Clean Vehicles & Air Quality

The Working Group addresses major challenges related to air quality and current developments in the field of clean and sustainable transportation within our cities.

Air pollution remains one of the biggest environmental health risks in Europe. Fighting for clean air is one of the major challenges that our cities and regions are addressing, but this requires technical know-how, adequate resources, and a strong political commitment. By promoting peer exchanges and capacity-building activities with our members, we support them in pushing for improved air quality, by assessing policy frameworks and researching emerging technologies that hold the potential to improve the air we breathe. This includes upstream measures like restricting the number of pollutant vehicles in cities, but also addressing emerging issues like noise pollution or non-exhaust emissions, a growing contributor to air pollution from road transport.

When it comes to clean vehicles, decarbonisation is also a major driving force behind the current EU policy on climate neutrality. The future is electric and cities are leading by example. Still, they need the proper enabling conditions in place, including support for the deployment of recharging infrastructure and the adoption of clean fleets. Ensuring alignment of electrification strategies with current sustainable mobility and urban planning policies is also a priority, and the working group currently explores a variety of tools and innovative strategies: future-proof concepts like smart, fast and bi-directional charging, adoption of right-sized vehicles fit for our cities, and the links between electromobility, road safety and parking. This is a transversal topic that also In the policy field, several relevant EU Directives and Regulations are being set up and will shape the future of urban mobility and transport emissions including the European Climate Law, the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR), the Eneregy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD), the EURO 7 type-approval regulations, the revision of CO₂ Standards for both Light Duty Vehicles and Heavy Duty Vehicles, and the revision of the Ambient Air Quality Directive.

Through the Working Group, POLIS brings the voice of cities and regions to several expert groups that shape the EU policy like the European Commission’s Sustainable Transport Forum, the Platform for Electromobility, the Zero Pollution Stakeholder Platform and the 2Zero public-private partnership as an associate member.

Topic priorities for 2025

Our current topic priorities for 2025 are the following:

• Air quality: help cities get ready for new requirements of revised Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD); social acceptance of clean air policies such as LEZ and ZEZ—in cooperation with the Governance & Integration, Active Travel & Health, and Access Working Groups;
• Clean Vehicles: in particular, AFIR/EPBD implementation (challenges and opportunities in deploying EV charging infrastructure: help cities and regions do it in a smart and future-proof way; integration of EV charging deployment, parking and urban planning; capacity-building linked to Sustainable Transport Forum Policy Guidelines, R&I projects, and data; barrier-free EV charging deployment); right-sizing of vehicles, including support measures to enable LEVs such as battery swapping/multimodal electromobility; procurement and operational challenges/synergies of ZE municipal fleets, including buses and trucks;
• E-fuels for hard-to-electrify sectors: emerging topic, given the pressure to include these in the revised CO2 standards for cars and vans—do e-fuels have any place on our roads?
• Non-exhaust emissions