Everyone can help to reduce CO2 pollution. This is shown by a study from Denmark, where people cycle around 1.6 kilometers a day instead of driving. If everyone were to cycle as much as the Danes, more than 400 million tons of carbon dioxide could be saved every year.
According to a new study, by cycling every day, every person could help reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by up to 700 million tons a year. The main aim of the study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, is to show that cycling plays an important role in reducing CO2 emissions from transport, said lead author Gang Liu, a professor of green technologies at the University of Southern Denmark is.
According to Liu, the focus of the debate so far has been on the advantages of electric cars. Annual CO2 emissions can be massively reduced just by cycling every day. The benefits for health and the improvement of air quality are not even included.
In this context, the study refers to the Netherlands and Denmark – the Dutch cycle around 2.6 kilometers a day, the Danes around 1.6 kilometers. If everyone cycled as much as the Danes do, 414 million tonnes of carbon dioxide would be saved each year, which the researchers calculated is equivalent to Britain’s annual CO2 emissions. With 2.6 kilometers of cycle paths, as in the Netherlands, emissions could even be reduced by 686 million tons per year. Global traffic is responsible for a quarter of annual CO2 emissions – one of the causes of global warming. Half of these emissions now come from cars.
The study processed data that an international team of researchers had collected in the world’s first database on bicycle ownership and use in 60 countries since the early 1960s. According to the researchers, from 1962 to 2015, the number of bicycles produced exceeded that of cars. China alone, one of the biggest sources of global CO2 emissions, accounted for almost two thirds of the approximately 123 million bicycles that were manufactured in 2015.
Nevertheless, in the countries surveyed, the average proportion of bicycle use for daily journeys was only five percent. According to the study, while bicycles are plentiful in some countries, such as the United States, their owners see cycling more as a leisure activity than as a daily mode of transport, and they often travel short distances by car.
