The news came “at the right time” in January. After that, new studies for the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) showed that a speed limit of 120 km/h in Germany could have a significant impact on CO2 emissions from car traffic. But the results don’t seem to be worth much.
The “Welt am Sonntag” now went into the depth of the 360 pages of the study and not only found the authors’ admission that it was “unclear to what extent the sample … is distorted”. Old and limited data was based on the data from the navigation system ” TomTom”, which, however, were already five years old and only represented 15 percent of the traffic. The authors of the study are therefore asking the clients in Dessau to check whether the data is reliable. But the intentions of the office, under the responsibility of Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens), were more likely to correct the previous UBA statement on the speed limit, according to which the reduction in CO2 was obviously surprisingly low. Now, at a good four percent, almost twice as high values have been calculated and classified as climate-relevant. Not representative The problems of the new study: Five years ago, “TomTom” devices were mainly installed in more expensive models, which tended to be faster and the measured average speed pushed upwards. In addition, the researchers found a lot of freeway traffic with speeds between 80 km/h and 90 km/h – so probably trucks and buses with this navigation system. All in all, it turned out that the “TomTom” traffic data was by no means representative and also differed significantly from the data from previous studies Facts backfired. The extrapolated effect on the total German CO2 emissions is only 0.5 percent, even with the determined four percent influence of cars, so it disappears in the statistical uncertainty. (Peter Schwerdtmann, aum)
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