Edinburgh Napier University

  The Government of Ireland has set out to pursue a climate-resilient economy and become carbon neutral by 2050. Increasing demands for emissions mitigation will put greater pressure
on transport activities for the movement of people and freight. The transport sector in Ireland will have to take prompt action in response to the climate emergency.

The Irish Government has demonstrated increased effort in policy development towards the low-carbon transition for the transport sector in recent years. The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) welcomes the policy measures proposed by the Irish
government to support the transport industry in reducing their carbon emissions in the last two years, but these interventions have yet to have a significant effect on the reduction of emissions.

Research studies on decarbonisation policy have focused mainly on the public stakeholders’ perspective, but there has been little work exploring the Irish industry stakeholders’ experiences of the existing decarbonisation measures.
Hence, in this study, with a special focus from the transport industry perspective, this report captured the current awareness and perception among the Irish road transport operators (public transport and freight) of transport decarbonisation policies and measures in Ireland.
Online survey questionnaires, in-depth interview and focus group interviews were conducted from March to September 2021 to obtain first-hand information and insights from transport operators and experts in Ireland.
The research findings suggested that there is a significant misalignment between the government’s incentivised decarbonisation direction and the industry’s preferences. The
current government policies on transport decarbonisation are less reflected in terms of measures and support schemes for the majority of SMEs in the market.

A better understanding of transport operators’ attitudes and motives (especially SMEs) and the challenges they face in decarbonising can inform a more effective response by policymakers, vehicle manufacturers, and the wider stakeholders in the society to intervene in the uptake of decarbonisation measures in the transport industry in Ireland.