Day 8 of 1415 minutes

Day 8: Transport & Mobility

Decarbonising transport – EVs, public transport, freight, and active travel

Learning Objectives

  • Understand the scale of transport emissions in the UK and why this sector has been one of the slowest to decarbonise.
  • Know the key policies driving the EV transition, including the ZEV mandate, and the challenges around charging infrastructure.
  • Appreciate the broader transport decarbonisation challenge beyond cars — freight, aviation, shipping, and the role of modal shift.

Transport: The UK's Largest Emitting Sector

Transport is the largest source of UK greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for approximately 26% of the total. Within transport, cars and taxis account for the biggest share, followed by heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), vans, aviation, and shipping. Unlike the power sector — where coal-to-gas and coal-to-renewables switching delivered dramatic emissions cuts — transport emissions remained stubbornly flat for most of the past decade, only dipping during the COVID-19 pandemic before rebounding.

The reasons are straightforward: the vast majority of vehicles on UK roads still run on petrol or diesel, and total vehicle miles have continued to grow. Efficiency improvements in internal combustion engines have been largely offset by the trend toward larger, heavier vehicles (particularly SUVs) and increased freight movements driven by online shopping.

The centrepiece of the government's plan to decarbonise transport is electrification — primarily switching cars and vans to battery electric vehicles (BEVs).

Transport accounts for approximately 26% of UK greenhouse gas emissions — making it the largest emitting sector and one of the slowest to decarbonise.

The EV Transition: ZEV Mandate and Market Growth

The UK has one of the world's more ambitious policies for ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. The Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, introduced in 2024, requires manufacturers to sell an increasing proportion of zero-emission vehicles each year, reaching 80% of new car sales by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

EV sales have grown rapidly. In 2024, battery electric vehicles accounted for approximately 19–20% of new car sales in the UK, up from just 1.6% in 2019. Including plug-in hybrids, the figure is higher. Major manufacturers — including Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan (which builds the Leaf and the Qashqai e-Power at its Sunderland plant), BMW Mini (at Oxford), and newcomers like BYD and MG — are competing in a fast-moving market.

However, the pace of the transition faces headwinds. EV prices remain higher than equivalent petrol cars, though the gap is narrowing. The second-hand EV market is still developing. And a significant proportion of UK households — particularly in urban areas — don't have off-street parking, making home charging difficult.

Charging Infrastructure: The Chicken-and-Egg Problem

For many potential EV buyers, charging infrastructure is the biggest concern. The UK had approximately 70,000 public charging points by the end of 2024, including around 14,000–15,000 rapid chargers. This is a significant increase from just a few years earlier, but it's unevenly distributed — London and the South East have far more chargers per head than Scotland, Wales, and northern England.

The government has set a target of 300,000 public charge points by 2030. Achieving this requires substantial private investment, supportive local authority planning, and solutions for on-street charging (lamp post chargers, cable channels, charging hubs) to serve the millions of households without driveways.

The charging experience is also a design challenge. Multiple networks, different apps, inconsistent pricing, and reliability issues have made public charging more confusing than filling up with petrol. Ofgem and the government have introduced measures to improve interoperability, require contactless payment, and mandate reliability standards — but there is still a long way to go before the experience matches consumer expectations.

The UK had approximately 70,000 public EV charge points by end of 2024, but the government's target is 300,000 by 2030 — and the distribution is heavily skewed toward London and the South East.

Beyond Cars: Freight, Aviation, and Shipping

Cars are the largest source of transport emissions, but they're not the whole story. Decarbonising heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) is significantly harder — batteries heavy enough to power a 40-tonne truck over long distances add substantial weight and reduce payload. Options being explored include battery-electric trucks for shorter routes, hydrogen fuel cells for longer distances, and catenary (overhead wire) systems on motorways. The government published a Zero Emission HGV consultation in 2023, but the technology pathway remains less clear than for cars.

Aviation is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise globally. Domestic flights within the UK are a relatively small share of total aviation emissions — the big challenge is international flights, which are growing. Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), produced from waste oils, agricultural residues, or synthesised from green hydrogen, is the most promising near-term option. The UK has introduced a SAF mandate requiring a percentage of aviation fuel to come from sustainable sources, rising over time. But SAF is currently far more expensive than conventional jet fuel, and production capacity is limited.

Shipping faces similar challenges. The International Maritime Organization has set targets for emissions reductions, and the UK is exploring ammonia and methanol as alternative marine fuels. The UK's maritime emissions are a smaller share of the national total but are among the hardest to abate.

Active Travel and Modal Shift

Not all transport decarbonisation requires new technology. Walking, cycling, and public transport are inherently lower-carbon than private car use. The government has invested in Active Travel England, a body established in 2022 to promote cycling and walking infrastructure, and there are ongoing investments in bus electrification and rail improvements.

The concept of modal shift — encouraging people to choose lower-carbon forms of transport — is fundamental but politically sensitive. It requires investment in public transport alternatives, safe cycling infrastructure, and urban planning that reduces the need for car journeys. Cities like Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh have invested in expanded cycling networks, bus priority lanes, and low-traffic neighbourhoods, but progress is uneven and often meets local opposition.

Rail is already significantly lower-carbon than road transport per passenger-kilometre, and the UK has programmes to electrify more of the rail network — though these have been subject to delays and budget cuts. The cancellation of the northern leg of HS2 in 2023 was a high-profile setback for rail investment.

Key Takeaway

Electrifying cars is the most visible part of transport decarbonisation, but reaching net zero in this sector also requires solving charging infrastructure for those without driveways, finding viable solutions for freight and aviation, and making the systemic shift toward public transport and active travel that reduces overall demand for private vehicle journeys.

Quick-Fire Recap

  • Transport is the UK's largest emitting sector at approximately 26% of total emissions.
  • The ZEV mandate requires 80% of new car sales to be zero-emission by 2030, rising to 100% by 2035.
  • Battery EVs reached approximately 19–20% of new car sales in 2024.
  • The UK had ~70,000 public charge points by end of 2024, unevenly distributed across the country.
  • Decarbonising freight, aviation, and shipping is significantly harder than electrifying cars and requires different technological approaches.

Reflection Prompt

Think about your own travel patterns over the past week. How much could you realistically shift to lower-carbon modes — and what would need to change (in infrastructure, services, or your own habits) to make that shift easy?

Sources & Further Reading

  1. Department for Transport, "Transport and Environment Statistics 2024", DfT, 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-and-environment-statistics-2024
  2. Department for Transport, "Vehicle Licensing Statistics", DfT/DVLA, 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/vehicle-licensing-statistics
  3. Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, "EV and AFV Registrations", SMMT, 2024. https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/evs-and-afvs-registrations/
  4. Department for Transport, "UK Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy", DfT, March 2022. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-electric-vehicle-infrastructure-strategy
  5. UK Government, "Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate", DfT, 2023. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/a-zero-emission-vehicle-zev-mandate-and-co2-emissions-regulation
  6. Department for Transport, "Jet Zero Strategy", DfT, July 2022. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jet-zero-strategy-delivering-net-zero-aviation-by-2050
  7. Active Travel England, 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/active-travel-england
  8. Climate Change Committee, "2024 Progress Report to Parliament", CCC, 2024.

Through a Product Designer's Lens

EV charging is one of the most obvious UX design battlegrounds in the energy transition. The current experience of using a public charger — finding one, checking it works, navigating multiple apps, understanding pricing, and waiting — is frequently poor. Contrast this with the seamless experience of filling up at a petrol station. The company that builds the best end-to-end charging experience — reliable hardware, intuitive app, transparent pricing, and excellent customer support — will capture significant market share. Tesla has demonstrated this with its Supercharger network, but there's a huge opportunity for open networks to match that experience.

From a systems thinking perspective, the transport-energy nexus is fascinating. Millions of EVs are essentially mobile batteries connected to the grid for most of the day. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology — where parked EVs can feed electricity back to the grid during peak demand — is still in pilot stages but could fundamentally reshape the electricity system. The product design challenge is enormous: how do you give EV owners confidence that their car will be charged when they need it, while also allowing the grid to use their battery when it's parked? The interface design, default settings, and trust-building mechanisms here are critical.

The behavioural design angle extends to modal shift. Apps like Citymapper already do excellent work showing multimodal journey options, but they rarely show the carbon impact of each choice. A product that makes the emissions comparison of driving vs. train vs. bus vs. cycling visible, personalised, and motivating at the point of decision could be a powerful nudge.

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