The world is finally starting to act on climate change, but the impression is that what is about to come out of COP26 which closed yesterday is totally insufficient.
This week, a number of nations and automakers agreed that we must aim for 100% fossil fuel-free, zero-emission car sales by 2040. The agreement also included India, the second (and future first) country most populous in the world. In total there are 30 signatories: the partnership now includes, among others, not only China, but also Brazil and Indonesia. Six automakers are involved including giants such as Ford and General Motors.
Those who are missing make more noise, however. And there is a lack of the USA, Japan, Germany and other crucial nations in vehicle manufacturing. Among the companies, Toyota's absence is not surprising, but seeing Renault or Kia out of the picture is terrible. Even the much talked about "Voltswagen", so linked to the electric future of vehicles, has not signed agreements. Good. So to speak.
Actually bad.
Not only would 2040 be too late, but it would show a hypocritical and inadequate face of world politics, as well as an insufficient limit, assessed only by virtue of listless calculations. To obtain this result, in fact, all the players in the field will have to make practically no extraordinary effort.
Earlier this year, theInternational Energy Agency has published a roadmap detailing the path to net-zero carbon emissions globally by 2050. You can read the full report here.
For the lazy: do you know what it says? He says the world needs to stop investing NOW, THIS YEAR in new fossil fuel projects. And he says new car sales must be electric 60% by 2030. Above all, it says that all (I emphasize: all) new car sales must be electric by 2035.
Not in 2040.
The IEA report goes further, also defining the “net benefit of these ideas”. Over 2 million lives saved and 0,4% more global GDP growth per year. These are the results for an investment made in favor of all earthlings, and not just some.
To abandon fossil fuel in 2035? Mathematically easy.
Some may argue that reaching the milestone in 2035 is too difficult, but the math says it is not.
A common rule of thumb in the automotive industry is that a car model cycle lasts about 5-7 years, more or less, before a significant “refresh”. And that new round of cars will also go from design to production in about 5-7 years. If today we take every vehicle model onto the road and let it run until the "natural" end of its cycle, we can more successfully make 2035 the year the last fossil fuel vehicle is sold to consumers.
Any automaker that was stupid (or greedy) enough to begin the process of designing a new fossil fuel vehicle this year the whole next 5-7 years may still pass to design that vehicle before launch (2021-2028), and then spend another 5-7 years selling that vehicle until the end of its model cycle (2028-2035). Even just at that natural pace, we would be still close at the expiration of 2035.
Since 2014, when Tesla showed the "dinosaurs" what it was capable of, serious companies should have understood where the wind would go.
The future has already been written. Insane and criminal slow down the process again
Norway has targeted a total ban on fossil fuel vehicles by 2025, yet already in 2021, sales of “old-fashioned” new cars have practically vanished in the country. Most new cars are electric only, over 80%, and nearly 10% have some sort of electrified powertrain. Trends show these numbers continue to rise
The main obstacles to mass adoption? Greater availability/variety of models and the development of dedicated infrastructure. 14 years should be more than enough to solve these problems, as long as we start seriously now.
There's not much to go around: we have to do so, according to science, in order to avoid the worst of the climate emergency. According to mathematics, however, we can do it without changing current production plans.
