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Electric vehicles are an important part of countries’ efforts to address climate change. In the U.S., for example, gas-powered vehicles are the biggest single source of greenhouse gases, producing more than a quarter of the country’s total emissions. “A rapid shift from fossil-fueled combustion engines to electric vehicles is an essential step toward mitigating climate change,” says Coral Davenport, nytimes reporter on environmental issues. “You can’t solve climate change without getting rid of them.” The U.S. is moving to strengthen pollution standards as well.
The country’s push is also an attempt to keep American industry competitive. Europe and China are using regulations and subsidies for automakers to bolster electric vehicles. Europe has proposed banning sales of gas-powered cars by 2035. Chinese automakers are expanding, with government help, into new markets around the world.
(www.nytimes.com, 06.08.2021. Adapted.)
In the fragment from the second paragraph “Europe and China are using regulations and subsidies for automakers to bolster electric vehicles”, the underlined term can be replaced, without affecting the sentence’s meaning, by
