HDVs are claimed to be responsible for over 6% of total European Union (EU) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and more than 25% of GHG emissions from road transport. According to the European Commission (EC), reducing these emissions will be crucial to the EU achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and lowering demand for imported fossil fuels.

Under the newly-approved targets, CO₂ emissions from large trucks (including vehicles such as garbage trucks, tippers or concrete mixers) and buses weighing more than 7.5 tonnes will have to be reduced by 45% for the period 2030–2034, 65% for 2035–2039 and 90% as of 2040. By 2030, new urban buses will need to reduce their emissions by 90% and become zero-emission by 2035. Emissions reduction targets are also set for trailers (7.5%) and semi-trailers (10%), starting from 2030.

The targets now have to be approved by the European Council later in April. At which point, if successful, the regulation will become law 20 days after its publication in the EU Official Journal.

Even so, the law requires the EC to conduct a detailed review of the effectiveness and impact of the new rules by 2027. This review will need to assess, among other aspects, whether to apply the rules to small lorries, the role of a methodology for registering HDVs exclusively running on CO₂-neutral fuels, and the role that a carbon correction factor could have in the transition towards zero-emission HDVs.

It also requires the EC to look into synthetic fuels for trucks, with a proposal to register heavy-duty vehicles running only on e-fuels expected within the next year.

Commenting on the announcement, Fedor Unterlohner, Freight Manager at Transport and Environment (T&E), says: ‘European truck manufacturers now have a clear roadmap towards producing only zero-emission… The law agreed is a compromise that gives one of Europe’s biggest polluters a path to go green. Long-term investment certainty has been given to manufacturers which are facing electric competition from foreign rivals. They must not be diverted into dead-end technologies for trucks, such as biofuels and e-fuels, that cannot compete on efficiency and cost.’

Meanwhile, according to the Global Commercial Vehicle Drive to Zero programme, many companies that back the EU regulation, such as DHL Group, Nestlé, IKEA, Milence and ChargePoint, have already committed to more ambitious CO₂ reduction targets to transform their own fleets due to the related operational, economic, jobs, climate and competitiveness benefits. The companies note that a strong policy signal from the EU will help rapidly increase the number of zero-emission trucks available on the market.

In addition to their individual company electrification goals, several of the law’s backers are endorsers of the Global Memorandum of Understanding on Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles (Global MOU). It calls for 100% new zero-emission medium- and HDV sales by 2040 at the latest, with an interim goal of at least 30% new sales by 2030. Some 33 countries, including 10 EU member states (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal) are Global MOU signatories. Together with the US, Canada, Turkey, Chile and others, some 21% of the medium- and HDV sales market globally has signed up to the pledge.

Although welcoming the European Parliament approval, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) warns that vehicle targets are only part of the puzzle for decarbonising truck and bus transport.

‘Simply setting ambitious targets for manufacturers and hoping smooth implementation follows is not a strategy,’ says Harald Seidel, Chairperson of ACEA’s Commercial Vehicles Board. ‘Europe is adopting the most ambitious 2030 targets for CO₂ reductions in the world. However, ambitious targets must be backed up by equally ambitious enabling conditions and a coherent regulatory framework.’

ACEA notes that zero-emission vehicles are not the bottleneck and manufacturers cannot tackle the shared decarbonisation challenge alone, especially as essential enabling conditions are beyond their control. To put the scale of the challenges in context, it notes that there is almost no public charging infrastructure suitable for trucks and buses available today. It says Europe needs at least 50,000 publicly-accessible chargers and at least 700 hydrogen refilling stations to achieve the CO₂-reduction target of 45% by 2030, adding that carbon pricing and incentive schemes aimed at narrowing the total cost of ownership gap between traditional diesel vehicles and zero-emission counterparts fall short.

According to ACEA, trucks and buses are poised to play an even larger role in facilitating movement across Europe in the future and, as a result, it has set out a blueprint for what Europe’s policy makers can do in its #FutureDriven Manifesto which it says is ‘tailored to the specific needs and challenges of zero-emission trucks and buses’.

EU funding to boost zero-emission mobility  

Meanwhile, in related news, the EC has unveiled plans to boost zero-emission mobility with over €424mn in funding for 42 new projects deploying alternative fuels infrastructure. The projects will aid the installation of electric recharging points and hydrogen refuelling stations, as well as the electrification of airports, taking Europe closer to its Green Deal goals. Financing will come from the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Facility (AFIF) of the Connecting Europe Facility.

Commenting on the funding, Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean says: ‘Since 2021, the EU has granted over €1.3bn through AFIF to several projects, deploying 26,396 electric recharging points, 202 hydrogen refuelling stations, and electrifying ground operations in 63 airports. This last call was the most successful regarding the projects’ number and quality so far, showing the growing interest in hydrogen and electric charging infrastructure.’