Full electrification of transportation carries a heavy price tag and long timelines, prompting New York officials to look for bridge technologies, new strategies and alternative fuels that can achieve emissions reductions right away.

“Developing complementary electrification and transportation policies are essential to achieving the state’s clean energy goals,” Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, said last week while moderating a roundtable discussion on electrification and fuels hosted by the New York Climate Action Council.

Tighe pointed out that cars and heavy-duty vehicles like trucks and buses account for about 80% of the carbon emissions from the state’s transportation sector, “which is in fact the largest sector of carbon emissions in our state.”

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) mandates that New York reduce emissions 85% from 1990 levels by mid-century, as well as consume 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040.

EV Kindergarten

“We want fleets and consumers to be adopting electric vehicles, and that’s because the average car on the road today is 12 years old, and 25% of cars go beyond 16 years of life,” said Britta Gross, director of mobility at the Rocky Mountain Institute. “Take 16 years from 2050 and you get the 2035 number [target EV penetration rate], which is consistent with what California’s done and what the U.K. is doing even more aggressively.”

New York aims to have 850,000 EVs on the road by 2025 and 2 million by 2030. The state’s $35 million in rebates since 2017 resulted in over 25,000 EV purchases as of June.

Dale Hall of the International Council on Clean Transportation said New York already has comprehensive support for the EV market with its rebates, strict emissions standards and various infrastructure programs, but there are a couple of gaps.

“One gap is an idea that has really taken off in a couple jurisdictions this year, which is extending EV rebates or subsidies to the used car market,” Hall said. “Oregon has rebates like that, California in a few specific air districts, Quebec, just north of us, and the Netherlands just implemented the first used EV rebate in Europe.”

Ryan Wheeler, who works with fleet electrification at National Grid, said the company is transitioning its light-duty fleet to 100% electric by 2030 and has other aggressive goals on the medium and heavy categories for its own internal operations fleet.

“In terms of getting more EVs on the road … a lot of our customers are still at the first learning stage, so a big focus of our efforts is ramping up outreach to customers about the vehicles that are available, the charging options and potentially different rate structures,” Wheeler said. “Charging access is another priority, so at National Grid we support a holistic approach that includes public access chargers, DC fast-charging options, and the multi-family dwellings are crucial when you think about equitable access.”

Fuel Standards, Alternatives

Ben Mandel, Northeast regional director at CALSTART, a national nonprofit focused on clean transportation technologies, framed the regulatory choices that could help sunset sales of internal combustion engine vehicles.

“Now with the enactment of [California’s] advanced clean trucks rule that does sunset internal combustion sales even on the medium- and heavy-duty side between 2024 and 2045, I strongly encourage New York to assume a leadership position by being the first state beyond California to really come out with a proactive signal that it will adopt those regulations in particular,” Mandel said.

The next critical element is putting in place the right operating conditions to make buyers prefer advanced high-efficiency vehicle technologies in terms of total cost of ownership, for which rate design is key, he said.

“Other measures include a low carbon fuel standard or adopting and really leaning in on the Transportation and Climate Initiative to make sure that the economics of operating charging stations … really do shift in favor of the technologies we want to promote,” Mandel said.

Floyd Vergara of the National Biodiesel Board said that electrification is fine for light-duty vehicles, but that medium-, heavy-duty and non-road sectors such as aviation have unique challenges.

“For these medium- and heavy-duty sectors I think alternative fuels have been shown to be very effective in California and Oregon, so they can and should play a crucial role in decarbonizing the transportation system while the states use that time to ramp up their electrification efforts,” Vergara said. “We’re not talking about an either/or, but really an ‘and’ scenario.”

Biodiesel and renewable diesel provide immediate reductions in carbon, up to and above 80% greenhouse gas reductions, 50% in particulate matter, 40% in carbon monoxide and up to 100% reduction in toxics such as benzene, toluene, xylene, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are particularly impactful for the disadvantaged communities that are generally located around facilities that use a lot of petroleum, he said.

“No substantial changes in infrastructure or operational change is required. … Alternative fuels all get significant reductions in air pollutants and GHGs,” Vergara said.

Mike Scarpino of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center in Cambridge, Mass., agreed that renewable natural gas (RNG) is an opportunity to get immediate reductions, especially in medium- and heavy-duty vehicles such as garbage trucks and city buses.

“If you flip the fuel source from regular compressed natural gas to RNG you can get pretty significant reductions, particularly if your RNG pathways are landfills, wastewater or dairy,” Scarpino said. “Once again, you’d be leveraging assets that you already have in place, dollars that have already been spent.”

RNG can help disadvantaged communities via cleaner refuse haulers, and “since total electrification will be very expensive, finding some of these bridge technologies is very important,” he said.