An electric revolution is underway in California, which could mean the beginning of the end for polluting and dangerous diesel trucks. In the fall issue of Sierra magazine, which will be released on September 12, the Sierra team brings us a special edition guide to illustrate what the transition from polluting to clean vehicles means for everyday people.

Today, Friend, we're bringing you an exclusive sneak peek into an in-depth story on how electric trucks are changing the lives of workers and community members at one of the world's largest ports.

You can read the full Sierra story here and urge the EPA to protect our health and climate from truck pollution here.

A WattEV charging facility in Bakersfield, California. Photo by Alisha Jucevic.

The end of the diesel-truck age begins at Southern California's ports.

The charging yard for electric trucks at the Port of Long Beach is bright and sunny and full of semi trailer tractors—the truncated front ends of big rigs without their big-box loads. It's also quiet.

To Louis Cardona, a port trucker for the past 10 years, that silence is the best part of driving an electric truck.

If California didn't have grand climate ambitions—thanks to policies such as Advanced Clean Fleets—Cardona would be stuck with noisy diesel. But he now has a choice of what to drive, because state regulators decreed that by 2035, only zero-emission trucks will be allowed to work the state's seaports.

Thanks to years of advocacy, the Port of Los Angeles—one of the busiest in the world—is going electric. But we need your help to speed up this transformation. Act to urge the EPA to affirm clean truck standards.

Clean truck standards are key to reducing carbon pollution from the freight sector. Nationally, transportation accounts for nearly one-third of carbon emissions and heavy-duty trucking is responsible for a quarter of that, adding more than 400 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to the earth’s atmosphere every year. That's the equivalent of 103 coal plants.

Trucks also emit more locally damaging pollutants like particulate matter from their diesel engines, which infiltrates human lungs and causes a host of ailments for people in port communities.

Right now, one of the largest challenges for drivers like Cardona is range. The charging ecosystem "needs to be more like Tesla’s, where you have places to charge everywhere.”

"We're working on that for you guys," says Salim Youssefzadeh, the CEO of WattEV, the company that leased the land and installed the chargers. Youssefzadeh has a vision for the future in which drivers like Cardona will be able to drive 500 miles, pull over and charge in 10 minutes, and then be back on the road—as quick as a diesel fill-up.

If you're looking to see how the transition from diesel to zero-emission trucks is taking shape, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are where it's happening. Together, they’re known as the San Pedro Bay Port Complex—the busiest port in the western hemisphere and the 10th busiest in the world. It processes half a trillion dollars in goods every year, one-third of all US trade that moves through seaports in containers.

But trucks are the primary reason why San Pedro Bay port communities, heavily working-class and Latino, suffer the worst diesel-particulate-matter pollution in the state. That's starting to change, Los Angeles’s sister port in Long Beach now bills itself as "the Green Port."

This is just a preview of Electric Big Rigs Are Poised to Revolutionize the Trucking Industry. Want to read the full story on the people who are driving this shift? Check out the full Sierra magazine article here.

Thank you for taking part in building a cleaner, more livable future.

Katherine Garcia,
Director, Clean Transportation for All Campaign
Sierra Club

P.S. Join us in urging the EPA to approve the Advanced Clean Fleets waiver to help accelerate the transition to non-polluting, zero-emission trucks and improve the health of our communities.

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