Electric Vehicles Hold Key To Zero-Emissions And Sustainable Mobility

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International organizations at COP26 have committed to helping 27 developing countries in a bid to speed up their efforts towards a zero-emissions future in their transport sector.

The United Nations and Global Environment Facility announced during a conference in Glasgow that the newly identified nations will be able to secure financing for their electric mobility programmes through the GEF Global Electric Mobility Programme which was initially launched in 2019. 

The programme funded by GEF engages organizations such as the UN Environment Programme, International Energy Agency, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Asian Development Bank to help middle- and low-income countries transition to wider adoption of electric vehicles such as buses, two- and three-wheelers, trucks, light-duty vehicles, and private cars. 

These countries will be assisted in developing national electric mobility roadmaps and set targets, policies, as well as business models, and financing schemes that would accelerate the shift towards using zero-emissions vehicles on roads.

At the COP26 Transport Day, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, remarked: “A world where one billion extra vehicles are added to the global vehicle fleet by 2050 is simply not compatible with a world where we limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Emissions from the transport sector need to fall rapidly. For this to happen we have to make the transition to sustainable, clean, and efficient mobility.” 

The transport sector is one of the key contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and is expected to take up one-third of the energy-related emissions by 2050. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body assessing the science behind climate change, all new vehicles across the world need to run as a zero-emissions vehicles by 2035 to meet the Paris Agreement climate targets. 

The first 17 countries which kicked off the first phase of the GEF Global Electric Mobility Programme included Antigua & Barbuda, Armenia, Burundi, Chile, Costa Rica, India, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Madagascar, Maldives, Peru, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, St. Lucia, Togo, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. 

The additional 10 countries that are set to benefit from the programme include Bangladesh, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, Albania, Grenada, Indonesia, Jordan, the Philippines, South Africa, and Tunisia.