One Year in Action: PATH2ZERO Is Paving the Way to Net Zero Transport
Transport remains one of Europe’s most persistent climate challenges. While emissions have stabilised or fallen in other sectors, transport-related greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise—driven by economic growth, complex mobility patterns, and fragmented policy approaches. Today, domestic and international transport emits more than one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e) each year, accounting for 29% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The decarbonisation of the transport sector must accelerate to achieve the EU’s climate goals for 2030 and 2050. It demands robust, data-driven tools that can connect policy choices to real-world impacts.
One year into its journey, PATH2ZERO is delivering exactly that.
Building the foundations for credible net-zero transport pathways
In its first year, PATH2ZERO has focused on building the analytical and technical backbone needed to design, assess, and benchmark credible pathways towards climate-neutral mobility. At the heart of this work is a Common Analytical Framework, which enables consistent mapping of national transport policies and strategies across Europe.
This framework now underpins a growing ecosystem of tools, including:
- P2Z_PolicyFrameMapper, which captures and visualises national transport policy elements in a harmonised way.
- P2Z_DataSyncer, a dedicated pipeline for integrating, validating, and harmonising diverse datasets to support modelling and evaluation.
“The climate crisis demands coordinated and ambitious action, and Path2Zero is one of them. We are not just modelling pathways, but co-designing realistic solutions together with policymakers, industry, and civil society," said Dimitrios Milakis, coordinator of PATH2ZERO.
Together, these tools ensure that policy assessments are based on comparable, transparent, and high-quality data, enabling meaningful comparison across countries and supporting evidence-based decision-making at both national and EU levels.
Advancing next-generation transport modelling
Alongside data and policy mapping, PATH2ZERO has made strong progress in developing its core modelling architecture. Work is well underway on STraDyM (Transport Strategies Dynamic Model), which will form the basis of the P2Z_Forecaster—a tool designed to project transport activity, energy use, and emissions through to 2050.
This work ensures that future PATH2ZERO scenarios will not only assess emissions outcomes but also consider economic impacts, sectoral interactions, and fairness across countries, supporting more balanced and realistic transition pathways across the EU.
Putting collaboration and co-creation at the centre
From the outset, PATH2ZERO has prioritised stakeholder engagement as a core pillar of the project. Over the past year, National Stakeholder Groups (NSGs) have been established across participating countries, bringing together policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to ground the project’s work in real-world needs and constraints. These efforts will feed directly into future phases of the project, including the development of more ambitious and inclusive net-zero transport pathways.
PATH2ZERO has also launched a sister-project collaboration with the MarLEN Project, a European initiative advancing research, innovation, and decarbonisation in maritime and inland waterway transport. Together, PATH2ZERO and MarLEN underscore the importance of transnational cooperation and cross-modal knowledge exchange in turning evidence-based strategies into actionable outcomes. Joint activities, including mutual-learning workshops, joint publications, and knowledge-sharing initiatives, are planned from spring 2026, strengthening the European Research Area and supporting more integrated, climate-neutral transport solutions across modes.
Looking ahead
Over the coming year, the project will move from foundations to application—advancing modelling, launching benchmarking activities, and beginning the design of next-generation net-zero transport pathways that go beyond business-as-usual.
Interested in getting involved or learning more? Get in touch with the PATH2ZERO team at info [at] path2zero [dot] eu.
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