Texas is the highest state consumer of energy which include the petroleum and natural gas industries. Land use policies and transportation have impacts on emission of air pollutants. Evaluation of the impacts of congestion and increase on emission, air quality, and human influence on pollution requires consideration of technological advances, transport, and environmental policies. The dependence of fossil fuels has led to environmental pollution, worsening air quality, and depletion of domestic fossil fuel resources. This study focus on promotion of efficiency in Texas energy sector and ways of reducing the associated pollutant emissions. The research accelerate alternative and clean energy developments in the US. This is the best way of solving the emission problems. Second, the current study improve transport emission measurement technologies. Reliable data source is important for emission research. Air quality concerns drive efforts to develop transportation policies. This gives the study a double perspective: to control energy consumption and define methods to reduce emissions of pollutants.
Discussion points
Causes of emissions in Texas
1. High energy consumption.
· There is high and increasing energy use, carbon (IV) oxide emissions, and threatened air quality from the transport sector in Texas. The resulting concerns include the environmental impacts of emission.
· Energy use is based on vehicles fuel-efficiency and miles which vehicle traveled (Nichols & Reiter, 2015). To reduce the energy demand, the government should have polices that improve vehicles efficiencies and reduce demand for travel.
· Congestion is associated with high energy consumption. Congestion can be reduced by reducing the demand to travel, improve traffic flow, and vehicles miles travelled. These measures reduce pollutant emissions and energy use.
2. Population increase
· The increasing population density in Texas State exert pressure on the pre-existing road network.
· The supply side of roads network is unresponsive to the demand, due to investment constraints and mismatch between what is needed and what is available in Texas (Euritt & Martello, 2010).
· The rising per capita income and inadequate capacity of public transport system results into increase in private-owned vehicles.
· The drastic growth in population is characterized by traffic density and congestion.
· Increase road congestion lead to increase in fuel consumption and increased emissions.
· The carbon dioxide emissions from increase fuel combustion cause increase in emissions of greenhouse gas.
3. Congestion assessment parameter
· Different parameters are used to measure the levels of road congestion. This can be classified into traffic flow volume measurement, speed measurement, and travel time measurement (Frey, 2017).
i. The speed based indices. The traffic speed at any road section reflect the traffic flow conditions. The measure of congestion is based on average travel speed (Bharadwaja & Ballare, 2017).
ii. Corridor mobility index (CMI) is the person carrying capacity of corridor. According to Frey (2017), the CMI is a “product of person volume per lane and travel speed. It is a measure of person movements.”
Emission Controls
1. Government policy
· The cost of clean technologies in transport sector is an obstacle to emission control
· Clean technologies are expensive in transport.
· According to Santos (2017), car running on fossil fuels are cheap compared to those running on renewable sources. The high costs is a barrier for electric vehicle market penetration.
· As momentum builds, the cost of operating and buying alternative vehicles could decrease.
· Until the cost of alternative energy fall, subsidies and taxes are needed (Euritt, Martello, & Qin, 2018).
· Transition to environmentally safe transport require policy initiatives.
2. Transport control
There should be transportation control measures in Texas. The control measures include:
· Encouraging teleconferencing
· Improving public transport system, and
· Encourage the use of non-motorized transport system such as cycling and walking.
Rationale
Air quality is a challenge for many people living in Texas. According to America Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 130 million people are living in areas that do not meet national ambient air quality standards defined by America Clean Air Act (CAA) (Webb & Kockelman, 2009). Transport sector remain air quality problem, this means the large sources of air pollution such as sulfur dioxide and greenhouse gases come from vehicles. This research is important for several reasons.
· The recent study suggest that release of emission from vehicles are frequent and in large magnitudes.
· Second, the emissions from transport sector result in release of toxic pollutants, thereby affecting the environmental quality and affect the ecosystem (Yu & Jia, 2010).
· The excess emissions are in most cases under-regulated, even when EPA consider them as violation of clean air act. Although Texas State is obligated to regulate the emissions, there are some exemptions and failure to pursue enforcement measures.
Methodology
· A survey will be designed and conducted on transportation emission professions. This will give an overview of the research on transport-related emissions in Texas.
· The objective of the survey will be to investigate the opinions on existing transport emission and future research directions.
· The survey will be conducted in e-mail format. The respondents will answer questions in form of questionnaire.
· The survey will cover topics of transport emission, emission reduction strategies, and emission modeling systems.
· The sample of the survey will include professionals from government, learning institution, and industrial field.
· The respondents should have diverse background of transport sector in Texas, air quality discipline, and land-use planning.
Conclusion
· The current study will examine the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation industry in Texas State.
· The study will highlight the effects of congestion towards growing emission levels and fuel use.
· It is expected that the longer the travel time under congested roads could be cause of increasing carbon emissions in Texas
· The relationship between congestion and increase in emission is significant to policy makers and town planners.