FISITA Carbon Neutral Mobility - Position Paper

FOP2023-09-01
 
Climate change and the associated CO2 challenge led to the Paris Agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in 2015. Nations agreed to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees over the reference.
 
The Agreement also introduced the notion of carbon neutrality. But the path to carbon neutrality is as important as the destination; it is urgent to mitigate the impact of cumulative emissions, a sharper decrease in the amount of CO2 emitted annually will create long term benefits on the way to any previously agreed lower CO2 emission target levels.
 
The automotive industry has made considerable efforts over the last 30 years to reduce CO2 emissions, notably through initiatives such as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations; and it has developed technologies to meet the increasingly stringent emissions and fuel economy regulations introduced in the world’s major automotive regions.
 
Carbon neutral mobility involves primarily the automotive industry, but it cannot be achieved without the additional input of a much wider network that includes energy providers, raw material suppliers, national and regional authorities, and, significantly,  consumers.