Transforming transportation is crucial if we’re going to reduce our dependency on oil. Burning oil in all our vehicles is taking a toll on the air we breathe and creating huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions which are causing climate change.

In the UK, over three-quarters of petroleum products from oil are used for transport. Most of these are going into the cars, trucks, buses, motorbikes and trains that make up our surface transport, but the aviation and shipping industries are also using vast quantities of oil.

We can start today by reducing the amount we travel and travelling more efficiently. In the city, we can leave our cars at home and take the bus, tram, carpool or walk to the places we need to go. We can reduce business travel by using video conferencing. We could all make smarter choices everyday that would reduce our oil consumption.

While that’s a start, we are also going to have to make our vehicles much more efficient. There have been small improvements in vehicle efficiency over the last few decades, but this has been cancelled out by the growth in the number of vehicles on the road in the UK.

There is a lot of potential to make massive improvements in fuel efficiency. However car manufacturers have been focused on making bigger vehicles like 4x4s (which are also more polluting) and making improvements to the passenger experience while neglecting innovation in efficient engine and car design.

To show how little the car companies have come we can look back in the Greenpeace archives. In 1996 we had the Swiss company Wenko design and manufacture a car for us to demonstrate how fuel efficient a car can be. Fifteen years later it’s still the most efficient vehicle in its class compared with the most efficient vehicles on the market today.

Eventually, all our surface transport will need to be made up by hybrid or electrified vehicles powered by clean energy. Our train system is already beginning to be electrified, and electric cars and vans are quickly coming onto the market.

It isn’t just about cutting emissions, a strong electric car industry also presents a huge economic opportunity for the UK. The UK has a strong engineering and design industry and is well-placed to exploit an electric car revolution. New analysis says that electric vehicles and connected industries could be a $300 billion business by 2020 and create over a million jobs globally along the way.

It’s going to be much harder to get all our planes off oil. The only alternative the aviation industry has come up with is biofuels. But there are lots of reasons why biofuels aren’t the silver bullet solution the aviation would hope (increased competition for land, raising food prices and driving rainforest destruction) - so that means that we are going to have to limit the amount we fly, and make sure planes are as efficient as possible.

For ships, more radical technologies are being tested, such as giant sky sails, which in the right conditions can cut ships’ emissions by up to 50%. Innovative schemes like these should be given more funding and the industry should work towards a goal of zero-carbon shipping by 2050. Early global trade was powered by sailing ships thousands of years before the advent of oil. What better symbol of the end of the oil age than a return to clean energy powered ships?

While we make the switch to clean energy to power our transport, there are a number of things we can all do to reduce the amount of oil we use.

Make journeys in less oil hungry vehicles

Instead of flying or driving to Manchester or Paris, we should be taking the train. Instead of using the car, we can walk or ride our bikes. Instead of driving our freight around in lorries, we should be moving it onto rail or our canals.

Reduce the number of journeys we make and make our journeys more efficient

Improving public transport and localising services means that we can get people where they need to go more efficiently - rather than hundreds of people driving their cars around our cities, they can take the bus, tram, carpool or walk to the places they need to go.

Instead of flying for business meetings, companies are increasingly using video-conferencing to talk to one another - saving carbon emissions and money. Many businesses are also promoting home-working which reduces the need to commute, cuts costs and also increases quality of life.

If we have to make a trip somewhere or commute to work, we should take other people making the same journey so that it’s much more efficient. We need to reduce the amount we fly, and we need to ensure that our planes aren’t flying around the world half empty. The tax system needs to incentivize airlines using fewer planes and making sure that every seat is used.

Switch the technology of our vehicles so that we reduce and phase out oil usage

We need our governments and train companies to electrify our train network, and we need electric buses to connect our communities.

Eventually we should be switching our cars over to hybrid and electric vehicles powered on clean energy. It’s important for European governments to set strong targets that will force manufacturers to produce much more efficient vehicles – and to develop radically cleaner technologies. We need our planes and ships to have the most efficient engines and designs possible, and in the case of our ships, we need them to harness the wind and reduce fuel consumption through new sky sails.