Drowning, not waving: Transport decarbonisation stalls in AUS

After a valiant start driven by the popularity of Teslas and the government’s adoption the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES), progress towards decarbonisation appears to be stalling.

In 2024, electric vehicles (EV) comprised less than 10% of all light vehicle sales and this was only 1% higher than the 2023 result.

Truck sales boomed in 2024 (51,277 according to the Truck Industry Council) but less than 1% of them were electric.

Despite the general acceptance by the community of electric buses, only 0.2% of the nation’s bus fleet is electric.

Of course, adoption of electric motors is not the only way to decarbonise transport. Changing to fuels and energy sources that have lower involvement of fossil energy would also work. However, progress here is glacial at best.

The bright spot is the use of rooftop solar to charge EVs. People who do this not only save heaps of money, but they also reduce the carbon intensity of their travel to zero. Bravo! EV motorists who charge from the grid are not doing so well; approximately 60% of electricity is sourced from the grid is generated from fossil fuels. Speaking of bright spots, the potential of Vehicle-to-Grid, or birectional charging is exciting. For more on this, see our recent work with the NRMA and UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, at Being a V2G trailblazer: Lessons for mass market adoption.

What about low and zero carbon fuels? This includes ethanol, biodiesel, renewable diesel, synthetic aviation fuel and hydrogen. They are all wonderful fuels but their availability is severely limited, and for the most part they cost much more to produce than their fossil equivalents (typically 200-500%). Not surprisingly motorists are not rushing to buy them.

So, what’s the plan to get things going again? Well, that seems to be another part of the problem. Although we are told that the government is working on a plan to decarbonise the transport sector (along with five other sectors of the economy) there has been little sign of output or progress.

No-one said decarbonisation was going to be easy, but unless and until the community is willing to bear the costs of the transition, the process will continue to stall. How big will the climate crisis have to be to change our mindset?