one of the highest increases in CO2 emissions between 2017 and 2018 in the European Union.
On average, the majority of European countries decreased their emissions by around 2.5 per cent, while Malta, by contrast, registered an increase of 6.7 per cent, leaving the country lagging far behind its greenhouse reduction targets. The principal cause for this increase was the ever growing number of private vehicles on the road.
This sentiment is also echoed in a recent publication issued by the Environment and Resources Authority which set forth a national strategy for the environment for 2050.
For this publication, several stakeholders were consulted on what they believed to be the main challenges facing Malta’s environment. The most common responses were that the quality of urban areas need to be improved, primarily by curbing excessive use of private vehicles.
Resonating with the national strategy for the environment, Prime Minister Robert Abela introduced a new economic vision for the country, which has one main overarching principle: the attainment of a better quality of life.
In order to support this principle, the government referenced five pillars through which it believes a better quality of life may be achieved. One of these pillars speaks about becoming a carbon-neutral society by 2050.
There are several new opportunities that will prove to be more convenient for moving around than the private car- Seb Ripard
While it remains unclear what steps the government will take to achieve this goal, it was mentioned that critical decisions need to be taken with regards to commuting, hinting that alternative means of transport and innovative mass transport systems are two solutions which will most likely be examined closely. In order to achieve long-term sustainable reductions, Malta will need to go through some fundamental transitions.
While the idea of reducing emissions from transportation might seem, at face value, to be a daunting task, solutions in this sector are advancing.
The long-term trend towards the electrification of ground transport implies that power utilities have a huge market opportunity as demand shifts from gasoline to electricity.
Europe’s response to the emission-reduction challenge in transport is an irreversible shift to low-emission mobility, which it intends to achieve by prioritising three areas for action.
The first is an increase in the efficiency of the transport system by ensuring that the most is made of advances in digital technology, smart pricing and shift to lower emission transport.
The second area is to accelerate the deployment of low-emission alternative energy for transport, such as advanced biofuels, electricity and hydrogen. The third area revolves around a shift to zero-emission vehicles.
Apart from electrification of transport, could Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) finally convince people to ditch their cars? MaaS is the integration of different forms of transport such as bus, tram, bike-share, ride-share, electric scooters, to name but a few, into a single service which may be accessed on demand.
It diverges from the concept that transportation is owned by the user and has proven to be particularly effective at solving first and last mile challenges. Research in this area indicates that implementing MaaS has the potential to replace over 2.3 billion urban private car journeys annually by 2023.
With Malta lagging far behind in its reduction targets, it is time for all stakeholders to come together to tackle this major challenge.
The sentiment among citizens, stakeholders and the government needs to be in conformity, with all parties agreeing that the biggest issue for Malta will be to curb the use of private vehicles.
This resonates with our vision, where we strongly believe that, in this day and age, there are several new opportunities that will prove to be more convenient for moving around than the use of a private car.
As operating partners for Bolt in Malta, we believe that we have a major role to play in solving transportation problems for people in the long-term.
Seb Ripard is CEO of TXF Tech, Bolt partners in Malta, Cyprus and Tunisia.