Ottawa, Ontario – Canada has joined Chile, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Greece and Austria in issuing a call to the world’s leading nations to pursue a global agreement to accelerate the manufacturing and adoption of zero-emission medium and heavy-duty vehicles (ZE-MHDV).
The eight nations, in partnership with the American non-profit CALSTART’s Drive to Zero campaign, issued the call for a global Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to reach 100 percent ZE-MHDV sales between 2040 and 2050. Their goal is for as many countries as possible to sign the MoU at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Glasgow this November.
These countries agree that this is a crucial step towards the world meeting the Paris Agreement climate goals.
“Zero-emission freight is a crucial step in a cost-efficient pathway to achieving our climate goals,” said Stientje van Veldhoven, Dutch minister for the environment and chair of the Transport Decarbonisation Alliance (TDA).
As e-commerce has grown in popularity the transport sector has been forced to accelerate it’s operations.
“Trucks account for only two percent of the vehicles on the road. Yet they are responsible for 22 percent of the road transport CO2 emissions in the EU,” said van Veldhoven. “If you take into account the lifetime of trucks, you just need to stop adding new fossil fuel vehicles around 2040 if you want to be carbon neutral in 2050.”
The involved countries are considering setting an interim sales goal for 2030 in order to encourage short-term action that would send a clear market signal to manufacturers.
