Archived press release

European Commission to publish plans for greener cars

18 December 2007

On Wednesday December 19^th, the European Commission is expected to publish its legislative proposals for reducing carbon dioxide emission from new cars. There has already been much discussion of this issue in the EU. Wednesday's announcement is not the final decision, but marks the start of the formal process, which will probably run until mid 2009. Decisions taken over the next 18 months could set standards for all new cars sold in the EU until 2020 and would thus have a impact on carbon dioxide emissions until around 2030. The decision will be a key test of the EU's commitment to tackling climate change.

In 2005, cars accounted for an eighth of the UK's total carbon dioxide emissions. Road transport's contribution to UK emissions is growing both overall and as a share of total emissions. Tackling transport's contribution to climate change will be essential if the UK is to meet its targets under the Climate Change Bill which is currently going through Parliament. Research for the Department for Transport found that low carbon cars would make the single biggest contribution to cutting carbon emissions from transport in the UK.

A car's carbon dioxide emissions are directly related to its fuel efficiency. The more fuel a car uses, the more carbon dioxide it emits. So a car that does 25mpg will use twice as much fuel and emit twice as much carbon dioxide to travel a given distance as a car that does 50mpg. Cars can be made more fuel-efficient by cutting weight, improved engines (such as hybrids, which combine petrol or diesel and electric engines), better transmissions and stop-start technology (which turns off the engine when a car is stopped in traffic).This is not rocket science: the technology to do this is available now. In the longer-term, cars must be designed to be more fuel-efficient, with lower top speeds and slightly reduced acceleration.

What is happening?

The current voluntary agreement to cut emissions from new cars has failed, and the EU is deciding what should follow it. The voluntary deal was reached between car manufacturers (through their trade associations) and the EU in the late 1990s. The aim was to cut average carbon dioxide from new cars sold by approximately 25% within a decade. Emissions are measured in grammes of carbon dioxide per kilometre (g/km CO2). Average emissions from new cars sold in 1995 were 185g/km (equivalent to around 37mpg for petrol cars and 40mpg for diesels). The target was to reduce average emissions to 140g/km CO2 by 2008 (for European manufacturers) or 2009 (for Japanese and Korean manufacturers). This agreement has failed and manufacturers are certain to miss their targets. Average emissions from new cars sold in the EU in 2006 were 160g/km (and 167g/km in the UK). The agreement has failed because it is voluntary, so there are no penalties for non-compliance; because progress is assessed industry-wide, allowing some manufacturers to `free-ride' on the progress made by others; and because Governments have not introduced real tax incentives to encourage low carbon cars.

Regulation is now virtually certain, based on individual manufacturers rather than trade associations, but the all-important detail has not yet been decided. A Commission communication earlier this year laid down its thinking at that stage, and the European Parliament has expressed its opinion in a non-binding vote in October. The Commission's legislative proposal on Wednesday will set out what it thinks the architecture of the regulation should be.

Key issues

The three key issues to be decided are:

• The Commission seems almost certain to endorse its earlier communication and propose that car manufacturers should reduce emissions to an average of 130g/km CO2 by 2012 by vehicle technology measures. A further 10g/km of reductions will come from other measures such as using biofuels and better quality tyres.

• Friends of the Earth believes that the target should be 120g/km by 2012 from vehicle technology alone. The 120g/km target was first agreed by the EU in 1995, to be met by 2005, or 2010 at the latest. The deadline was moved back to 2012 when the voluntary agreement was reached. This target must not be weakened further.

• Friends of the Earth and other green groups are also calling for a longer-term target to be set at this stage, aiming to reduce average emissions to no more than 80g/km CO2 by 2020. This will give the industry a clear steer about the reductions it must make in the next 13 years which is critical given the length of lead times in the car industry between design and production. At the moment it is not clear whether the Commission's proposal will lay down a medium-to-long term target.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust