Electric vehicles (EVs) now account for more than one-in-four car sales around the world, but the next phase is likely to depend on government action – not just technological change.
That is the conclusion of a new report from the Centre for Net Zero, the Rocky Mountain Institute and the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute.
Our report shows that falling battery costs, expanding supply chains and targeted policy will continue to play important roles in shifting EVs into the mass market.
However, these are incremental changes and EV adoption could stall without efforts to ensure they are affordable to buy, to boost charging infrastructure and to integrate them into power grids.
Moreover, emerging tax and regulatory changes could actively discourage the shift to EVs, despite their benefits for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, air quality and running costs.
This article sets out the key findings of the new report, including a proposed policy framework that could keep the EV transition on track.
A global tipping point
Technology transformations are rarely linear, as small changes in cost, infrastructure or policy can lead to outsized progress – or equally large reversals.
The adoption of new technologies tends to follow a similar pathway, often described by an “S-curve”. This is divided into distinct phases, from early uptake, with rapid growth from very low levels, through to mass adoption and, ultimately, market saturation.
However, technologies that depend on infrastructure display powerful “path-dependency”, meaning decisions and processes made early within the rollout can lock in rapid growth, but equally, stagnation can also become entrenched, too.
EVs are now moving beyond the early-adopter phase and beginning to enter mass diffusion. There are nearly 60m on the road today, according to the International Energy Agency, up from just 1.2m a decade ago.
Technological shifts of this scale can unfold faster than expected. Early in the last century in the US, for example, millions of horses and mules virtually disappeared from roads in under three decades, as shown in the chart below left.
Yet the pace of these shifts is not fixed and depends on the underlying technology, economics, societal norms and the extent of government support for change. Faster or slower pathways for EV adoption are illustrated in the chart below right.
Internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles did not prevail in becoming the dominant mode of transport through technical superiority alone. They were backed by massive public investment in roads, city planning, zoning and highway expansion funded by fuel taxes.
Meanwhile, they faced few penalties for pollution and externalities, benefitting from implicit subsidies over cleaner alternatives. Standardisation, industrial policy and wartime procurement further entrenched the ICE.
EVs are well-positioned to follow a faster trajectory, as they directly substitute ICE vehicles while being cleaner, cheaper and quieter to run.
Past transitions show that like-for-like replacements – such as black-and-white to colour TVs – tend to diffuse faster than entirely novel products.
Late adopters also benefit from cost reductions and established norms. For example, car ownership took 60 years to diffuse across the US, but just 20 years in parts of Latin America and Japan.
In today’s globalised economy, knowledge, capital and supply chains travel faster still. Our research suggests that the global EV shift could be achieved within decades, not half a century.
Yet without decisive policy, investment and coordination, feedback loops could slow, locking in fossil-fuel dependence.
Our research suggests that further supporting the widespread deployment of EVs hangs on three interlinked actions: supporting adoption; integrating with clean electricity systems; and ensuring sustainability across supply chains and new mobility systems.
Closing the cost gap
EVs have long offered lower running costs than ICE vehicles, but upfront costs – while now cost-competitive in China, parts of Europe and in growing second-hand markets – remain a major barrier to adoption in most regions.
While battery costs have fallen sharply – lithium-ion battery packs fell by 20% in 2024 alone – this has not fully translated into lower retail vehicle prices for consumers.
In China, a 30% fall in battery prices in 2024 translated into a 10% decline in electric SUV prices. However, in Germany, EV retail prices rose slightly in 2024 despite a 20% drop in battery costs.
These discrepancies reflect market structures rather than cost fundamentals. Our report suggests that a competitive EV market, supported by transparent pricing and a strong second-hand sector, can help unlock cost parity in more markets.
Beyond the sale of EVs, government policy around running costs, such as fuel duty, has the potential to disincentivse EV adoption.
For example, New Zealand’s introduction of road-pricing for EVs contributed to a collapse in registrations from nearly 19% of sales in December 2023 to around 4% in January 2024.
EV-specific fees have also been introduced in a number of US states. Last month, the UK also announced a per-mile charge for EVs – but not ICEs – from 2028.
Addressing the loss of fuel-duty revenue as EVs replace ICE vehicles is a headache for any government seeking to electrify mobility.
However, to avoid slowing diffusion, new revenues could be used to build out new charging infrastructure, just as road-building was funded as the ICE vehicle was scaling up.
While subsidies to support upfront costs can help enable EV adoption, the best approach to encouraging uptake is likely to shift once the sector moves into a phase of mass diffusion.
Targeted support, alongside innovative financing models to broaden access, from blended finance to pay-as-you-drive schemes, could play a greater role in ensuring lower-income drivers and second-hand buyers are not left behind.
Mandates as engines of scale
Zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandates and ICE phase-out deadlines can reduce costs more effectively than alternatives by guaranteeing market scale, our research finds, reducing uncertainty for automakers and pushing learning rates forward through faster production.
California’s ZEV mandate was one of the first in the 1990s, a policy that has since been adopted by ten other US states and the UK.
China’s NEV quota system has produced the world’s fastest-growing EV market, while, in Norway, clear targets and consistent incentives mean EVs now account for nearly all of new car sales. These “technology-forcing” policies have proved highly effective.
Analyses consistently show that the long-run societal benefits of sales mandates for EVs far outweigh their compliance costs.
For example, the UK’s ZEV mandate has an estimated social net present value of £39bn, according to the government, driven largely by emissions reductions and lower running costs for consumers.
Benefits can also extend beyond national borders. For example, California’s “advanced clean cars II” regulations – adopted by a number of US states and an influence on other countries – have been instrumental in compelling US automakers to develop and commercialise EVs, which can, in turn, trigger innovation and scale to reduce costs worldwide.
Research suggests that, where possible, combining mandates and incentives creates further synergies: mandates alleviate supply-side constraints, making subsidies more effective on the demand side.
Public charging: a critical bottleneck
Public charging is one of the most significant impediments to EV adoption today.
Whereas EVs charged at home are substantially cheaper to run than ICE vehicles, higher public charging costs can erase this benefit – in the UK, this can be up to times the home equivalent.
While most homes in the UK, for example, do have access to off-street parking, there are large swathes of low-income and urban households without access to private driveways. For these households, a lack of cheap public charging has been described as a de facto “pavement tax”, which is disincentivising EV adoption and resulting in an inequitable transition.
Our research shows that a dual-track charging strategy could help resolve the situation. Expanding access to private charging – through cross-pavement cabling, “right-to-charge” legislation for renters and planning mandates for new developments could be combined with strategic investment in public charging, to overcome the “chicken-and-egg” problem for investors uncertain about future EV demand.
Meanwhile, “smart charging” in public settings – where EV demand is matched with cheaper electricity supply – can also help close the affordability gap, by delivering cheap off-peak charging that is already available to those charging at home.
The Centre for Net Zero’s research shows that drivers respond to dynamic pricing outside of the convenience of their homes, which reduces EV running costs below those of petrol cars.
The figure below shows that, while the level of discount being offered had the strongest impact, lower-income areas showed the largest behavioural response, indicating that they may stand to gain the most from a rollout of such incentives.
Our research suggests that policymakers could encourage this type of commercial offering by creating electricity markets with strong price signals and mandating that these prices are transparent to consumers.
Integrating with clean electricity grids
Electrification is central to decarbonising the world’s economies, meaning that sufficient capacity on electricity networks is becoming a key focus.
For the rollout of EVs, pressure will be felt most on low-voltage “distribution” networks, where charging is dispersed and tends to follow existing peaks and troughs in domestic demand.
Rather than responding to this challenge by just building out the grid – with the corresponding economic and political implications – making smart charging the norm could help mitigate pressure on the network.
Evidence from the Centre for Net Zero’s trials shows that AI-managed charging can shift EV demand off-peak, reducing residential peak load by 42%, as shown in the chart below.
Additionally, the amount of time when EVs are plugged in but not moving is often substantial, giving networks hours each day in which they can shift charging, targeting periods of low demand or high renewable output.
The system value of this flexible charging is significant. In the UK, managed charging could absorb 15 terrawatt hours (TWh) of renewable electricity that would otherwise be curtailed by 2030 – equivalent to Slovenia’s entire annual consumption.
For these benefits to be realised, our research suggests that global policymakers may need to mandate interoperability across vehicles, chargers and platforms, introduce dynamic network charges that reflect local grid stress and support AI-enabled automation.
Bi-directional charging – which allows EVs to export electricity to the grid, becoming decentralised, mobile storage units – remains underexploited. This could allow EVs to contribute to the capacity of the grid, helping with frequency and providing voltage support at both local and system levels.
The nascency of such vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology means that penetration is currently limited, but there are some markets that are further ahead.
For example, Utrecht is an early leader in real-world V2G deployment in a context of significant grid congestion, while Japan is exploring the use of V2G for system resilience, providing backup power during outages. China is also exploring V2G systems.
Our research shows that if just 25% of vehicles across six major European nations had V2G functionality, then the theoretical total capacity of the connected vehicles would exceed each of those country’s fossil-fuel power fleet.
Mandating V2G readiness at new chargepoints, aligning the value of exports with the value to the system and allowing aggregators to pool capacity from multiple EVs, could all help take V2G from theory to reality.
A sustainable EV system
It is important to note that electrification alone does not guarantee sustainability.
According to Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) analysis, the total weight of ore needed to electrify the world’s road transport system is around 1,410mtonnes (Mt). This is 40% less than the 2,150Mt of oil extracted every year to fuel a combustion-based system. EVs concentrate resource use upfront, rather than locking in fossil-fuel extraction.
Moreover, several strategies can reduce reliance on virgin minerals, including recycling, new chemistries and improved efficiency.
Recycling, in particular, is progressing rapidly. Some 90% of lithium-ion batteries could now be recycled in some regions, according to RMI research. Under an accelerated scenario, nearly all demand could be met through recycling before 2050.
Finally, while our report focuses largely on EVs, it is important to highlight that they are not a “silver bullet” for decarbonising mobility.
Cities such as Seoul and New York have demonstrated that micromobility, public transport and street redesign can cut congestion, improve health and reduce the number of overall vehicles required.
Better system design reduces mineral demand, lowers network strain and broadens access.
The ‘decision decade’ ahead
Policy decisions made today will determine whether EVs accelerate into exponential growth or stall.
Our research suggests that governments intent on capturing the economic and environmental dividends of electrified mobility are likely to need coherent, cross-cutting policy frameworks that push the market up the steep climb of the EV S-curve.
The post Guest post: How to steer EVs towards the road of ‘mass adoption’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: How to steer EVs towards the road of ‘mass adoption’
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The