Today Andreas Scheuer, Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, presented a master plan for climate-friendly commercial vehicles and agreed with vehicle manufacturers and users as well as representatives from the energy industry and infrastructure provision on how to implement it.
Together, all players involved aim to bring climate-friendly commercial vehicles with alternative drives onto the roads quickly in order to advance the decarbonisation of road freight traffic.
Ambitious climate protection goals
According to the federal Climate Change Act, transport-related CO2 emissions must drop by 42% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. For heavy-duty road freight transport, it was determined in the federal government’s Climate Action Programme 2030, that by 2030 a third of kilometres travelled must be electric or based on electricity-based fuels. At present road freight transport is responsible for around a third of CO2 emissions in the transport sector.
The targets of the climate action programme are supported by concrete measures to make climate-protecting commercial vehicles competitive and to increase planning and investment security for manufacturers and users. NOW GmbH is closely involved in the implementation of these measures, the further shaping of the stakeholder process in the framework of the commercial vehicle plan and the coordination of a funding programme that already began in 2021. The purchase of the relevant vehicles (vehicle class N1, N2, N3) is to be supported with buyer’s premiums, which also ensure the development of the necessary refuelling and charging infrastructure for alternatively powered commercial vehicles. The legislative framework will also promote the switch to climate-friendly technologies, for example through differentiation of truck tolls according to the CO2 output of the vehicle.