A review on emissions and mitigation strategies for road transport in Malaysia

The emissions from road transport are serious threats to urban air quality and global warming. The first step to develop effective policies is to determine the source and amount of emissions produced. This paper attempts to review emissions from road transport using COPERT 4 model and examined possible emission mitigation strategies. In road transport, results have show that passenger cars are the main cause of CO2, N2O and CO emissions, while motorcycles are main source of hydrocarbon (HC) emissions. However, light duty vehicles and heavy duty vehicles are the main contribution of particulate matters. The total CO2 equivalent emissions for road transport in Malaysia are 59,383.51ktonnes for year 2007. Further results show that CO2 emission is the primary source of greenhouse gas pollution which is 71% of the total CO2 equivalent. A parametric study was conducted to estimate the potential emission mitigation strategies for road transport by taking the emissions in 2007 as a reference year. It was observed that promoting the public transport is an effective strategy to reduce emissions and fuel consumption from the technical view point. It can totally save up to 1044ktonnes of fuel consumption and total CO2 equivalents emissions can be decreased by 7%. It was noted that, fleet renewal and promoting natural gas vehicles will significantly contribute in the reduction of emissions in Malaysia.