The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has awarded $8.2 million in state incentives to help companies operating in Texas purchase 51 electric trucks.
The announcement is a win for communities, the climate and the companies who secured the historic funding opportunity. The announced funds should signal to companies across the country that clean fleet investments are now part of the package of economic incentives that make Texas such an attractive place to do business.
Medium- and heavy-duty trucks only make up 10% of the vehicles on American roads and highways, but they produce a disproportionate amount of climate and local air pollution per mile. That’s why states, cities and counties across the country have been working for years to clean up these critical pieces of our economy.
Colorado has two urgent opportunities — alongside complementary measures that explicitly prioritize frontline communities — to seize this momentum and produce cleaner air and reduced climate emissions faster.
By Larissa Koehler and Brian Urbaszewski
Today, the Illinois Commerce Commission issued a final order approving beneficial electrification plans from the state’s two biggest utilities — Commonwealth Edison and Ameren. The transportation-focused plans, directed by the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, are critical to decarbonizing the transportation sector in Illinois.
By Elizabeth B. Stein and Cole Jermyn
Back in December, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities released a revised straw proposal for the development of charging infrastructure for zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles throughout the state. This proposal comes over a year after the preliminary proposal was released in June 2021. When it comes to building infrastructure at a large scale and the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other health-harming pollution, especially in already overburdened communities, a year’s delay is costly. The BPU must work quickly to finalize an order and direct the utilities to implement their resulting programs soon to align with the rapid deployment of zero-emission trucks and buses expected in New Jersey.
By Eriko Shrestha and Tianyi Sun
There is extraordinary excitement today over zero and low carbon hydrogen. But can it live up to the silver-bullet hype?
Case in point: Evidence indicates that in certain applications, green hydrogen made using wind or solar power could indeed yield a big climate benefit over fossil fuels. And in applications where other clean alternatives are lacking, it could be one of our best decarbonization tools.
Electric heavy-duty vehicles have come a long way in a pretty short time. Back in 2018, we were excited about prototype vehicles and trucks with 60-mile range. Today there are scores of truck models available at ever increasing ranges, clear market segments where these vehicles can thrive today, and ever-growing fleet interest in deploying these vehicles.