TRANSPORTATION AND ENERGY

This chapter describes how energy is essential to transportation. The separation of people and things in space necessitates passenger and freight movements, and energy is required to overcome that separation. Physics defines work as the application of force over a distance, and energy as the ability to do the work. To move any object from one place to another work must be done: force must be applied over distance in order to accelerate an object from rest, and it must be continually applied to overcome the frictional forces that oppose motion. Thus, transportation requires the use of energy. This chapter describes how society has an interest in the research and development of technologies that will protect the environment or enhance national security. Indeed, without the incentives created by environmental regulations or other public policies, businesses are unlikely to invest in developing technologies whose benefits accrue principally to society as a whole. Creating advanced technologies to solve the problems associated with transportation’s use of energy (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, oil dependence, air pollution) therefore requires deliberate and significant governmental action. This action can take the form of direct investment in research and development or indirect stimulation of technological progress through regulations or other policies that reward the developers of environmentally beneficial and nonpetroleum technologies.