California is at the vanguard of the revolution in transportation, thanks to stringent environmental regulations, high electric vehicle adoption rates, and an innovative tech community that is enabling new mobility services while seeking to make autonomous vehicles a reality.
And while the US has announced it will withdraw from the Paris agreement, California has resolved to keep the goals of the accord intact and achieve a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. During a moment of dwindling national ambition, California has thus stepped forward as a vigorous proponent of environmental protection – and not just in the United States, but internationally as well. Yet minimizing the harmful effects of climate change will depend crucially on the transformation of the transport sector. This is particularly true in California, where transportation is responsible for nearly 40% of emissions.
California and Germany are united by a commitment to slashing GHG emissions and upholding the goals of the Paris agreement. This task poses monumental challenges for actors in the realms of politics, business, and civil society on both sides of the Atlantic. Against this backdrop, “DE.CA.rbonize Transportation – The German–Californian Conference for Zero Emission Transportation” aims to foster cooperative ties between California and Germany and to enable the joint development of a robust strategy for the complete decarbonization of transportation by 2050.
The two-day conference, organized by the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in cooperation with Agora Verkehrswende, took place in Berlin on January 30–31, 2018.
The corresponding slides may be found in the download section below.
