The planned green transition for transport

The transport sector as a whole (all modes including shipping and air) accounts for almost a quarter of Europe's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), road transport constitutes the highest proportion of overall transport emissions (around 71 % in 2018), but this is expected to decrease as road transport decarbonises faster than the other transport modes.

As outlined in the “European Strategy for low-emission mobility” the Commission intends to focus on three main elements: increasing the efficiency of the transport system, speeding up the deployment of low-emission alternative energy for transport and moving towards zero-emission vehicles. All these components have been incorporated in the recently released Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy.

The European Commission intends to promote the transport sector’s green transition through their Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, published in December 2020. During the consultation period last year, Leaseurope called for European support for the promotion of vehicle sharing (including removing current cross border barriers), electric vehicles and related infrastructures, and demonstrated enabling solutions such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS).

This strategy includes initiatives already planned for delivery in 2021, namely the Eurovignette, the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Directive and Euro 7 standards. It also includes measures on the energy transition, road safety and digitalisation. Commissioner Vălean (responsible for transport) anticipated that research and innovation funds will be redirected towards areas such as sustainable biofuels and that the Energy Taxation Directive and the Fuel Quality Directive will also be revised this year. Some of the included initiatives have long been advocated for by Leaseurope, such as the review of EU type approval legislation and measures to encourage cross-border shared mobility (e.g. car rentals).

In terms of concrete objectives, the EU wants at least 30 million zero-emission vehicles in operation on European roads by 2030 and almost all cars, all new vans and all heavy-duty vehicles to be zero-emission by 2050. Other key objectives to be reached by 2030 include the existence of 100 climate-neutral cities in Europe, scheduled collective travel (under 500 km) between European cities with populations over 1 million being carbon-neutral, automated mobility deployed on a large scale, and seamless multimodal passenger transport enabled by integrated electronic ticketing and enhanced passenger rights.

To achieve this vision, the strategy identifies 10 flagship missions with a list of policy actions that will guide the Commission’s work in the years to come. These policy actions are built around three pillars: (1) make all transport modes more sustainable; (2) make sustainable alternatives widely available; (3) put in place the right incentives.

The strategy mentions that policy actions are needed to stimulate demand for zero emission vehicles and that recharging and refuelling infrastructure are required to enable their uptake (flagship 1). The Commission will also establish a new Low Carbon Fuels Value Chain Alliance to boost the supply of sustainable fuels and to deploy e-fuels (flagship 2) and ensure that passenger transport-on-demand (taxis and private hire vehicles) can become more sustainable thanks to common labels and digital solutions for cars (flagship 3). A focus is also on measures to develop more sustainable freight transport, shifting to rail and waterborne transport when possible (flagship 4). The possibility of including road transport in the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is mentioned in flagship 5.  Flagship 6 entails initiatives related to cooperative, connected and automated mobility (CCAM) for 2021 and all legislative initiatives regarding multimodality for ticketing, data sharing, intermediaries (2021 and 2022). It also includes the intention of making the use of cross-border car rentals easy and affordable (the annex refers to 2023). Flagship 7 foresees building a European Common Mobility Data Space and at the same time granting a level playing field for data. The Annex indicates that the Commission will “review the current EU type approval legislation to facilitate car data-based services” in 2021, which is also one of the main lobbying priorities of Leaseurope. Investment is considered key to finance fleet renewal (flagship 8) so that low and zero emission technology options are deployed, including through retrofitting and appropriate scrappage schemes. The COVID-19 pandemic showed the importance of delivering EU-wide harmonised rules for insolvency protection schemes (flagship 9). Finally, flagship 10 focuses on measures to improve the safety and security of all transport modes and includes the revision of the Directive on cross-border enforcement of traffic rules (2021-2022) which Leaseurope is involved with.

Taking into account the COVID-19 crisis, regulators aim to ensure that the EU transport system is truly resilient against future crises by setting out a roadmap for the green and digital transformation of the transport sector. An interconnected, multimodal transport system is considered the base of mobility in Europe.

Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy

Leaseurope's consultation response