Zero emission cars around the world
The global light duty vehicle fleet including passenger cars and light commercial vehicles (e.g. pick-ups and delivery vans) is growing rapidly, from about 1 billion vehicles today to more than 2.5 billion vehicles by 2050. The majority of this growth will be taking place in developing markets. The growing vehicle fleet will lead to an almost three-fold increase of energy use and CO2 emissions globally.
A major global clean transport disruption is needed to shift to a cleaner and low-to-no emissions trajectory to achieve global targets, particularly the Paris Climate Agreement and agreements on air quality (e.g. UN Environment Assembly 1/7 resolution on air quality). Electric vehicles are a necessary step in decarbonizing the transport sector. According to the International Energy Agency, limiting the global temperature increase to below 2°C will require at least 20% of all road transport vehicles to be electrically driven by 2030 (approximately 300 million vehicles).
Scenario calculations using UN Environment’s eMob Calculator show that while the LDV stock more than doubles between now and 2050, global light duty vehicle energy use could be stabilized to today’s levels and global light duty vehicle CO2 emissions could be decreased below year 2000 values. By achieving a 60% share of battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road, more than 60 billion tons of CO2 could be saved between now and 2050.
Electric mobility and the Global Fuel Economy Initiative
As part of the Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI), UN Environment is currently supporting fifty country projects that have developed or are developing fiscal and non-fiscal national policies and programmes to encourage energy efficiency of light duty vehicles. The active promotion of electric cars as well as their adequate representation within efficient vehicle policies packages is part of the GFEI.
Establishing a fuel economy baseline is most often the first step towards the development of an electric mobility strategy. It provides information about the efficiency of the national new vehicle fleet and is essential for any targeted policy development to reduce road transport energy use Read More about GFEI >>
Countries are interested in working with UN Environment in a shift to electric light duty vehicles for several reasons:
- To support national strategies to shift to low-and no-emissions mobility;
- To reduce air pollution - vehicle emissions are a key cause of air pollution, particularly small particulate pollution (PM2.5);
- To reduce emissions of short-lived climate pollutants, especially black carbon; all while saving energy and moving to low carbon societies and greener economies.
- To implement the Paris Climate Agreement and national climate commitments (i.e. Nationally Determined Contributions);
UN Environment is setting up an industry partnership bringing together all relevant stakeholders such as car manufacturers, electric vehicle supply equipment companies as well as utilities to facilitate the deployment of charging infrastructure in low and middle-income countries
The eMob Calculator to estimate costs and benefits of a large scale deployment of electric light duty vehicles
UN Environment developed the eMob Calculator, which is a free tool to assess the potential of electric light duty vehicles to reduce energy use, CO2 and air pollutant emissions and costs until the year 2050. The tool can be used to perform cost-benefit analysis on a national as well a city level, taking into account the need for public charging infrastructure
Partner-initiatives
Electric Vehicle Initiative
The International Energy Agency (IEA) coordinates the Electric Vehicles Initiative (EVI), a multi-government policy forum dedicated to accelerating the deployment of electric vehicles worldwide and allowing countries to share experiences on the topic. In 2017, EVI governments lunched the EV30@30 campaign to speed up the deployment of electric vehicles and target at least 30 percent new electric vehicle sales by 2030.
