"Moving Cooler" report highlights emission reduction benefits of pay-per-mile insurance
06 Aug 2009
The first‐ever comprehensive analysis of transportation efficiency and its relationship to greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction and consumer savings has been released by a diverse group of stakeholders committed to addressing climate change. "Moving Cooler: An Analysis of Transportation Strategies for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions," provides an objective and scientific analysis of the effectiveness and cost of almost 50 scalable transportation strategies, both alone and combined, to reduce GHG emissions.
To date, little research has taken a critical look at the full range of transportation measures that would influence greenhouse gas emissions, by reducing the amount of vehicle-miles traveled, reducing fuel consumption, and improving the performance of the transportation system.
The intent of the Moving Cooler study is to assess the potential effectiveness of a broad variety of transportation strategies—under a wide range of different assumptions—to reduce greenhouse gas emissions." The report addresses the greenhouse gas emissions reductions, costs, consumer savings, and equity considerations of almost fifty strategies aimed at improving access and mobility without excessive driving, traffic, and associated costs.”
The report was supported by the U.S. Department of Transportation through the Federal Highway and Transit Administration and by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It was also co-sponsored by non-governmental organizations, including environmental groups (the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund), developers (Urban Land Institute), and an oil company (Shell). The report shows the importance of various packages of strategies in reducing vehicle miles traveled and related greenhouse gas emissions and that implementing such strategies is critical to meeting greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.
Significantly, when usage-based insurance was added to a bundle of land use/transit/non-motorized transportation measures (one of a number of policy bundles evaluated), the report shows that it led to a 44% increase in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through 2050 than without the inclusion of such insurance.
More details on the report are available at: http://www.movingcooler.info/
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