The next generation of EU rules requiring car makers to reduce carbon dioxide from new vehicles will involve a weakening of an 11-year-old commitment on fighting global warming.
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The proposals were published this month after three delays caused by significant differences between the environment and enterprise commissioners, Stavros Dimas and Günter Verheugen. From that in-fighting, Verheugen appears to have got the better deal, as the requirement of Europe’s car makers for 2012 has been lessened from 120 grams per kilometre to 130.
However, Dimas has secured an important point: there will be a binding target for the average new car which the makers must meet.
The environmental movement was disappointed at what is the latest weakening of a standard first published in 1996. The 120 g/km target was first set for 2005, then moved to 2010, and put back again to the current 2012. If the proposals are approved, the weakened 130 g/km limit for carmakers will cause an additional 100 million tonnes of CO2 to be emitted between 2012 and 2020.
IPCC REPORT
“It is only a few days since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said a rise in temperatures of 3 Celsius was the best the world could hope for this century,” said T&E’s director Jos Dings. “This is the first chance for Europe’s leaders to show they are listening, yet all they can do is water down an 11-year-old target which was entirely achievable.
“We talk about the ‘tipping point’ of climate change. This IPCC report with its huge scientific consensus ought to be the tipping point in the debate about climate change, encouraging governments and blocs to set ambitious targets in their climate policies, not water down a target set when oil dependence and climate change were less urgent than they are today.”
Verheugen was clearly influenced by a campaign of misinformation by the German car industry, in which some makers said the original draft proposals would put the German automotive industry out of business.
“What we have seen is mindless scaremongering from the German car industry,” said Dings. “They talk of millions of jobs at risk but the reality is they will make job cuts anyway as a result of overcapacity and other problems of their own making and blame it all on environmental legislation. It is simply wrong that the Commission is weakening an absolutely key element of Europe’s climate policy due to the misleading claims of one industry in one country.”
Verheugen has succeeded in lessening the load on car makers by getting the revised 130 g/km target accompanied by other measures – such as biofuels – which are aimed at making up the 10 g/km shortfall.
LONG-TERM TARGETS
But T&E wrote to the Commission president José Manuel Barroso on behalf of the Green 10 group of environmental NGOs, saying: “The long-standing 120 g/km figure has always been an energy efficiency objective for new cars. The target has always been just one element of a set of policies to reduce CO2 emissions from road transport. Hence, making alternative policies ‘count’ towards the 120 g/km target effectively weakens it.”
T&E says that the proposal fails to look far enough ahead saying an 80 g/km by 2020 should be the target and would also give long-term certainty to the car industry.
An emissions level of 120 g/km equates to 4.5 litres of diesel or 5.0 of petrol per 100 kilometres.
NGOs are also concerned that the emissions recorded for new vehicles in test conditions are much lower than in real driving. That’s because slick tyres are used and gas-guzzling devices like in-car air conditioning, lights and electrically heated seats are not switched on during the test-cycle.
• A report reviewing progress in reducing CO2 from transport in developed countries says more action is needed. The report by the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) says “despite significant efforts on the part of some countries, emissions have increased steadily over the last 10 years.”
This news story is taken from the February 2007 edition of T&E Bulletin.
