Modeling the dynamics of changes in CO2 emissions from Polish road transport in the context of COVID-19 and decarbonization requirements

Abstract

Emissions from transport account for 20%–25% of global carbon dioxide emissions, with more than 70% coming from road transport, making it an extremely important topic in the context of decarbonization. The aim of the article is to analyze the trend of CO2 generated from road transport, taking into account the its various sources, and also to examine the manner in which reduced mobility during the pandemic affected the emissions at the time. For this purpose, a time series containing observations up to the pandemic outbreak and a time series containing additional observations from the pandemic period were analyzed. For each time series, a trend was determined and described by a polynomial and then verified to see if the pandemic phenomenon significantly affects a parameter of the proposed model, using appropriate statistical tests.