On the acknowledgement that diesel trucks create far too many emissions, an intercontinental group is working on a plan to make one of North America’s major highways a little greener.
An international group of three countries and three U.S. states gathered at the Port of Long Beach recently to launch the British Columbia to Baja California Zero Emissions Vehicle corridor, or BC2BC, that will allow for a network of charging and hydrogen fueling stations along Interstate 5.
The 1,381-mile highway from Canada to Mexico sees an average of 10,000 trucks a day carrying freight. It is one of the busiest roadways in the nation.
The BC2BC agreement sets technical standards and rules on how to build, place and operate charging stations along the route by 2030, so that a heavy-duty electric truck charging in Sacramento can expect the same compatible plug if it zips down to Tijuana or travels north to Vancouver.
The governments also agreed to build 20 electric charging stations and three hydrogen fueling hubs along the route, funded by a mix of public infrastructure grants, port container fees and nonprofit backing.
“Today marks the beginning of something extraordinary — a tri-national, five-state partnership to deploy charging infrastructure along Interstate 5,” California Transportation Secretary Toks Omishakin said, framing the pact as a down payment on a cleaner freight system rather than a finished one.
Locations will be chosen based on studies of existing charging stations along state highways conducted by researchers at UC Davis. The school’s Electric Vehicle Research Center, tapped by CalTrans in 2020, wrote in a 2024 analysis that there is a prevailing fear among freighters of arriving at a station and finding that the charging cords are not working, leaving them stranded.
At a press conference, port officials and trucking experts lamented the environmental damage that diesel trucks continue to wreak on towns and communities that dot the route bordering the highway. Heavy-duty trucks make up only about 6% of vehicles on California roads but produce roughly 35% of the state’s vehicle nitrogen oxide emissions and a quarter of its transportation greenhouse gases, according to the California Air Resources Board.
About a quarter of Interstate 5 passes through major metropolitan areas, suburban corridors, and city centers, and is the main artery for six major California cities, including San Diego, Santa Ana and Los Angeles.
Just as much as it delivers goods, the routes that run through the Long Beach and Los Angeles seaports introduce diesel exhaust into neighborhoods near ports, rail yards and freeway corridors, leading to elevated rates of asthma and other respiratory disease.
It’s an environmental burden that must be alleviated, said Port of Long Beach chief executive Noel Hacegaba, who touted the city seaport’s 102 electric truck charging stations and said they hope to have another 92 installed by the end of the year.
While the 5 freeway does not intersect Long Beach, the city benefits from its use by truckers to freight goods, many of which came from the city’s seaport. “We have a role to play and we want to make sure we are committed to the success of this green corridor,” said Mayor Rex Richardson.
It’s a move familiar locally, as the Long Beach Port inked a deal in June with the Wonderful Company to launch a green route to the Central Valley. It announced a similar arrangement with Shanghai in 2022.
The corridor’s backers are careful not to oversell its timeline. Officials say it’s too early to know how many chargers the full build-out would require, though the number is likely to run into the hundreds. Alissa Kendall, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis, said the new corridor should also generate feedback that helps refine the network as trucking companies actually use it — an essential part “given the constant pressure to show that public investments in these stations and technologies are sound.”