Following a strategic review coinciding with the 20th anniversary of Zemo Partnership in June, the Partnership recently announced the creation of a Zero Emission Mobility Taskforce. It aims to become the leading authority on the policies and pathways needed to achieve a successful transition to net-zero road transport in the UK.
Progress towards the targets will be benchmarked and monitored through the creation of a series of Zemo Zero Emission Mobility Roadmaps – a bold new member-wide Zemo initiative that forms the core output from our Taskforce.
Zemo will harness its convening powers, developed over two decades, to engage the widest range of stakeholders in this endeavour; not just from the Partnership’s existing 225-plus members, but those representing government, industry, road user and consumer groups, NGOs, and other sector experts from academia and research bodies.
Zemo is uniquely placed to make this happen by building on the Partnership’s success and experience over the last 20 years; drawing on the trust and respect that has been established; and driving the cross-sector collaboration that is part of Zemo’s DNA and vital to our sustainable transport future.
Delivering on our promise of decisive actions and accountable delivery, with a clearly defined mission: To methodically identify the policy gaps and missing actions critical to achieving a sustainable mobility future for all.
The Zemo Zero Emission Mobility Roadmaps will inform our conversations with the most senior decision-makers across industry, consumer groups, and national, regional and local government to agree these vital policies and actions – and who should deliver them.
Developed hand-in-hand with our members, we will produce six instrumental strategic policy roadmap reports that identify what must happen to achieve net-zero transport in the UK.
The roadmaps will adopt a tiered approach – outlining the current state of play in each sector, defining goals for each road transport sector to meet, identifying key categories for change, and establishing drivers and policy actions to deliver our future.
Centred around our existing Working Groups, comprehensive Zero Emission Mobility Roadmaps will be published for:
- Personal mobility
- Public mobility
- Moving goods and services
- Sustainable fuel supply
- Infrastructure supply
- Vehicle supply (in collaboration with the Advanced Propulsion Centre).
Public mobility will focus on the pathways for decarbonising coaches and buses, as well as the infrastructure that will be required to support them.
While the bus sector has made commendable progress in recent years, with nearly 2,500 zero-emission buses in service today across the UK, questions still remain about the medium- to long-term policies and support mechanisms required to decarbonise the remainder of the fleet in a sustainable manner.
The coach sector, too, currently has no viable plan for decarbonising c.25,000 vehicles in the absence of funding support and policy levers from government.
In this first phase of the Taskforce, Zemo Partnership will explore three key pathways for reducing tailpipe emissions: The role of sustainable fuels in the short- to medium-term, electrification in the medium- to long-term, and hydrogen in the long-term.
Following the success of our three Roadmap Launch Workshops in September, the expertise of our existing Working Groups will now be used to shape and refine the Zemo Zero Emission Mobility Roadmaps.
If you would like to hear more about the Zemo Zero Emission Mobility Taskforce, or if you are keen to get involved in the work, please visit Zemo’s website.
