The White House wants a zero-emissions trucking industry by 2040

The Biden administration is coping the monumental task of making America’s industrial freight transportation system more environmentally friendly. The White House said Wednesday that it aims for 30 percent of industrial truck sales to be zero-emissions by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040.

In addition to those non-binding targets, the White House is meeting Wednesday with stakeholders from the commercial vehicle, shipping and infrastructure industries to help implement its agenda. The roundtable is designed to advance the Biden administration’s goal of “redirecting the construction of the infrastructure necessary to make the zero-emissions freight ecosystem a reality in the United States.”

Not surprisingly, the trucking industry uses a lot of energy and produces a lot of pollution to match. Bloomberg notes that the transportation sector accounts for about 29 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and freight transportation (including shipping, trucks, and trains) makes up about a third of that figure. So you can assume that the US trucking industry is responsible for roughly 10 percent of the nation’s carbon emissions.

As part of the election-year rollout, the Biden administration plans to ask the public to comment on the heavy-duty vehicle charging infrastructure, signaling that the specifics of the plan have not yet been finalized. The White House wants to avoid a fragmented industrial EV charging system without a common standard. The industry seems to have settled on Tesla’s NACS as the de facto choice in the light consumer sector.

Along with the newly announced industry targets, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is opening about $1 billion in Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding to replace Class 6 and 7 vehicles (school buses, utility trucks garbage and delivery trucks) with electrical equivalents .

The IRA requires at least $400 million of this funding to go to local communities most affected by industrial pollution. The White House says 72 million Americans live near trucking routes and bear the brunt of their short-term output. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly (given the nation’s history), people of color and those from low-income households are the most likely to be severely affected by high levels of environmental toxins.

The White House’s goals are admirable given the urgency of the global climate crisis and the role of the trucking industry. However, one significant problem remains: these are voluntary, non-binding resolutions that could – and, given public commentsit will almost certainly be repealed by a second Trump administration if serial napper to return to office next year. As with many other aspects of the nation’s and the world’s future, U.S. voters will decide the outcome this November.