Fuelling Italy’s Future: How the transition to low-carbon mobility strengthens the economy shows that the transition to low-carbon mobility in Italy can improve the domestic economy, reduce spending on imported fuel, increase national energy security, reduce the exposure of consumers to oil price volatility, strengthen the macroeconomic resilience of the country and considerably improve the health of citizens.
EUROCITIES, the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), and Transport & Environment (T&E) are joining forces to organise the first ever European Summit on Diesel.
Electromobility is the most promising future technology to decarbonize road transport. Grid management is critical to electric vehicle adoption. Smart charging is key to minimize the amount of investments needed in the grid. Large scale deployment of EVs represents an opportunity to store large amounts of renewable electricity in batteries, reducing curtailment. EVs can even work as virtual power stations.
Despite the perception that public recharging is a major barrier to the mass uptake of electric vehicles (EV), public chargers are only used for about 5% of charging events, including on-street city charging, car parks and fast charging along road corridors. The data compiled in various studies to date shows that the vast majority of EV charging happens at home or work and it is a lack of choice and availability of electric cars that is the principal barrier.
Which comes first, electric cars or the recharging points? How to tackle this dilemma has been the subject of considerable debate. This report examines the importance and availability of public charging infrastructure and how to efficiently expand the existing network as the number of electric vehicles on the road increases.
Efforts to tackle air pollution caused by diesel cars are moving the problem east rather than solving it. That is the conclusion of an analysis by T&E to coincide with Bulgaria’s presidency of the EU. Another T&E report suggests that efforts to clean up the air in western European cities are less effective than they should be because decisions on restricting certain car types are not based on real-world emissions.
With drivers ditching their diesel cars in view of an increasing number of city bans and low-emissions zones in Western Europe, many of these dirty cars now end up in Central & Eastern EU Member States. This means the air quality problems will be exported, not solved, thus deepening the East-West divide that already exists on air quality in Europe. Bulgaria is case in point. This briefing details the impact of dirty diesels heading east to Bulgaria.
New mobility services like Uber and Lyft offer the potential to get cities moving, improve quality of life and reduce emissions. But this will only happen if new and traditional mobility services can be integrated to make a more attractive offering that finally persuades drivers out of their cars, write Greg Archer and Yoann Le Petit.
In 2018 the EU will develop a budget for the 2021-2027 period. The current budget earmarks €100 billion for investment in transport infrastructure, as well as research and innovation. Nevertheless, emissions continue to rise from the sector and represent 27% of Europe’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Spending should prioritise addressing this worrying trend, investing in infrastructure that helps reduce such emissions. Furthermore, the most polluting means of transport could become new own resources for the EU budget, which would help to reduce emissions and fill the EU budget gap that will be left after the UK exits the EU. Read more in our responses to the European Commission’s open consultations on the EU budget.
Whilst the rest of the economy has leapt forward to embrace digitalisation, transport has remained largely analogue. The internal combustion engine, a workhorse from the 19th century, stills powers virtually all vehicles using oil that chokes our cities and heats the planet.