The Transport Decarbonisation Alliance at COP27
Call to Motion on Energetic Mobility and Deep Dive on Clean Trucks
Last month at COP 27 in Egypt, CLEE partnered with the Transport Decarbonisation Alliance (TDA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) as chair of TDA, to convene experts to debate a few of the foremost next steps in clean transportation. While avoiding the worst of climate change requires a rapid increase within the pace of decarbonization across the transport sector, the TDA spotlighted two vital areas: a call to motion on energetic mobility and a deep dive into accelerating deployment of unpolluted trucks.
The TDA put out a Call to Motion to support Energetic Mobility Capability Constructing invest $100 million within the training of 10,000 energetic mobility professionals, marking the primary time that energetic mobility featured prominently at a climate change summit. Improving conditions for walking and cycling can generate improvements in public health, road safety, and emission reductions – all while making cities more liveable. All these advantages of walking and cycling will be low-hanging fruit for local jurisdictions, but are too often ignored and underfunded. And while it’s commonplace for cities to struggle with identifying funding for energetic mobility initiatives, even once they are able to make the investments their success will be constrained by an absence of technical expertise to properly plan, design, construct, maintain, operate and promote sustainable urban mobility systems. Training 10,000 mobility professionals in the following ten years will construct a neighborhood knowledge base and create a pipeline of projects to make sure sustained, prime quality investment in energetic mobility at a worldwide scale. To learn more watch the event “Shifting Gear: Accelerating Energetic Mobility for Future Generations”.
Later within the COP, the TDA, CLEE, and CARB hosted a series of sessions bringing representatives from firms, countries, cities, and regions together to debate challenges and opportunities around decarbonizing freight and the deployment of charging infrastructure for clean trucks (learn more and watch the discussions here). These events highlighted clean trucks as a growing priority for a number of reasons:
Trucks have a disproportionate impact on public health and carbon emissions.
- Indeed, within the US, trucks make up only 5% of vehicles on the road but account for greater than 25% of overall transportation emissions. An Environmental Defense Fund evaluation found that ensuring 100% of latest truck, bus, and van sales within the US are zero emission by 2040 would result in $485 billion in health and environmental advantages and stop as many as 57,000 premature deaths by 2050. Notably, low income and communities of color often bear the brunt of the health and emissions impacts from trucks, making clean trucking a climate justice priority.
Current zero emission truck uptake is slow and it must scale up rapidly.
- Some 95% of global 2021 EV sales were light duty passenger vehicles, while only 5% were trucks. Yet, while sales have been increasing, they make up only a small fraction of overall vehicles on the road today. Based on the International Council on Clean Transportation, the perfect likelihood of keeping warming below 2 °C would require most developed countries to transition at the least 90% of their latest automotive, van, and bus sales and three-quarters of truck sales to zero emissions by 2035, and partner with emerging markets and developing economies to transition at the least 90% of world automotive, van, bus, and truck sales to zero emission by 2040.
The clean truck technologies and business case are ready.
- Many clean trucks already offer fuel and maintenance cost savings over the lifetime of the vehicles, and most studies show that the whole cost of ownership for nearly all zero emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks will probably be lower than those of internal combustion engine trucks by 2025 or 2030 at the newest. While more zero emission truck models and higher range are still needed, a large variety of outstanding truck orders indicates that demand exceeds current production.
Participants noted that key supportive policies can speed up investment in clean trucks. Jurisdictions can send market signals by setting ambitious deployment targets for trucks and charging. Regulations might help create market certainty, for instance, CARB’s Advanced Clean Trucks and Advanced Clean Fleets rules set annually increasing targets for manufacturers to sell and fleets to buy zero emission trucks. Incentives and de-risking initiatives might help attract private investment. National and regional governments and NGOs might help traditionally siloed stakeholders coordinate across public, private, energy, and transportation sectors.
The sessions also highlighted that differing approaches based on readiness will pave the collective path for transforming the sector. For instance, light duty EVs are a very good “gateway” to heavy-duty electrification: if jurisdictions have already got robust charging networks for cars, they’re often higher positioned for the infrastructure needed for trucks. Similarly, by leading on trucks, jurisdictions just like the EU, China and US might help bring down the prices and show success for the remaining of the world. Governments (and the private sector) should take whatever steps they will to encourage investment in zero emission vehicles and move the market forward. (Take a have a look at CLEE’s Case Study transient, Deploying Zero-Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Innovations to Speed up Transport Decarbonisation, for some examples of various approaches from jurisdictions at different stages of cleansing up transportation.)
All approaches and all hands on deck will probably be needed to decarbonize transportation on the pace and scale required by climate science. As a worldwide network of firms, countries, cities, and regions, the TDA can connect experts, discover challenges, and highlight solutions through initiatives like these COP 27 discussions. Each energetic mobility and clean trucks as an emerging priority would require significant investment and coordination in the following 20 years, and TDA members are already leading the best way.
