New US vehicles must be electric by 2030 to meet climate goals – report
The US should ensure almost all new cars and light vehicles sold are electric by the end of this decade, and stop using fossil fuels for power generation by 2035, to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement, a new analysis has found.
Joe Biden, the US president, should aim for a national target of cutting emissions by about 60% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels, for the world to have a good chance of holding global temperature rises within 1.5C of preindustrial levels, according to Climate Action Tracker (CAT).
Such a target would be substantially tougher than the halving of emissions by 2030, compared with 2005 levels, that many US civil society groups have espoused.
Biden’s top advisers are working on a national plan for emissions cuts, called a nationally determined contribution, or NDC – a requirement of the Paris agreement. John Kerry, Biden’s climate chief, is expected to unveil the plan at a US-led climate summit on 22 April.
CAT analyses countries’ commitments against the Paris goals of holding global temperature rises to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, with an aspiration of limiting the rise to 1.5C. The latest analysis, published on Thursday, shows that the US as the world’s second biggest emitter, after China, must cut emissions by between 57% and 63% to remain within the lower limit.
Biden has plans to ensure the US fully decarbonises power generation in the next 15 years, which CAT said was consistent with meeting the goals of the Paris agreement, and to move towards electric vehicles, though he has not set a firm timeline for the latter.
The CAT analysis found nationwide sales of nearly all new light-duty vehicles must be electric by 2030, and that Biden should aim for cuts of 60% in emissions from residential buildings and 70% in emissions from commercial buildings, which would be tougher than Biden’s current aims of halving emissions from buildings by 2030.
Emissions cuts of 60% for the US would be a stretch, but should be achievable, according to Niklas Höhne of the NewClimate Institute, one of the two organisations behind Climate Action Tracker. “If you take climate change seriously, this is what [Biden] must do,” he said. “It is a matter of political will.”
He pointed to the rapid progress made in recent years on electric vehicles, and the plunging price of renewable energy. “Things are possible now that we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago,” he said. “That’s why it’s possible to set visionary targets even if you don’t know how to meet the last five or 10% [of the emissions cuts needed].”
Countries are already spending trillions on rescuing their economies from the Covid-19 pandemic. “Now is the moment, when a lot of money is being spent, to ensure it is being spent not just to support the economy but to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
Biden has also made clear his commitment to a long-term target for the US of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, joining scores of other countries that have also announced a net zero target in recent months. Those long-term targets mean that countries responsible for a majority of global greenhouse gas emissions have now pledged to reach net zero around midcentury, a goal scientists say must be met to stay within 1.5C or 2C.
However, few countries have shortterm targets aligned with that mid-century target, or detailed plans on how to reach their goals. That is where NDCs, a requirement of the Paris agreement, come in.
The deadline for submitting NDCs was last December, but about half of countries – including the US, China, India and other big emitters – missed the deadline owing to the pandemic. The UN recently published a report showing that the NDCs submitted so far would only result in a 1% fall in emissions, far below the levels needed.
The UN now wants all countries to re-examine the NDCs they have submitted, and is urging those yet to come forward with NDCs to do so as soon as possible, ahead of a vital UN climate summit this November, called Cop26 and to be hosted by the UK in Glasgow.
China, the world’s biggest emitter, is also being closely watched. Last week, Beijing published the latest five-year plan, which sets out the government’s economic blueprint for 2021 to 2025, but it merely reiterated an existing goal of peaking emissions by 2030. Green experts said that was too late to have a chance of meeting the Paris goals, and China may revise the goal in its NDC.
John Murton, the UK government’s envoy for Cop26, told a UK parliamentary committee on Thursday: “We are urging all countries to make commitments consistent with pathways to net zero.”
Nathaniel Keohane, senior-vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund in the US, said: “After four years of the US going backwards on climate and falling behind, while the UK, EU, China and others moved ahead, this is the moment for the US to demonstrate leadership and set a stretch goal. What seems very clear from all the analyses that have been done to date is that the next target should start with a five.
“That level of ambition would reestablish American leadership on climate, supercharge American competitiveness, and galvanise global climate action as we head into Cop26. And as a range of modelling analyses have shown, an NDC of at least 50% is well within reach, provided the Biden administration goes all-in on climate action.”