In a paper published by Businessgreen.com, the clean vehicles and emobility officer at Transport & Environment, Julia Hildermeier, says EV quotas start to emerge.

She refers first at Netherlands’ parliament, that voted to make 100 per cent of new car sales emissions-free by 2025. Dutch MPs also told the government to make this possible through EU policy – most likely in the form of an EV sales quota for carmakers as part of the next round of car CO2 standards.

Norway’s parliament also issued a plan calling for the phase-out of combustion engine cars from new sales by 2025. In Germany, the Environment minister recently suggested a three per cent sales quota for EVs and the Economics ministry affirmed that in 2050 “the emissions of newly bought vehicles must … amount to zero”. At the COP21 conference in Paris, the UK government also confirmed that almost all cars and vans must be zero emissions by 2050, joining the three aforementioned European countries, eight US states and Quebec in Canada in the Zero Emission Vehicle Alliance.

But the next big thing is expected in China.

Julia Hildermeier reveals that he Chinese government is actively considering implementing a zero-emissions vehicle mandate similar to that in operation in California. Beijing already promotes EV use: from this year onwards, 30 per cent of municipal fleets have to be battery electric vehicles or fuel cell cars. The scheme has contributed to China’s recent EV sales boost (180,000 EVs sold by end of 2015, up 300 per cent in one year). To build on this success, the city exempts small passenger EVs from rush hour restrictions for vehicles and supports electric taxi fleets.

This kind of regulation shoud help EV sales, including hydrogen cars.