Green Policies and Transport Decarbonization in the EU: The Role of Environmental Taxes and Renewable Energy Use

Decarbonising the transport sector is a strategic policy priority in the European Union's (EU) targets to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Accordingly, this study examines the impact of environmental taxes and renewable energy use on transport-related CO₂ emissions (TCO₂). For 27 EU countries, we estimated a panel fixed-effects model using data from 2015 to 2023. The estimated results indicate that environmental taxes and renewable energy use reduce TCO₂. The results support increasing environmental taxes and renewable energy use in the EU to reduce transport emissions.