The white van can decarbonise

The number of vans on our roads has skyrocketed in recent years, with more than a million more being added between 2014 and 2023. Most of these vans have been diesel worsening CO2 emissions and air pollution. Since 1990, we’ve seen greenhouse gas emissions from vans go up by 62%, while nitrogen oxide emissions have effectively flatlined in recent years.

Compared with other vehicle types, the CO2 emissions from vans are going in the wrong direction. The Climate Change Committee has specifically noted that progress is not going quickly enough on vans with slower electric van uptake and rising average CO2 emissions from new vans being highlighted as a concern.

The vast majority of van sales have been powered by diesel, in opposition to the trend we’re seeing in the car market, where diesel is in notable decline.

Ideally we would see progress within the fleets owned by companies and that could really drive a transformation across the sector. Corporate fleets own 58% of all the vans in the UK and yet they drive 76% of the van mileage, which means they have a responsibility to make those miles as green as possible.

The good news is that electric van sales increased sevenfold over the past five years. That growth is significant, and is expected to continue and go even faster as the new ZEV mandate rules (which require van makers to sell more zero emission vans) kicks in and gets the transition really rolling - even though we may not see real, rapid change until the flexibilities built into the policy cease. In fact the ZEV mandate should push the UK ahead of other European countries that have overtaken us in electric van uptake over the last few years.

There are a number of measures that could help the transition to zero-emission cans across the UK. Those include: