Assessing strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in urban transportation sector

Abstract

Preventing global warming has become the consensus of human beings. "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change" has assured the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emission. There are two sources of greenhouse gas emission: fixed sources and mobile sources. Mobile sources are those vehicles in motion which emit gas pollutant from energy consumption. Because of the technology limitation, reducing or recycling the gases emitted by mobile sources is rather difficult. This study proposes a model for assessing strategies of reducing the greenhouse gas emission in transportation sector by focusing on technology innovation, substitution of transportation modes (automobiles), transportation system management, adjustment of transportation related lifestyle and urban development structure. The relative importance and effect of every item and criterion are evaluated by using pairwise comparison of AHP. The assessments and rankings of strategies are made by using total weighting score method. Finally, according to the analysis of the results, the strategies are proposed to the future planning of decreasing greenhouse gas emission.