The chicken-and-egg conundrum is coming home to roost for transportation’s energy transition initiatives: Which comes first, electrification mandates or infrastructure investments?
There are no easy answers; there are a lot of hard questions.
Gisele Widdershoven raises several in her recent analysis of the challenges facing electric shore power for ships calling at European ports.
The questions apply to electrification initiatives far beyond Europe.
Widdershoven, a maritime shipping and energy transition analyst, argues that providing electric onshore power supply (OPS) for ships docking at Rotterdam, Antwerp-Bruges, and other major EU ports “has now become one of the defining strategic tests of whether Europe can maintain its industrial competitiveness and maritime relevance amid accelerating geopolitical fragmentation.”
A key test question, she notes, revolves around “the contradiction between rapid electrification mandates and underprepared infrastructure.”
Port-specific challenges listed in Widdershoven’s analysis include severe electricity congestion in Rotterdam, long-term power cost exposure in Antwerp-Bruges, and industrial competition for electricity in Amsterdam.
All are factors in maritime transportation’s energy transition and decarbonization chicken-and-egg conundrum.
What is ready for prime time today in that transition game?
Not hydrogen.
In his foreword to DNV’s Hydrogen To 2060 report, Ditlev Engel, the energy systems CEO for the maritime industry risk-management company, states that DNV has scaled back its “long-term forecast for clean hydrogen (to 2050) by 45%” compared with its 2022 outlook for hydrogen’s role as a low-carbon and renewable energy carrier.
Main reason: “In the years since then, decarbonization actions have weakened, most obviously in the U.S., but also elsewhere. At the expensive end of decarbonization, clean hydrogen has suffered disproportionately (along with carbon capture and storage) with cutbacks and delays to policy support.”
So, we are a long way from counting chickens or eggs there.
Meanwhile, back on North America’s road to electric-vehicle adoption, the market shows growing interest in internal-combustion-engine options as global gas and diesel prices head skyward. However, recent Cox Automotive data shows that EV sales remain soft.
The U.S.-based automotive services and technology company’s report for April pegs new EV sales at 23.1% below the same month in 2025 and down 6.2% from March.
That leaves EVs with a 5.6% share of new-vehicle sales in the U.S. – disappointing considering that EVs accounted for 10.9% in Q3 2024.
Still, sales of April’s used EVs were up 16.7% year over year and 3% month over month as they neared 3% of the used vehicle market share.
Other brighter transportation electrification news includes the Port of Vancouver’s (PoV) $3 million Electric Container Trucking Program (ELECTRA).
The partnership between the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and B.C.’s provincial government provides container trucking companies with subsidized five-year leases and supporting electric charging infrastructure. Five companies operating six trucks are involved in ELECTRA’s pilot phase.
Considering that B.C.’s heavy-duty truck fleet numbers around 64,000, ELECTRA is a small-potatoes undertaking.
But you have to start somewhere, and commercial trucking needs all the help it can get in converting at least a portion of its fleet to lower-carbon options.
The electrified share of North America’s commercial trucking fleet remains under 5%. That is an improvement from 2019, when that share was less than 1%, but it is still minimal at best.
According to IDTechEx, a U.K.-based market research company, even though the world’s medium- and heavy-duty truck fleet accounts for less than 10% of global vehicle traffic, it accounts for 40% of the global transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Elsewhere along the B.C. waterfront, Global Container Terminals (GCT) has embarked on an initiative to achieve a 45% absolute emissions reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050. The decarbonization game plan for the company that operates the PoV’s GCT Deltaport and Vanterm container terminals includes “deploying British Columbia's largest waterfront EV fleet, transitioning to renewable diesel, and integrating fully electric cranes.”
Meanwhile, DP World, which operates container terminals in Vancouver, Nanaimo, and Prince Rupert, is focused on hydrogen fuel cell container crane testing and refitting.
Despite downgrading clean hydrogen’s market viability as a decarbonization tool in the near term, DNV’s report estimates that hydrogen will attract upwards of US$3 trillion in CAPEX investment over the next three decades.
But admirable portside decarbonization pilot projects aside, maritime transportation is still searching for answers to its electrification chicken-and-egg question.
As Widdershoven’s analysis of Europe’s OPS challenges concludes, EU policymakers face a critical strategic challenge:
“If OPS deployment outpaces electricity infrastructure readiness, Europe risks creating a maritime system burdened by higher costs, unstable power access, operational vulnerabilities, and declining competitiveness relative to regions with cheaper, more stable energy systems.”
Europe, however, is not alone in grappling with how to wring a net positive result from that complex chicken-and-egg electrification equation.
Any jurisdiction that is serious about reducing transportation pollution faces the same calculation complications.
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