What is it about?
This paper looks at how energy use in transport has changed worldwide from 1800 to 2020 across ships, trains, road vehicles, and aircraft. It shows that transport went through three major energy transitions: from renewable sources to coal, from coal to oil, and now from oil to electricity and biofuels. Over time, vehicles became more efficient, but total energy use grew much faster because transport activity increased. The study uses this long-term history to help understand how transport energy transitions happen and how long they take.
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Why is it important?
This study is important because it uses 200 years of data to show how energy transitions in transport actually happen. It finds that past shifts between energy sources took many decades and that efficiency improvements did not reduce total energy use, because transport demand kept growing. These results provide evidence that energy transitions in transport are slow and that efficiency alone does not guarantee lower energy consumption, offering useful lessons for planning the current shift to low-carbon transport.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Insights from the evolution of transport technologies, 1800–2020: Energy use, transitions, and efficiency, Applied Energy, December 2025, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2025.126561.
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