chaire-energyMiren Lafourcade attended the Workshop: “The Energy Transition in Land Transportation”, Tuesday November 22.
She presented The Carbon Footprint of Suburbanization: Evidence from French Household Data, joint work with Camille Blaudin de Thé.
Abstract:
This paper investigates the impact of urban form on fuel consumption and CO2 driving emissions  in  France.   The  use  of  a  very  rich individual  survey  helps  control  for  selection  issues, as some households may live in a location consonant to their socioeconomic characteristics or travel predispositions. In addition, we also use instrumental variables to control for simultaneity between fuel consumption and population settlements. The results suggest that, by choosing to live at the fringe of a metropolitan area instead of a city-center, the sample mean-household bears an extra-consumption of approximatively six fuel tanks per year. More generally, doubling residential density results in an annual saving of approximatively two tanks per household, and largely more if coupled with better access to city-centers, improved rail-routes and reduced pressure for road construction in the metropolitan area. The relationship between urban population and driving emissions is however bell-shaped: small cities compensate lack of either density or public transit by more circular design or centralization.