Abstract

The configuration of current civilization would not be conceivable without abundant and cheap transport: the dominant trends of recent decades such as the globalization of the economy, the segmentation of productive processes in distant places, the metabolism of large cities fueled by distant resources or mass tourism, would not have been possible.

During the first two decades of the 21st century, world passenger transport has grown like population (26.5%), but world freight transport has more than doubled (115% increase) to reach 53 tkm/ hab/day (tons x km per inhabitant and day). The characteristics of oil and its derivatives (gasoline, diesel, kerosene and fuel oil), with high energy densities (around 10 kWh/kg and around 8 kWh/litre), rapid recharge and artificially low costs by not including outsourcing, have led to a close correlation with transport and its growth: today 95% of transport (land, sea, air) is powered by petroleum products and 75% of oil is used for transport.

Electricity, the main renewable energy vector in the transport of the future, represents a substantial improvement in the performance of the driving elements but requires important power systems (storage in batteries, hydrogen and fuel cell, electrified catenary) that will be necessary implement to reconvert the centralized system of obtaining and distributing fossil fuels to mostly distributed systems of electric energy and hydrogen. It is necessary to rule out the obtaining of biofuels from crops, in collision with food and of very low yields, and limit them only to small amounts obtained from waste.

The transition in transport, based on renewable energy vectors and in the framework of sustainable development, will bring important changes and limitations with respect to some of the characteristics and uses we are used to today with oil, but also advantages and new possibilities. The purpose of this communication is to analyse these issues and explore the incidence of renewable transport in the current dominant trends and in the sustainable development of the future