Why the car is key to low carbon mobility in Brazil

Abstract

The challenge of transitioning to low carbon mobility differs between industrialized countries and emerging economies. Industrialized countries – where mobility is high but its growth has slowed down – must reduce absolute levels of transport emissions, i.e. they have to transition from high carbon to low carbon mobility. Emerging economies – where continued growth of both transport and associated emissions appear inevitable – have to find mobility pathways that allow for growth of transport while curbing the growth of transport emissions. Different strategies are adequate to achieve this objective in an emerging economy depending on respective framework conditions. Brazil is a particularly interesting case. As this chapter will illustrate, Brazil is headed toward an auto-dominated mobility system. We argue that Brazil must achieve low carbon automobility in order to achieve low carbon mobility.