Investigation of Carbon Footprint Change Originated from Transportation Sector

Global warming has become one of the most important issue in the world over the past decades, and this has led to increased researches on greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2. An important share in greenhouse gas production belongs to the transportation sector. Motor vehicles are one of the most important sources of fossil fuel emissions that cause air pollution and climate change. In recent years there is a growing interest in urban air pollution and intense traffic, which is part of daily life with CO2 emissions. Therefore, it is important to reduce emissions originated from transportation sector, while struggling with air pollution and climate change. Carbon footprint, defined in the unit of carbon dioxide, is a measure of damage that is caused by human activities in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced. It consists of two main groups; primary footprint and secondary footprint. Primary footprint, domestic energy consumption and transportation (including cars and airplanes) are measures of direct CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions associated with the manufacture and eventual degradation of these products from the entire life cycle of the products we use. In this study, the research was conducted on transportation carbon footprint values of Turkey and G20 countries between the years of 1990 to 2016. Furthermore, the carbon footprint over the last 26 years was investigated