environment magazine

Sustainability and Mobility - 12 Theses

By Gerhard Prätorius, Head of CSR and Sustainability at the Volkswagen Group

Globalization has developed enormous economic momentum, putting people in a position to raise their standard of living. The world’s population will grow to more than nine billion by 2050 and all these people will need energy and food, housing and mobility, education and healthcare. Technical progress, productivity increases, innovations and resource-efficient structural change will help to achieve the necessary improvements.

The guiding principle of the 21st century is sustainability. According to the Brundlandt Definition, “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This concept is enjoying growing acceptance all over the world. What sustainability essentially means is that the way we manage our lives and the resources we consume must not restrict the opportunities available to future generations. Environmental, economic and social objectives must be reconciled. That said, the following 12 theses elaborate the relationship between sustainability and mobility in order to create a perception of what sustainable mobility could mean.

1. Globalization is an enormous accelerator for the world-wide division of labor; as a result, there will be a strong increase in the volume of traffic in the foreseeable future. However, transportation is not only a product of the division of labor, but a value creator as well.

2. History shows that turning to the path of more sustainability obviously depends on a certain level of economic development. No economic development means no sustainability – neither social nor ecological.

3. A transportation system that meets the requirements of sustainability must resolve the following contradiction: Traffic growth as a driver of economic development and traffic volume as a cause of environmental impacts and climate change.

4. Even if the climate debate were to disappear from the agenda – and at present there are no conclusive scientific or political reasons to indicate that – the strong increase in energy demand and competition for energy raise the question of alternative sources of energy for different means of transport.

5. This relates to the transportation system as a whole, but above all to motorized individual means of transport. The rule of thumb is simple: The more advanced economic development is, the more “individualized” the transportation system becomes. In countries with a developing solvent middle class, a further aspect is added to the systemic advantages of the automobile, i.e. flexibility, security and comfort: Cars as a symbol of economic prosperity. Automobile market developments in what are known as the BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are correspondingly dynamic. There are currently around one billion vehicles in the world. In just ten years from now, there could be well over 1.3 billion. This mobility boom must be handled responsibly. And that means pressing ahead with environmentally-friendly drive technologies and developing intelligent and networked traffic systems.

6. The key issue for sustainable mobility lies in energy supply and storage technology. The greater the success in establishing CO2-neutral and renewable energy supplies, the more sustainable mobility becomes.

7. There is not merely one technological option on the way to “automobile sustainability”. Technology competition is spurred on by “classical” drivetrain technologies with their strong focus on gasoline and diesel engines. The more these drivetrains harness their improvement potential – and that is still very substantial – the more challenging it will be for alternative drive concepts to stay in the race. The most promising solutions are those which do not need a completely new supply infrastructure. There will be different propulsion options in the future, all of which can cater for different mobility needs, depending on their advantages.

8. A future perspective for an optimized individual mobility system could be battery electric powertrains for urban and suburban areas, combined with plug-in hybrid cars for longer distances. These should be powered by renewable energy based on renewable electric power and on biomass.

9. These fuels produced from biomass, i.e. regenerative raw materials, create a largely CO2-neutral cycle in terms of fuel consumption and service life. An appropriate alternative power supply would bring lasting benefits, since it would both make a contribution to conserving resources and help avoid a further increase in global warming. The ecological advantages of alternative fuels are partly or entirely negated if their production is, for example, associated with deforestation or the cultivation of monocultures which not only harm the environment, but also compete with the food chain, thereby causing social problems. The introduction of an internationally valid biofuel certification procedure would ensure that the opportunities for more sustainable mobility are also actually harnessed.

10. Apart from product-related innovations for more sustainable mobility, the traffic system as a whole, i.e. the interaction of vehicles and infrastructure, also plays an important role. Serious additional environmental and economic impacts result from a permanently overloaded infrastructure and from traffic congestion. Communication-based, intelligent traffic management can lead to substantial efficiency gains in this context. Another important contribution to traffic sustainability takes the form of improved cooperation among all means of transport, e.g. comodality and intermodality.

11. New communication technologies, the new “digital natives” generation and new business models will bring significant innovations in access to and use of mobility modes (“carsharing 3.0”) which can contribute to make individual mobility more sustainable.

12. Companies must be seen as a part of the solution on the road to sustainability. They must be recognized for their contribution to solving social and ecological challenges. We must of necessity find ways to combine economic development in the form of economic growth and competitiveness with social and environmental sustainability at both micro- and macro-level.

Author information
Gerhard Prätorius, Dr. rer. pol.
Gerhard Prätorius is the Head of CSR and Sustainability at the Volkswagen Group. Before joining the company many years ago, he was managing director of several regional development agencies, working on technology transfers especially in the fields of new transportation systems and environmental technologies. He began his career as a senior researcher in this field at the Institute for Ecology and Business Management at the European Business School, Oestrich-Winkel (Germany). Dr. Prätorius is an economics, political science, and German language graduate and is also a lecturer at Carolo-Wilhelmina Technische Universität Braunschweig. He has published numerous articles on mobility and sustainability.