Mind the gap - Cutting UK transport’s climate impact

Shifting to cleaner forms of transport is the next step in the journey to cutting the UK’s climate impact and cleaning up the air in our towns and cities. Despite rising electric vehicle sales, the UK’s fleet of cars, vans and trucks is still largely powered by polluting petrol and diesel, and road transport remains the highest emitting economic sector. If aviation and shipping are included, transport accounts for over a third of the UK’s total greenhouse gases.

Successive governments have introduced some powerful policies. The plan to phase out sales of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030 and the accompanying zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, requiring a growing proportion of new cars sold to be electric vehicles (EVs), will result in huge carbon savings.

The ZEV mandate is driving sustained growth in the sales of electric vehicles, but the government now also needs to follow through on promised measures to cut the climate impact of long distance vehicles with high emissions, like HGVs and coaches.

Since 2020, our Net zero policy tracker has consistently shown the significant gap between what active and promised policies will achieve and the emissions reductions needed to put the UK on the right trajectory to a net zero carbon economy by 2050.

For transport alone, we estimate that current policy will result in 97MtCO2 e excess emissions over the period 2028 to 2032 (the UK’s fifth carbon budget). This is equivalent to a year’s worth of emissions from all the cars, taxis, lorries and vans on our roads today. A credible carbon budget delivery plan must address this with new policy to get the UK back on track to meet its international commitments under the Paris climate agreement and achieve its 2050 net zero goal.

It is a big task, requiring a strategic approach, but our analysis shows it is possible to cut emissions further with concerted effort across all modes of transport and there are many areas with considerable scope to act. The range of solutions we present here would also bring a wealth of other important benefits to communities, from easing congestion and cleaner air, to healthier streets and greater connectivity. We focus only on those policies where the carbon reduction potential can be clearly quantified and significant savings are achievable.

We calculate that, with these new actions, there is potential to achieve an additional reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 105MtCO2e between 2028 and 2032, by accelerating the transition to EVs for high mileage vehicles, encouraging the better use of cars, switching sooner to electric buses, expanding rail use, better integrating public transport, limiting aviation growth and rolling out greener shipping fuels.