Clean Mobility: Accelerating transport decarbonisation is at a critical turning point
An overview of why Europe’s clean mobility transition is entering a decisive phase, and how vehicles, charging infrastructure, grids and clean power must scale together to decarbonise transport.
The transport sector is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the European Union. Reducing emissions from this sector is vital to achieving the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality objective. Europe’s clean mobility transition in road transport is entering a new phase, moving from passenger electric vehicle (EV) scale-up toward the harder-to-abate segments of heavy-duty freight.
In the EU, battery-electric cars represented 13.6% of new registrations in 2024 (over 1.4 million vehicles), signalling that electrification is now mainstream but still uneven by country and EV charging infrastructure availability. The UK is advancing faster on new-car adoption, with EVs reaching 23.4% of registrations in 2025 (473,348 vehicles), supported by policy around fossil fuel vehicle phase out by 2035.
A major case study for success in this sector is how large cities are electrifying public transport at pace: battery-electric buses reached 36% of new EU city-bus sales in 2023, reflecting route predictability and depot-based charging advantages. The next growth wave is e-HGVs, enabled by improving battery performance, stronger CO₂ standards and requirements for heavy-duty vehicles, and the emergence of investment into megawatt-scale charging required for long-haul operations.
Investment needs are now best understood as a system build-out combining vehicles, charging infrastructure, grids, and clean power, rather than a single infrastructure line item. An estimate of €1.7 trillion in public and private funding from 2025–2030 is required to decarbonise the road transport sector, rising to €5 trillion by 2040.
Charging infrastructure is a key enabling condition to the rollout of EVs and the electrification of road transport. At the EU level, the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) mandates member states to build public charging capacity for both light duty vehicles (LDVs) and heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) on main roads. Public funding is most catalytic where early utilisation is low (public charging, grid reinforcements, first-of-a-kind hubs), while the bulk of capex ultimately must come from private balance sheets and project finance once utilisation is bankable.
The overall investment required for light vehicle charging infrastructure will be up to €100 billion by 2030 to meet the needs of the European Commission, which has called for 3.5 million public charging points by 2030, highlighting the scale of the rollout challenge.
A defining commercial trend is the shift from “deploy chargers” to deliver fleet uptime through fit-for-purpose ownership and service models. Private depot charging (logistics depots, bus garages) typically benefits from higher utilisation and controllable dwell times, making it easier to finance through long-term contracts (energy + operations + uptime SLAs). Public or shared charging can unlock wider access but often begins with lower utilisation and therefore requires different economics: stronger site fundamentals, capacity-rights strategy, and blended capital or risk-sharing to bridge the ramp-up period.
The opportunity set is expanding around shared infrastructure for commercial vehicles. For buses, depot electrification increasingly pairs charging with on-site batteries and renewables to manage peaks and improve resilience. For e-HGVs, the growth model is likely to be aggregated hubs at strategic freight nodes (ports, logistics parks, TEN-T corridors), with megawatt charging and energy management layered in. Regulation is pushing this direction: under AFIR, Member States must ensure increasing TEN-T coverage for truck and bus charging through 2025–2030, tightening maximum distances between stations over time.
Connected, cooperative and automated mobility (CCAM) and autonomous systems represent the next technology wave, especially in commercial road transport where the economics are most sensitive to utilisation. The EU is coordinating Research and Innovation deployment through the CCAM Partnership, aiming to accelerate safe and scalable rollout. The UK’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) plays a parallel convening and regulatory-development role.
In the near term, the most credible disruption is in constrained settings (depots, terminals, fixed-route operations) and “economic segments” where automation can compound benefits: higher asset utilisation, fewer incidents, optimised energy use, and tighter integration between vehicles, infrastructure, and power systems.
Finally, beyond road transport, shipping and aviation illustrate why “hard-to-abate” sectors matter for Europe’s net-zero pathway. Both are structurally difficult to decarbonise due to high energy-density requirements, safety and certification constraints, and long asset lifecycles, yet they sit on critical trade and connectivity nodes where marginal improvements have outsized economic and emissions implications.
In practice, near-term decarbonisation levers combine efficiency and operational measures with a gradual shift toward low- and zero-carbon fuels, including sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and synthetic e-fuels in aviation, and renewable or low-carbon fuels plus shore-side electricity in maritime. Each requires new supply chains, certification frameworks, and infrastructure at airports and ports.
At the global level, the IMO’s 2023 strategy sets a net-zero direction for international shipping “by or around 2050,” with indicative checkpoints, including at least a 20% emissions reduction by 2030, striving for 30%, compared with 2008 levels.