The latest Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership Annual Conference brought together leading speakers, representatives of government, key stakeholders and other experts to ask whether electrification alone can deliver the urgent reductions in GHG emissions needed from the road transport sector.
The conference – ‘More than electric dreams? Future Fuels on the Road to Zero? – asked whether accelerating the drive to battery electric vehicles can deliver road transport’s contribution to ‘net zero’ or whether we’ll need to use ‘other tools in the box’ to cut emissions from liquid fuels and combustion engines while we’re undergoing the electric transition.
Transport minister Michael Ellis MP made the keynote speech infront of 200 delegates yesterday.
The Government has already announced a target to end the sale of conventional internal combustion engined cars and vans by 2040. Even if that target is brought forward to 2035 or 2030, as proposed by the Committee on Climate Change, ICE vehicles will still contribute around 50% of the greenhouse gas impacts from road transport to 2050.
And while progress is being made in powering more and more cars and vans with electricity from increasingly renewable sources we still need practical solutions for ‘hard to electrify’ applications such as trucks and long-distance coaches.
LowCVP’s Managing Director Andy Eastlake said, “We’re making great strides towards the electrification of cars, vans and buses operating on certain duty cycles and with specific customers, but with sales still only a few percent of the total volume we must redouble our efforts to accelerate that transition.
“But, in combination with that, we surely need to take as much fossil carbon out of the system as soon as we can. Indeed, the ‘quickest wins’ and greatest near-term impacts can be delivered through moves to decarbonise more ‘conventional’ transport fuels used in IC engines.”