Transportation

How Can Cities Ensure EV Charging Accessibility for Lower-Income Drivers?

Watsonville, California as a Case Study for Policymakers

California’s ambitious goal to end the sale of internal combustion engine passenger vehicles by 2035 will require addressing the challenges faced by lower- and moderate-income drivers in accessing battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs). Chief among these concerns is their need to have a convenient and affordable place to charge the vehicles. Currently these residents too often …

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Four EV Trends

One of these things is not like the others.

The automotive world is changing quickly. Most of the trends are mutually reinforcing.  But one points in the opposite direction. The first and most obvious trend is the rise of EVs.  In the twenty years since Tesla arrived, EVs have gone from 0.2% of new cars to 13%, and Bloomberg predicts that this figure will …

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Reading the Tea Leaves: Biden’s and California’s Vehicle Regs at the D.C. Circuit

A leading environmental lawyer gives his perspective.

Transportation is now the source of 28% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, more than the electric power sector. The transportation sector is also a substantial source of nitrogen oxides and particulates, both of which are dangerous to human health.  The Biden Administration has taken important regulatory actions bearing on these problems, with others in the …

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How Major Corporate Fleets Can Drive Responsible and Sustainable EV Battery Supply Chains

New CLEE/Ceres report released today with recommendations for corporate EV fleet managers

The electric vehicle (EV) market is growing rapidly, but with this growth comes public pressure to ensure supply chains for EV batteries are sustainable. The soaring demand for batteries relies heavily on the extraction and refinement of critical minerals, processes that have far-reaching environmental and social impacts. Moreover, the global distribution of these operations leaves …

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How Much Credit Can California Take for the Electric Vehicle Revolution?

New CLEE report responds to criticism over how the state quantifies policy impacts.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is the state’s lead agency on zero-emission vehicle policy, from its first-in-the-nation mandate on automakers to produce zero-emission models to its wide-ranging incentive programs, among other policy approaches. But in 2021, the California State Auditor released a report criticizing how CARB measures the effects of its zero-emission vehicle policies. …

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Accelerating Freight Decarbonization

A Guide to Zero-Emission Zones in Cities

The Transport Decarbonisation Alliance (TDA) is a collaboration among countries, cities, regions and companies with the goal of accelerating the global transformation of the transport sector towards a net-zero emission mobility system by 2050. CLEE is actively supporting California Air Resources Board (CARB) with its TDA presidency through research and strategic coordination. Together with various …

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Can the New Climate Laws Transform our Transportation Infrastructure?

Flyer for Emmett Institute 2023 Symposium Panel 3: Transportation Case Study: Decarbonizing Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, listing Hilary Norton of California Transportation Commission and FAST, Beth Osborne of Transportation for America, and Regan Patterson of UCLA Engineering as panelists and Jonathan Zasloff of UCLA as moderator

The IIJA and IRA will spend a lot of money on transportation—but whether they’ll create fundamental change in our infrastructure or continue business as usual will depend on how that money is used.

This is the last in our series of posts previewing the Emmett Institute’s 2023 Symposium, coming up on April 12. Check out the first post, introducing some of the big questions around the IIJA and IRA, the second post, on transmission infrastructure, and RSVP for the Symposium here! Transportation is one of the most complicated …

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The Buildout Begins

New billion-dollar factories to produce EVs and their batteries are popping up across the country, with important political implicationss.

There’s been a surge of new EV and battery manufacturing projects in the past year. According to NPR, “In 2022 alone, companies announced more than $73 billion in planned projects — more than three times the previous record, set in 2021.” We read a lot about the rapid expansion of EV and battery manufacturing.  It …

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Keep on Trucking

A new rule will clean up exhaust from new diesels, a major health threat.

Last week, EPA finalized its new rule imposing emission limits on new heavy trucks. The new regulation was clearly a massive undertaking. EPA’s formal announcement of the new rule is 1100 pages long. The accompanying summary of comments on the proposed rule and EPA’s responses is another 2000 pages. This is partly due to the …

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The Transport Decarbonisation Alliance at COP27

Call to Action on Active Mobility and Deep Dive on Clean Trucks

Last month at COP 27 in Egypt, CLEE partnered with the Transport Decarbonisation Alliance (TDA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) as chair of TDA, to convene experts to discuss some of the major next steps in clean transportation. While avoiding the worst of climate change requires a rapid increase in the pace of …

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