The fast lane towards sustainable transport

As hard as it is to believe, the electric car was invented (in Europe) almost 200 years ago. It even became quite popular early into the 20th century but it quickly lost its primacy to the combustion engine which was able to drive longer distances using the newly discovered 'black gold' of the time. It took us many decades to understand that that petrol was more black than golden; that it had tragic ramifications over our air quality and CO2 emissions. Today transport is responsible for over a fifth of Europe's CO2 emissions and is the main source of pollution in our cities. It is therefore responsible for diseases and premature deaths of millions around the world every year.

That is about to change. Last week the Commission proposed ambitious CO2 emissions targets for European cars. Overall, they will have to be 30% lower in 2030 than to 2021

This will require our industry to reinvent itself, to develop new zero-emission cars and to conquer this booming market with new innovative solutions.

Indeed, Europe has been lagging behind for a while. We will now have to accelerate in order to catch up and overtake the current market leaders of clean cars (namely China and California). Yet, while the other market players have been advancing fast, they haven't advanced very far. They are still bound by one critical component: the capacity of the battery.

The major scientific breakthrough in batteries is therefore still ahead of us. The 'prize' for making it will be gigantic: the battery market will soon reach an annual turnover of €250 billion in Europe alone. This is a perfect example of where Europe can plug in. We are therefore rolling our sleeves across sectors to create a European Battery Alliance which will allow the clean mobility industry to go the extra mile, or many extra miles. Our initiative is aimed at producing 'green batteries' which will be sustainable all across their value chain, or ideally value cycle…

Europe's continued enthusiasm to lead the global energy transitionwas warmly welcomed at the #COP23 Summit in Bonn. Not only national governments applauded Europe's ambition and sense of global leadership. More than ever, cities are at the front line of climate action. Cities are the first to suffer from pollution (killing 400,000 Europeans every year), climate change, and congestion. They are the first to develop and adopt smarter and more efficient means of transport as part of a new urban ecosystem. It is therefore no surprise that they are leading the way forward, including more and more European cities declaring themselves as low emissions zones.

https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/929408387367952384

Given that the majority of the world population and two thirds of Europeans live in cities, urban policy can have a tremendous impact. The total pledge of all cities in the Global Covenant of Mayors is equivalent to the CO2 emissions of a country the size of Brazil or to removing 260 million cars off the roads!

The road from Paris remains long and steep. But our concrete actions will ensure that Europe accelerates its transition towards clean transportation as part our commitment to lead the global energy transition.