ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Future Transp.
Sec. Transportation Emissions
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/ffutr.2025.1644106
Scenarios of fuel vectors trajectories in the Italian road vehicle fleet to 2030 and their impacts on EU GHG reduction targets
Provisionally accepted
- 1Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie per l'Energia e la Mobilita Sostenibili Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Naples, Italy
- 2Universitas Mercatorum, Rome, Italy
- 3Universita degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Caserta, Italy
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Transport sector's decarbonization remains a critical challenge in reducing GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions and achieving the EU Green Deal 2030 targets (-43.7% with respect to year 2005). This paper develops forecasts for 2030 to assess the potential reduction in Tank-to-Wheel (TtW) and Well-to-Wheel (WtW) GHG emissions within the Italian road transportation sector. Two tendential scenarios, namely "High Decarbo" and "Moderate Decarbo", are constructed based on differing hypotheses and on adoption rates of measures and policies aimed at promoting sustainable transportation (e.g., subsidies for electric vehicles) that are already in effect. The findings indicate that the "Moderate Decarbo" forecasts project a 12% and a 15% GHG emissions reduction in TtW and WtW compared to 2005 levels. Under favourable assumptions, GHG emissions could potentially be reduced by 28% TtW and 33% WtW, nearing EU targets but still falling below them. The impact of electrification has been broken down and HydridHybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) contribution on GHG reduction is expected to be very close to Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), underlining the advantages that an encouraged HEVs spreading might have, in addition to the BEVs. The introduction of the law-required quantities of second generation bio-fuels is the main driver for the higher WtW reductions. Two more "trend-breaking" 2030 scenarios are developed in which bio-fuels are spread maximising the Italian production capabilities to abate the environmental impact of freight sector. In the "High Decarbo" scenario the WtW GHG emissions reduction is up to 40%, demonstrating the impact that a smart use of them might have.
Keywords: Road transport decarbonization, Paths to 2030, Green mobility, Bio-fuels, sustainable transportation
Received: 09 Jun 2025; Accepted: 08 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Di Domenico, Beatrice, Henke, Picone, Cartenì and Cascetta. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Davide Di Domenico, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie per l'Energia e la Mobilita Sostenibili Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Naples, Italy
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