Green Transport

Green transport or green means of transportation are these means that have a minimal effect on the environment both at the production stage and during their use and final withdrawal from circulation. Green transports include reduced energy-consumption vehicles, bicycles and also car-pooling services.

Applications

The adoption of Green Transport applications concerns both businesses and individuals. A number of examples are given below:

An enterprise can promote an integrated policy for the management of business travel for its staff, which will improve its environmental performance and save money; this can be achieved by purchasing low emission cars for the staff, providing annual tickets for public transportation and applying car-pooling schemes so that as many passenger seats as possible are occupied in the cars used;
Car rental companies can be equipped with low emission cars; The same applies to conventional and electric bicycle rental companies;
Businesses that have educational objective such as eco-driving adoption; Individuals who decide to buy cars with low emissions and fuel consumption standards; Similarly, individuals who purchase electric or conventional bicycles;
Individuals or businesses that decide to equip their vehicles with devices such as trip computers, cruise control systems and speed limiters.

Advantages - Environmental Benefits

By adopting practices such as the ones listed above, businesses and individuals achieve lower fuel consumption, thus saving money. On the other hand, the environmental benefits are significant. The following two examples are indicative:

Replacement of all conventional cars with hybrid cars implies on average the avoidance of 600-750 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions annually.
The average nominal consumption of an average engine capacity hybrid vehicle is 4.3 lt/100 Km, while average real consumption reaches 5.2 lt/100 Km i.e. 2/3 of the rates of a similar conventional model.

Institutional Framework

Motor vehicle tax for all private cars depends exclusively on the carbon dioxide emissions of each vehicle (grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre). This applies to all cars irrespective of technology (petrol, hybrid, diesel etc). Therefore, the lower the carbon dioxide emissions of a car, the lower the cost for the owner as regards motor vehicle tax;
All hybrid cars are exempted from circulation limitations (ring) in the city of Athens;
All electrical or hybrid cars whose engine’s emissions comply with the current provisions on antipollution vehicles of Directive 94/12/EC or later, are not subject to the provisions of the article on Classification Fees for private vehicles (Law 2960/2201, GG A 265 / 22 November 2001).