Skip to main content

Stakeholders lobby EU for electrification of transportation

Ahead of its discussion on the European Union’s key priorities for the next decade, seven stakeholder organisations from industry, transport and cities have written to the College of the European Commission regarding the creation of a European Energy Union with a forward-looking climate change policy. They called on the commissioners to focus on the transport sector, which represents about a third of the EU’s overall energy consumption and is almost exclusively dependent on imported fossil fuels. The let
February 11, 2015 Read time: 2 mins

Ahead of its discussion on the 1816 European Union’s key priorities for the next decade, seven stakeholder organisations from industry, transport and cities have written to the College of the 1690 European Commission regarding the creation of a European Energy Union with a forward-looking climate change policy. They called on the commissioners to focus on the transport sector, which represents about a third of the EU’s overall energy consumption and is almost exclusively dependent on imported fossil fuels.

The letter goes on to say that a European Energy Union represents a unique opportunity to move towards a comprehensive strategy for the electrification of transport. It claims a progressive electrification of transport, ranging from private vehicles to public transport and rail can help diversify energy sources, improve energy efficiency, air quality and reduce oil imports.

The letter goes on to say that electrification of transport should be a key EU political priority to maintain the competitiveness of European industry and stimulate innovation, jobs and growth.

It concludes that electrification of transport represents a significant opportunity for decarbonisation of transport by 2050, as highlighted in the transport white paper and urges the EU to make electrification of transport one of the its flagship initiatives within an EU Energy Union and develop a holistic European strategy to accelerate its uptake within the emerging plans for an energy union.

Related Content

  • Best laid plans
    March 22, 2012
    Colossal is not too bold a word to describe the scale of ITS developments currently under way in Europe. The European Commission’s ITS Action Plan has six areas of focus, each of which expands out into numerous projects involving a lot of leg work by various committees, working groups or consultants. Add to that the supporting work and research efforts of the many parts of Ertico (ITS Europe); plus each of the 27 European Union member states is working on ‘transition’ of the EU’s ITS Directive into their ow
  • EU budget ‘should help speed up research for decarbonisation of transport’
    September 1, 2017
    Following a vote on the 2018 European Union general budget by the Transport and Tourism Committee (TRAN), chair Karima Delli said that, by adopting its 2018 budget, the TRAN Committee has given clear priorities for the future of mobility in the EU. She went on to say that in a period of great uncertainty for the next EU budgets due to Brexit, it is very important that the EU secures and speeds up research and innovation programmes such as SESAR.
  • Harmonisation of Europe's ITS deployment still unbalanced
    January 31, 2012
    Dean Herenda, Chairman of the EasyWay project, talks about the progress made and the progress still to be made in harmonising ITS deployment across the European Union. "The deployment and use of ITS in road transport across Europe was and still is unbalanced" Although Europe can be proud of being home to some of the world's most advanced ITS solutions, the relative disparities between Member States of the European Union (EU) in terms of the extent and technological sophistication of deployments actually sta
  • EU having ‘intense’ discussions over ‘low-carbon mobility’ goals
    June 3, 2016
    According to Maroš Šefčovič, the Commission vice-president for the Energy Union, the European Commission is having “very intense discussions” with member states over the individual emissions reduction percentage that they will be assigned to reduce emissions in sectors not covered by the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), says Euractiv. Šefčovič devoted substantial attention to the situation in the non-ETS sector and to the issue of ‘low-carbon mobility’, or reducing emissions from transport. The non-ETS se