Australia can’t rely entirely on electric vehicles to reduce transport emissions to safe levels and governments must pursue other ways to cut pollution from the sector. Monash University’s Climateworks Centre made the finding in modelling released on Tuesday showing electric vehicles, both big and small, would need to make up 73 per cent of all new vehicles sold by 2030 to meet Australia’s climate goals.
“In the face of moderate uptake of electric vehicles today and quite low uptake of zero-emission trucks and light commercial vehicles, we wanted to think about the approach.” The report found 73 per cent of all new vehicle sales, including trucks, would need to be electric by 2030 to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal, but a “diverse” approach to cutting transport emissions could make up for a shortfall.