Five Minutes With: Stephanie Kodish on electrifying road transport globally

Ahead of the 2026 UN Climate Change conference, COP31, held in Antalya Türkiye this year, we spoke to Stephanie Kodish, Senior Global Director for Catalyst MobilityTM and its Global Drive to Zero program, about electrifying road transport around the world.

Q: What does Catalyst Mobility do, and how is it pushing for electrified road transport?

Catalyst Mobility works across stakeholders, such as government, industry, and communities – all towards the objective of clean, equitable, and affordable transport across the world.

In our work, we see that one of the most effective ways to build momentum is to bring together governments, fleet operators, vehicle manufacturers, infrastructure providers, and other stakeholders around shared deployment opportunities. By focusing on specific geographies and real-world use cases, stakeholders can align investments, address implementation challenges, and build confidence in the transition to zero-emission trucking. For example, freight corridors are increasingly serving as focal points for collaboration across the ecosystem, helping demonstrate how coordinated action can accelerate deployment of both zero-emission trucks and the infrastructure needed to support them.

What we see is that bringing together stakeholders from across the ecosystem and creating a forum for governments, industry, and financiers to collaborate, the experiences gained in one transport corridor are transferred across others. Whether it is specific to infrastructure planning, the governance that enables countries to work together, or policies to provide market certainty—progress in one geography can help inform and accelerate market development in another.

Similar questions are being dealt with by people in various regions. We are bringing them together to share learnings, elevate the success stories, identify progress across the freight ecosystem as a Plan to Accelerate Solutions under the Action Agenda in order to decarbonize trucks and buses in alignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Q: What examples of zero emissions freight corridors are we seeing right now?

Last year at COP30, we launched e-Dutra, which is a 800-kilometer roundtrip freight route between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil. By 2030, it aims to host 1,000 carbon-free truck trips a day. The opportunity is tremendous. Right now it aligns nearly 50 committed industry stakeholders, including the charge point operators, the utilities, the local and national government, the manufacturers, and the fleets.

e-Dutra is one incredible example of zero emission freight corridors that are scaling as part of the Global Green Road Corridor Initiative all around the world. Through the GGRC initiative and the incredible efforts of partners on specific corridors, public and private sector innovators are collaboratively creating achievable, accessible, and scalable models across different regions.

Another GGRC example is the British Columbia in Canada to Baja California in Mexico (BC2BC) corridor. It was launched by five subnational governments championed by the California State Transportation Agency, Catalyst Mobility, and the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. This route spans over 1,300 miles across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, and serves nearly 10,000 trucks each day. The project has laid the groundwork for 20 electric charging hubs and three hydrogen stations. We’re now looking at harmonizing policy and standards, and expanding the network in order for freight to be entirely carbon-free and clean along that full route.

These are far from isolated efforts. GGRCs are now in development across six continents, from Colombia and the U.S. East Coast to Spain-to-France, Southern and Northern Africa, India and Australia, including a corridor linking Central Asia to China and Europe. Each is tailored to its region, but all aim to make zero-emission freight practical at scale.

Q: How is continuity between COPs helping build some of that momentum in the transport sector?

There's much sparkle, news, and enthusiasm when it’s time for COP. But there also needs to be continuity in the tangible actions being delivered on the ground. The Global Green Road Corridor Initiative supports and can accelerate a successful transition away from fossil fuels, because it’s focused on concrete plans made with stakeholders across the ecosystem to not only ideate but actually implement solutions.

Clean transport goes hand in hand with clean energy. The Hume corridor in Australia, for example, which is also part of the Global Green Road Corridor Initiative, is meant to be entirely powered by renewables. Solutions must be tailored to local needs and designed by regional ecosystem partners.

At Drive to Zero, the Global Memorandum of Understanding on ZE-MHDVs (Global MOU) we co-lead with the Government of Colombia brings together 43 countries and 300+ subnational and private sector endorsers working toward 100% new zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sales by 2040. Together, they represent one-in-four trucks globally and 44 percent of world GDP. Members include Canada, the first to sign; Ethiopia, which banned gasoline and diesel truck imports; and the Netherlands, which is rolling out zero-emission freight zones.

COP31 and the Presidency’s “35 by 35” electrification target offers an opportunity to showcase actionable ways to transform transport systems into carbon-free, future-proof networks. That is something that we are looking forward to engaging with in Antalya for COP31, and in Addis Ababa for COP32.