The regions where ICCT works face vastly different challenges in making progress toward clean transportation. In some markets significant progress has been made on conventional pollutants, but cutting greenhouse gas emissions remains a major challenge. In other places, rapidly growing vehicle fleets threaten to overwhelm reductions of both conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases.
In Northern America the ICCT works with two national governments — the United States and Canada — and California, which has been an leader in air quality programs since obtaining a waiver from the federal government in 1967 that allowed the state to set its own more stringent emissions limits for new vehicles.
Latin America's megacities have some of the world's most difficult air pollution and transportation challenges. A combination of geography and uncontrolled vehicle emissions has made many of the region's biggest metropolitan areas notorious for their smog. But efforts to impose emissions limits for cars, trucks and buses have begun to make an impact in a number of places.
The 27-member European Union is a global leader in controlling vehicle emissions of both conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases. If the EU adopts proposed standards, the region's passenger vehicle fleet — already one of the world's most efficient — will be required to reduce carbon dioxide emissions an additional 40 percent by 2020.
Asia is home to the world's fastest growing economies. China and India in particular are motorizing their transportation systems so quickly that even large efficiency improvements could be cancelled out by the increasing number of vehicles on the road. ICCT is working with the governments around Asia to reduce emissions of both conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases.