Sustainable and energy efficient transport of passengers and goods has become a major concern of policy makers worldwide. This paper examines the existence of policies and measures for sustainable urban freight transport in European cities. The methodology for comprehensive mapping and benchmarking of strategic policy documents and measures has been developed and applied to a panel of 129 European cities. The desktop analysis shows an extremely heterogeneous situation of logistics and mobility planning policies and planning documents adopted in Europe. Cities are mainly opting for soft measures with high impact on savings. They are trying to achieve efficiency with adequate regulation system and measures supporting the introduction of new services. Only few measures directly promoting energy savings were identified while on the other hand, various measures with indirect impact on energy consumption were recognized.

INTRODUCTION

Despite of its important role in modern society, transport has many shortcomings resulting in congestion, pollution, CO2 emissions, noise and accidents. Transport is also the largest energy-consuming sector in the EU-28 [1–۳], whereby road transport consumes 83% of total energy consumption in transport and accounts for 93% of CO2 emissions [4,5]. Road transport vehicles are predominantly using fossil fuels, which emit large quantity of greenhouse and other polluting gases into the atmosphere and therefore significantly contribute to climate change and global warming [6–۸]. Without appropriate regulatory measures, energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the land transport sector is expected to grow. Compared with 2009, 50% growth is expected by 2030 and more than 80% by 2050 [9]. To reach sustainable low-carbon economy by 2050, Europe needs to cut emissions from transport by at least 60% compared to 1990 [10,11]. Transport is considered also as one of the most important factors for achieving the goal of the Paris agreement, which aim is to limit global temperature rise in this century well below 2 °C, comparing to the preindustrial levels [12,13]. Pietzcker et al. [14] studied alternative scenarios on transport decarbonisation in energyeconomic models. They found out that in the first half of the century, transport is expected to leg behind mitigation efforts of other sectors for 10-30 years. Even in the most stringent policy scenario, more than 85% of transport final energy will still come from the fossil fuels. Deep emission reductions in transport sector (by 90% and more) is expected in the long run (until the end of the century) and only in the case when the most stringent policy scenarios would have been implemented. The preconditions of the scenarios to meet the expected results are: implementation of the advanced vehicle technologies in combination with carbonfree primary energy sources and inclusion of the road transport into the EU ETS (European Emissions Trading Scheme) [5]. Carbon pricing should be complemented with regionspecific and integrated transport policies aiming at changing mobility demand and promoting the use of innovation in alternative transport options and the use of alternative fuels [15–۱۷].