CO2 saving effect determined: Cycle 2.6 kilometers a day for the global climate

Technical innovations such as the development of electric cars, lightweight construction methods and improving fuel efficiency are popular approaches to reducing road traffic emissions.

But in order to achieve the desired climate goals, it probably also requires a rethinking of the way we move.

A study by a team led by the ecologist Gang Liu from the University of Southern Denmark shows how much CO2 can be saved if we leave the car at home and jump on the bicycle saddle – especially over short distances

The scientists collected worldwide data on bicycle production, ownership and use from 1962 to 2015 and analyzed global relationships.

They discovered that cycling like the Dutch are showing us can save around 686 million tons of CO2 per year worldwide.

As described in the

, every person worldwide would only have to cycle 2.6 kilometers per day instead of driving.

In 2015, this corresponded to 85 percent of Germany's emissions.

But even just 1.6 kilometers per day – the Danish average – would already save 414 million tonnes of CO2 – equivalent to the entire CO2 emissions of the UK in 2015.

It has long been debated that switching from car to bicycle has a significant impact on the environment, but bicycles play a central role in road transport in only a few countries.

To explore this, the team generated an overview of bicycle production and inventory in 60 countries and compared this to that of cars.

They found that the number of bicycles produced increased by an average of about 3.4 percent annually from 1970 to 2015, which exceeded the number of cars and their growth rate at all times.

Bicycles were most frequently manufactured in China - in 2015 at 65.7 percent, followed by Brazil with 5 percent, India with 4 percent and Italy and Germany with 2 percent each.

More wheels than cars

But it was not only in production that bicycles were ahead of cars: more people in most countries – especially in industrialized countries – owned a bicycle.

The Netherlands and Denmark are front runners, with theoretically every person there owning at least one bicycle over the entire period.

The scientists suspect that the reasons for this are the widely available information and the bicycle-friendly infrastructure.

On the other hand, low- to middle-income countries – such as Africa and Asia – had significantly lower bicycle ownership per capita compared to the global average.