BERLIN (dpa) – Climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions in traffic increased from ten million to 163 million tons between 2009 and 2018.

This derives from the Federal Ministry of Transport’s response to a small request from the Greens parliamentary group that the German press agency received. The first “Rinse Post” reported about it.

Accordingly, the transport sector’s share of all emissions – given in CO2 equivalents – increased from 16.9 to 19.1 percent in the period in question. By far the largest share of emissions due to road traffic: According to information, in 2018, 96.4 percent of all traffic emissions on the road were generated.

The specified CO2 equivalent is a unit in which all greenhouse gases are converted to make them comparable.

According to the paper, road freight transport accounted for 26.6 percent of total transportation emissions, or about 43 million tons of CO2 equivalent in 2018. The paper includes recent but preliminary data on the volume of goods traffic in Germany: according to this, 85.6 percent of goods traffic in Germany was handled by road and 9 percent by rail in 2019.

In domestic German air traffic, emissions decreased slightly from 2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to 2.3 million tonnes between 2009 and 2018. In 2018, it accounted for a total of 1.2 percent of all traffic emissions.