CARB Revives Incentives for Clean Trucks and Buses

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The California Air Resources Board (CARB*) and CALSTART reopened the admired Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP**) today to new voucher requests. The 2021 reopening makes available $165 million to California-based businesses that want to transform their fleets with new, zero-emission and near-zero-emission clean vehicles. With an HVIP voucher, industry-leading vehicles can be as affordable as their traditional fossil-fueled counterparts, allowing purchasers of all sizes to deploy advanced technologies that help fleets achieve reductions in emissions and air pollution to support the state’s climate goals and improve air quality in the most impacted communities.

This year HVIP will be fulfilled in waves, allowing the opportunity for more fleets to participate, especially smaller fleets CARB said. Half of the funds will be released immediately. Remaining funds will be made available two months later, at 10 a.m. on Tuesday 10 August 2021. Class 8 trucks performing drayage operations, as well as vehicles purchased by public agencies are exempt from this pause.

This exemption is acutely important to CARB’s Project 800 initiative. Project 800 aims to support the deployment of zero-emission trucks serving California ports by setting a goal of 800 zero-emission drayage truck orders in 2021. The 800 trucks are a pathway toward jump-starting the sector and paving the way for more zero-emission trucks in the near future.

“HVIP is one of California’s leading incentive funding programs for heavy-duty vehicles and is effectively helping fleets get to zero-emission,” said CARB Executive Officer Richard W. Corey. “It plays a key role in achieving Governor Newsom’s vision that all medium- and heavy-duty vehicles be 100% zero emission by 2045. This will accelerate the rate at which these zero-emission trucks and buses can help clean the air, especially in those communities hardest hit by pollution from truck traffic.”

With more vehicle options from Class 2B through Class 8, HVIP will help businesses and public fleets make the switch to clean vehicles and help increase the market for these technologies. The transportation sector is by far the state’s largest source of air pollution and climate-changing gases, and the prime source of air pollution in communities adjacent to ports, rail yards, distribution centers, and goods movement corridors that suffer from high levels of diesel pollution. More than half of vehicles purchased through the project to date are operating in disadvantaged and low-income communities, which are disproportionately burdened by harmful air pollutants and subject to heavy truck traffic.

Since its launch, the HVIP has:

  • Provided more than $400 million through 2020, supporting 1,400+ participating fleet purchasers
  • Helped deploy more than 7,000 clean vehicles
  • Successfully leveraged more than $2 billion in additional dollars of other public and private spending toward these purchases — over $4 for every $1 of HVIP investment.

* CARB is the lead agency for California’s fight against climate change and oversees all air pollution control efforts in the state to attain and maintain health-based air quality standards.

**HVIP is administered by the clean transportation non-profit CALSTART, and is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of cap-and-trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy and improving public health and the environment – particularly in disadvantaged communities. The cap-and-trade program also creates a financial incentive for industries to invest in clean technologies and develop innovative ways to reduce pollution.

 

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