Can a lobbying group formed by utilities, EV manufacturers, and a ridehail company get us to zero emission vehicles faster?
This week, we talk to Joe Britton, the executive director of the brand new Zero Emission Transportation Association, a group that launched last month with a simple but bold ambition: ensuring every new car and truck sold in the United States by 2030 is 100% zero emission. For cars, that’s significantly more ambitious than even California’s new policy. For trucks, it’s wildly more ambitious – most people assume zero emission trucks are much further down the road.
One interesting element of ZETA is the presence of utilities in a transportation lobbying association. Despite the potentially obvious upside for electric utilities in transportation electrification – a whole bunch of new electricity demand – many US utilities have dragged their feet on (or been outright hostile to) decarbonization.
It’s hard to find someone who knows more of the ins and outs of these issues than Joe. I was excited to sit down for an interview with him, condensed below:
Andrew Salzberg (AS): What are the goals of ZETA 2030?
Joe Britton (JB): The North Star goal for ZETA 2030 is that every vehicle sold in 2030 be an electric vehicle (EV). That’s throughout all eight classes of vehicles. Some classes, it may be a bit more aspirational than others, but we feel like we need to put in place the policies to make that possible.