Transport

• China continued to lead in total volume of electric vehicle (EV) sales in 2022, not only in cars – accounting for nearly 60% of global sales – but also for light commercial vehicles (LCVs) (more than 40%), 2-wheelers and buses (both more than 80%), and trucks (more than 85%).  
• The United States made significant policy progress towards decarbonising transport in 2022, including through the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains a suite of policies designed to accelerate EV adoption and production of biofuels, synthetic fuel, and hydrogen. The US Departments of Energy and Transportation together articulated a bold framework for transport decarbonisation, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently proposed multi-pollutant emissions standards for light- and heavy-duty vehicles, towards the aim of meeting national 2050 net zero emissions targets. 
• The European Union launched a strong push on the transition to EVs through the Green Deal Industrial Plan, released in February 2023, and political agreement on the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation that will mandate member states to roll out public charging for light- and heavy-duty vehicles. Political agreement has also been reached on a law that will mandate the adoption of low-emission alternatives to fossil-derived jet kerosene in aviation, as well as low-emission fuels in maritime. A proposal to revise the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) to cover maritime emissions, and create a separate new ETS that also includes road transport emissions, is being formulated.  
• Norway continues to lead in terms of sales share of electric cars, reaching nearly 90% in 2022. 
• India adopted the Production Linked Incentives (PLI) scheme in 2022, which includes a programme to boost domestic battery manufacturing, with a budget of INR 181 billion (Indian rupees) (USD 2.2 billion), as well as the Automobile and Auto Component PLI scheme which grants incentives for sales of advanced automotive components and vehicles, including battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. 
• In the first quarter of 2023, Australia committed to putting in place a fuel efficiency standard for light-duty vehicles, and formulated a National Electric Vehicle Strategy to accelerate the adoption of EVs. 
  

In 2022 global CO₂ emissions from the transport sector grew by more than 250 Mt CO₂ to nearly 8 Gt CO₂, 3% more than in 2021. Aviation was responsible for much of the increase, as air travel continued to rebound from pandemic lows to around 70% of 2019 levels. Tempering this increase, EVs continued to gain momentum in 2022, with over 10 million cars sold globally, reaching 14% of all car sales. Emissions are still lower than in 2019, demonstrating the lingering effects of the pandemic on passenger and cargo activity. 

Getting on track with the NZE Scenario would require transport emissions to fall by about 25% to around 6 Gt by 2030, even with an anticipated growth in demand. Achieving this drop will depend on the rapid electrification of road vehicles, operational and technical energy efficiency measures, the commercialisation and scale-up of low-emissions fuels, especially in the maritime and aviation sub-sectors, and policies to encourage modal shift to less carbon-intensive travel. 

Motorised transport remains dependent on oil, and more generally, on combustion engines that run on liquids or natural gas. The share of biofuels consumed by such vehicles have increased from less than half a percent in 1990 to about 3.5% in 2022, as a result of decades of policy support, but the implications for GHG emissions on a well-to-wheels basis vary considerably, depending on the feedstock and conversion technologies. 

As with other end-use technologies, the electrification of road vehicles is the most promising pathway to increasing conversion efficiencies and reducing GHG emissions. Lifecycle efficiency and emission reductions compound as the share of renewables in power generation continues to grow. 

The need to monitor the impacts of the pandemic on economic activity, as well as the impacts of response measures on mobility, led to an increase in availability of real-time or near real-time indices tracking mobility. Some track the movement of people, others compare trends in the number of weekly commercial passenger aviation flights, and others still track public transport use, or international shipping traffic. 

The impacts of the pandemic on activity, and hence on energy use and emissions from transport, are complex. They include: 

• Direct reductions in mobility resulting from lockdowns. 
• Disruption to global supply chains and trade flows. 
• The perceived need to find alternatives to public transport during periods of contagion, the resulting impacts of reduced ridership on the economics of public transport, and responses by public transport authorities to make their services more convenient, robust and resilient. 

The pandemic demonstrated the activity reductions that result from an acute public health crisis, but as activity is now rebounding, there may be lessons on how changes in lifestyle and behaviour can both reduce energy use and emissions and lead to healthier and more resilient societies outside of a pandemic context.  

Continued research and innovation are required in battery technology, from the development of advanced cathode and anode materials through to scalable manufacturing processes for next-generation batteries, to improving and scaling up both end-of-life battery management and recycling. Innovation continues to make progress in improving energy density, reducing cost and improving safety. Priority should be given to reducing the intensity of critical metals in batteries, such as nickel and lithium, where supply challenges already exist.  

The year 2023 saw the first commercially available electric car with a sodium-ion battery, and technological progress (the chemistry was at technology-readiness level (TRL) 4 only a few years ago) has led to projections that this novel battery chemistry will enter the market by 2030, potentially easing some challenges facing road electrification related to cost and critical minerals supply. 

Efficient technologies to reduce the fuel requirements of ships and aircraft are being developed. For ships, options include wind propulsion and assistance, for which many designs can be retrofitted. In aircraft, entirely new airframe and engine designs, such as blended wing-body aircraft or ultra-high-bypass ratio jet engines, can reduce fuel burn by more than 20%.  

Enabling ships and planes to run on alternative fuels will also play a role in reducing emissions. Promising demonstrations have included ships capable of running on hydrogen, ammonia and methanol, while hybrid electric aircraft and aircraft running on hydrogen – including via direct combustion, via onboard fuel cells, or a hybrid of the two – are at various stages of conceptual design and prototyping.  

The share of energy covered by fuel economy and/or vehicle efficiency policies has more than doubled over the past two decades, from less than 25% of road transport energy consumption covered in 2000 to more than half in 2022. About 50 countries now have fuel economy and/or vehicle efficiency standards for light-duty vehicles in place, and nearly 40 (including EU member states) have such standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. 

Rapid and continuing progress in the electrification of road transport has been one of the bright spots of the clean energy transition. Policy momentum has been instrumental to the progress made to date, and is still building, shifting from an exclusive focus on demand-side subsidies to supply-side mandates, and to incentives and other forms of support to accelerate the scale-up, technological advancement, and resilience and diversification of EV battery value chains. 

Electric trucks have so far been substantially deployed only in China, thanks to strong government support. In the past few years, however, several other countries have announced support for truck electrification, and sustained policy support will be needed to enable rapid deployment. Electric trucks accounted for just over 1% of global truck sales in 2022, a sales share that reaches around one-third by 2030 in the NZE Scenario.  

Worldwide consumer and government spending on electric cars continued to increase in 2022. Total spending on electric cars increased by 50% over 2021 to reach USD 425 billion. Most of this was spent by private or corporate consumers on electric vehicles. The government share of total spending on electric cars remained at 10%, having steadily declined from more than 20% in 2017. 

The current rate of spending on EVs remains compatible with the year-on-year growth rate required to reach the investment levels of the NZE Scenario. Maintaining strong sales growth will depend on a multiplicity of factors, including deployment of charging infrastructure, the availability of car models, and battery costs. These require continuous government support and private sector investment. 

As the electric car market matures, reliance on direct subsidies must decrease and eventually disappear. Incentives offered by governments are gradually switching focus from consumers to charging infrastructure and battery manufacturing, leading to record investments in new battery manufacturing capacity being announced in 2022. Budget-neutral feebate programmes – which tax inefficient internal combustion engine vehicles to finance subsidies for low-emission vehicle or EV purchases – can be a useful transition policy tool.  

Fuel taxation that reflects the societal and environmental impacts of driving internal combustion engine vehicles, together with stringent vehicle efficiency or CO₂ standards, have helped leading markets increase EV adoption, and should be implemented by countries seeking to hasten the transition to electromobility. 

Internationally aligned standards, regulations and targets will be critical to reducing CO₂ emissions from international aviation and shipping, particularly as these sectors are outside the scope of all countries’ UNFCCC pledges. As such, agreements on stringent and binding regulations will need to be agreed by the UN agencies that co‑ordinate such actions for these sectors: the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). An outline of the targets and initiatives of these and other organisations are provided in the aviation and international shipping sectoral topic sites. 

Road sector initiatives, both for light- and heavy-duty vehicles, either focus on both efficiency and promoting zero-emission vehicles, or exclusively on electrification (which in many cases tacitly includes fuel cell electric options). Initiatives focusing on zero-emission vehicles and/or electric vehicles include: 

• The Accelerating to Zero (A2Z) coalition launched at the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) co-ordinates leading initiatives that work to accelerate the adoption of zero-emissions vehicles. The coalition builds on the Zero Emission Vehicles Declaration which has 223 signatories as of May 2023. 
• The Electric Vehicle Initiative, under the Clean Energy Ministerial, with 16 member countries and the International Energy Agency as the secretariat. 
• The EV100 and EV100+ Campaigns, launched in 2018 and 2022, respectively, by the Climate Group. Signatories of the EV100+ campaign commit to transition their fleet of vehicles over 7.5 t to zero emission by 2040 in OECD markets, China and India.  
• In 2021, the Dutch government and CALSTART’s Drive to Zero Campaign launched the Global Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Zero-Emission Medium- and Heavy Duty Vehicles, through which signatories commit to work together to achieve 100% ZEV bus and truck sales by 2040, with an interim goal of 30% by 2030. In 2022, 11 countries signed the MoU, bringing the total number of countries and territories among the signatories to 27. These account for over 15% of total annual sales of new medium and heavy-duty vehicles worldwide. 
  

• Mohamed Hegazi, founder and Director of Transport for Cairo (TfC) L.L.P
• François Cuenot, UNECE