This article is also available in Italian / Questo articolo è disponibile anche in italiano

Ever since the beginning of time, humans have travelled, harnessing animals and carving logs, building harbours and roads. They have refined navigation techniques, chariot construction, car design, the aerodynamics of aircraft, the range of rockets, the power of spacecraft. Since the first attempts to cross the seas more than 10,000 years ago, we are now ready to discover the borders of the solar system. Yet, the world of transport still has a threshold to cross, namely that of sustainability.

Transport is now the second-largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, with land, air and sea travel releasing more than 8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere each year. Air traffic is set to double by 2050, say aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Boeing, and fuel consumption will increase by 59%. By mid-century, as many as 3 billion vehicles will be on the road globally, when more than 8.1 trillion tonne-miles of goods will be transported.

We are all about mobility and the insatiable desire for it. And nothing is more powerful than desire. If once travel used to be a rare occurrence (a move, an escape from the enemy at our doorstep, a migration to seek better conditions), today we travel for work, to stay connected to friendships and relatives scattered around the world, we cross the Atlantic to catch a Taylor Swift concert, to dine in a starred restaurant, to get a master's degree, or to volunteer in a Palestinian refugee camp. We move, but even more so the goods, the only truly globalised subject, which not even the new tariff war will be able to stop.

We have built an entangled system of roads, ports, air pathways, railways, car parks, tracks, canals, and stations. You only need to spend a day in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the busiest in the world with over 108 million passengers a year (295,000 a day!), to form an image of the magnitude of transport in the 21st century.

Reducing the global impact of the sector is a huge challenge. However, it must be approached through the complex and rapid technological transformation well outlined in this issue of Renewable Matter.

Firstly, we have the automotive challenge between China, the United States, and Europe. The Asian giant is accelerating more and more on low-cost, ultra-tech electric vehicles (cars but also buses), as BYD's Maria Grazia Davino reports, while the US is cutting back on funding for electric recharging infrastructure. Europe is caught in the middle, with President von der Leyen expediting the process of reviewing the stop on conventional engines as of 2035, and freezing fines for three years for manufacturers that fail to meet sustainability criteria, while firmly supporting European battery production for the continent's automotive industry.

Next, there is the issue of integrated public transport: a real turning point for sustainable transport, as William Todts of the T&E think tank explains, stressing the importance of investing above all in energy and digital infrastructure, rather than in the road network. In the meantime, the train is once again an important means of transport in the 21st century: electric, circular and technological, as Giorgia Marino well illustrates in her in-depth study on rail mobility.

Making transport truly circular will require the use of more and more recycled materials and remanufacturing processes, as well as working on the recovery of EV batteries. And we will have to get rid of the concept of transport ownership once and for all, thanks in part to the advent of autonomous and shared driving. On which, however, Europe is lagging behind, as Daniel Serra Segarra, Director of Ecosystem & Stakeholders at EIT Urban Mobility, explains. Electrification, SAF, ammonia, and hydrogen will be the fuels of this new mobility, in order to decarbonise even complex sectors such as the naval industry.

Not enough space to cover all the new mobility trends (such as the rediscovery of walking and urban walking, the night train phenomenon, flight-shaming). This issue, however, is a testament to the immense dynamism of the sector: to the need for a non-biased and non-ideological narrative (with apologies to the fanatics of the internal combustion engine at all costs) and to how flying cars and robotaxis are no longer a science fiction fairy tale, but a piece of the puzzle in our long exodus from the cradle we have been given towards a future yet to be designed. As long as we always return to this cradle and preserve it in its immense beauty.

DOWLOAD AND READ ISSUE #55 OF RENEWABLE MATTER: TRANSPORT

Cover: City of the future, April 1942, Frank R. Paul. Image used with the acknowledgment of the Frank R. Paul Estate