20 not out, and half way there: Zemo20Zero

Zemo Partnership's Andy Eastlake reflects on the organisation's 20th Anniversary Conference, which took place on Clean Air Day, 15th June

20 to Zero; no not a brake test for cargo bikes, but Zemo’s view on progress to zero emission transport. After our first 20 years, it was great to see a packed house for Zemo’s 20th Anniversary Conference on 15th July. We had some excellent speakers in a sparkling venue on a sparkling June day.

Held in the new City Hall (a building that does, quite literally, sparkle), on the banks of the Thames, it’s an exemplar of energy efficiency, and the ideal place to talk about the technologies of the future. A modern symbol of what people are capable of creating when we put our minds to it.  

We were of course very glad to secure the space at City Hall to celebrate the Partnership’s anniversary on June 15 – Clean Air Day – thanks to the support of London’s Mayor. Our work on the  clean air and change agendas meant the event gave us the opportunity to reflect on the progress we’ve made in both cleaning up and decarbonising the UK’s road transport in the last 20 years. I spoke about the Partnership’s ‘Top 20’ achievements which range from the agreement, design and implementation of the colour-coded ‘environment label’ which now accompanies cars on sale in showrooms (and in other contexts) to the great progress in bus decarbonisation – both via electrification and in current  fuels - which we’re now working hard to emulate in powered light vehicle, coaches and trucks.

Chris Stark (the Climate Change Committee’s Chief Executive) dispelled any possibility of complacency, saying that while we’ve come some way since 2003, there’s a long and challenging hill still to climb. The Committee expects cars (around 45%) and vans (15%+)  to comprise over 60% of the emissions savings required from road transport in 2050. The contribution of HGVs is expected to kick-in harder after 2035. Significantly, Chris said that to meet the required target for 2050, car travel demand will have to be reduced by 17%.

While cars and buses are, encouragingly, tracking ahead of the Committee’s ‘Balanced Pathway’ for zero emission sales, Chris’ view is that we’ve a long way to go in terms of the provision of an adequate public chargepoint infrastructure and that we need to make progress on vans and heavier commercial vehicles. Critically, we’re continuing on a long-term trend of growing car, van and commercial vehicles use while we will need to achieve the reverse.

A key theme of the Anniversary Conference was that we’re coming through the ‘what are we going to do?’ and ‘how can we do it?’ phases of the transition. Broadly, we know the technologies that can get us there and what we need to get them into the market. Now is the time to ramp-up delivery of every necessary element; vehicles, chargepoints and other infrastructure, energy and behaviour change.

Key to that delivery are local, regional and sub-national agencies to support the ‘bookends’ of national policy and individual action. These were represented in good numbers at the conference and amongst the speakers with two Deputy Mayors of London - for Transport and Environment - and representatives of Transport Scotland and Transport for Wales amongst others.

Such organisations are now in the vanguard of the drive for ‘delivery’ and working collaboratively and in partnership with other authorities and organisations is going to be key to future success. Zemo, of course, intends to play a major convening role in this process and we took a good step forward with this Conference.

After twenty years of focus to identify the necessary pieces, we now need to put it all together within the next twenty to get to zero.

All the event resources, including Chris Stark’s presentation and associated notes as well as videos, images and a range of other resources are all being brought together on our event page: www.zemo.org.uk/Zemo20Zero