A Survey on Effects of ITS –related Systems and Technologies on Global Warming Prevention

Abstract Recent annual CO2 emission from Japan sums up to 1.3 billion tons, and about 20 % of it is from automobile traffic. There are many approaches to reduce CO2 emission and to prevent the global warming, and one of the important approaches is the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). This paper surveys the effects of the ITS on the global warming prevention based on the data in Japan. The ITS could contribute to the energy conservation on two aspects: one is to eliminate the congestion, which enables each automobile to drive at the fuel optimal speeds, and the other is to provide means for modal shift, which reduces the traffic. This paper surveys the ITS technologies for CO2 emission reduction, which include traffic signal control, ETC, route guidance, cruise control, and automated driving. In addition, when vehicles drive with a small gap, the aerodynamic drag will be reduced to result in CO2 emission reduction, which a new Japanese project named “Energy ITS” is focusing on: the project aims at an automated truck platoon and demonstration is planned along an expressway under construction.