Transport: Hot Trends - Eco Transport

We love transport. The last century saw a boom in our transport options and raised our expectations of travel to unforeseen heights. Anyone of us could be on the other side of the world by tomorrow. This insatiable hunger to broaden our horizons does have the odd downside however. Not least of these is the contribution that our expeditions make to human induced climate change, or to be more exact the impact that our choice of fuel has. In the UK, Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG – a basket...

San Francisco covers just over forty-seven square miles. Every year about sixteen million visitors find their way to this small patch of the West coast, attracted to the ambiance, restaurants and scenic beauty of this city by the Bay. At least one million of them also board the ferry that carries them to Alcatraz Island. This is the iconic tourist destination whose history as a notorious federal prison and then an outpost for American Indians has eclipsed its earlier use as a lighthouse and mili...

Air travel is responsible for 700 million tonnes - around three per cent - of global carbon emissions every year. But if the growth of aviation continues, this could rise to three billion tonnes by 2050. Now, despite being perceived as resistant to environmental change, aircraft manufacturers and airlines have come together in an unprecedented act of co-operation in the search to survive in a world after kerosene. Fast forward to the year 2040. Your flight from London to Singapore has many trap...

On Tuesday 7 October, a fleet of odd-looking vehicles rolled into Pretoria after an epic two-week, 4.175km round-trip across South Africa’s heartland and back along its coastline. This was the end of the inaugural South African Solar Challenge, the longest and toughest solar-powered race in the world, and the first sanctioned by the Federation International de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation, or FIA). Setting off from Pretoria in Gauteng province on 28 September, the r...

Since last October all drivers who want to enter Frankfurt am Main, Germany, have to buy a special low-emission sticker for their cars. The city’s Low-Emission Zone comprises the area of the so called “Highwayring” – bordered by the highways of A5 in the west, A3 in the South and A661 in the north. The majority of the city’s urban area thus now belongs to the zone, where the stickers are obligatory. This rule applies to the locals as well as the drivers from all over Germany or abroad and for...