Zero-emission vehicles will need to hold a dominant automotive market share by 2035 for the Paris Agreement’s global warming target of 1.5 degrees Celsius to be truly achievable, research group Climate Action Tracker (CAT) has claimed- EurActiv’s partner edie.net reports.

A report released this week calls for “substantial changes” in the transport sector in order to meet the climate targets set at COP21 last year. It is the first in a series of decarbonisation reports fromCAT – an independent consortium of research groups including NewClimate Institute, Climate Analytics, Ecofys and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Commenting on the report, NewClimate Institute’s Markus Hagemann said: “Emissions standards only get the transport fleet to a certain point—it is clear that in order to get to the Paris Agreement’s lower temperature goal of 1.5C, the world needs to make a paradigm shift to zero emissions vehicles.”

However, even achieving a dominant share of EVs in car fleets is estimated to not be enough to reach the 1.5C targets, CAT says, with the report suggesting that an ambitious decarbonisation of the power sector will also need to be achieved in order to ensure the vehicles are truly ‘zero-emission’

Yvonne Deng from Ecofys added: “Aside from much-needed shifts in transport behaviour, for the transport sector to decarbonise there is no choice but to adopt zero-emission vehicles. For electric vehicles (EVs), this would mean that they also need to be powered by renewable electricity.”

The report goes on to suggest that, if the majority of countries were to double their fuel economy standards for new cars by 2030 – as well as achieve a 50% uptake of EVs by 2050 – then the world would be on a path to stay within the 2C global warming goal set out in the Paris Agreement.