Energy and transportation: the need for an energy transition.

The introduction of this chapter gives an overview on the importance of the transport sector and travel demand of societies. We will focus the purpose on the latest transportation evolutions (as motorisation, travel speed or travel cost) and their consequences on energy consumption. The first part deals with a recent diagnosis about final energy consumption coming from this transportation sector at different geographic scales (global, regional and urban). This diagnosis considers both the levels of development of the countries and the most important terrestrial transportation modes (car, train, bus, active modes). The second part is dedicated to urban mobility and the key determinants regarding car dependency (urban form and density, automotive system, behaviour and attitudes). The last part reports different policy applications that actively favour energy transition, more specifically for the transportation of people (innovation in motorisation as electric or hybrid vehicles, new urbanism tendencies, intermodality and modal shift, mobility marketing, intelligent transport systems, etc.). The conclusion summarises the need of energy transition in order to sustain quality of life.