Evaluating Economic Feasibility of Environmentally Sustainable Scenarios by a Backcasting Approach with ESCOT (Economic assessment of Sustainability poliCies Of Transport)

摘要

The aim of the System Dynamics Model ESCOT is to describe a path towards a sustainabletransport system in Germany and to assess its economic impacts. ESCOT was developedwithin the environmentally sustainable transport (EST) project of the OECD that wasdesigned to consider the ecological and technical aspects of a transition towardssustainable transportation. ESCOT comprises five models: the macroeconomic, thetransport, the regional economic, the environmental and the policy model.The economic assessment for environmentally sustainable scenarios show that thedeparture from car and road freight oriented transport policy is far from leading to aneconomic breakdown. With an expansion of the time period for the transition we derivedeven more encouraging results.For the economic assessment it is important that ESCOT considers not only first roundeffects but also secondary effects. This ability makes ESCOT to a powerful instrument forthe assessment of such large ecological changes.