On September 26, 2018, in the Rayburn House Office Building, with the Commission on U.S. Transportation Sector Efficiency, Natural Resources Defense Council’s Roland Hwang discussed why electrifying transportation is so important.
“It is the single largest source of carbon pollution in this country surpassing power sector in 2016. If the US transport sector was its own country, it would be the fourth largest emitter in the world. That, with climate change, means we need to transform our transportation system.
Second key milestone I'd like to highlight, we're about to hit is that sometime this year, the U.S. is likely to exceed Saudi Arabia in oil production. And sometime next year exceed Russia and therefore become the world's largest oil producer. With this of course comes more air pollution, more water pollution, more threats to our coast line.
And finally, a milestone that hit as well is after many, many years of US leadership in the electric vehicle space, in 2016 China surpassed the U.S. in deployment of electric vehicles. And [China] is now leading the world in deployment of this very critical technology.”