ExternE: A European Accounting Framework for Life Cycle Impact Assessment and External Costs of Transport

This paper discuss draft final results of a European research project (1998-2000) concerning the assessment of life cycle impacts on man and the environment and external costs of a wide variety of transportation technologies. The methodology is based on the ExternE (Externalities of Energy) Accounting framework. It allows to quantify and monetise impacts on public health, agriculture and materials, but ecological impacts could not be monetised. It results in external cost data that are site, trajectory and vehicle specific but on this basis more aggregated and generic data have been used. This also allows calculating external costs related to the supply of fuels, vehicles and infrastructure.

Overall, it shows that external environmental costs of transport are significant. For Belgium, notwithstanding stricter standards for new vehicles, overall external costs of passenger car traffic have hardly been reduced.