EU gets deal to cut emissions from vans
Car industry will have until 2017 to meet emissions targets.
The automotive industry will have to cut emissions across its entire fleet of vans by 2017, following a deal reached by the European Union institutions yesterday (15 December).
But limits on tailpipe emissions will be laxer and later than those originally proposed by the European Commission, which drafted the proposal as part of the EU’s efforts to cut rising emissions from transport.
At a private meeting yesterday afternoon, negotiators from national environment ministries and the European Parliament agreed how and when to phase in the targets. Under heavy pressure from car-making countries – notably France and Germany – they decided to allow industry more time. The car industry will have until 2017 to ensure that average emissions across fleets of new vans and minibuses are no more than 175 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometre – one year later than the Commission had proposed.
Ministers also succeeded in scaling back the ambition of a 2020 target, agreeing on a goal of 147g CO2 per km instead of the 135g that the Commission had been aiming at.
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Nevertheless, Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action, welcomed the agreement. “The agreed regulation will make vans less polluting and will contribute to our overall ambition to cut emissions from transport,” she said in a statement.
Kerstin Meyer at Transport and Environment, a group campaigning for clean transport, said that the EU should have rejected carmakers’ claims that more demanding targets were impossible. “The industry said it couldn’t make a 14% improvement in van efficiency over nine years, while it managed to improve car efficiency at more than three times that rate last year. Policymakers must do a better job of holding the industry to account when it makes such claims.”
The European Carmakers’ Association (ACEA) has long argued that 160g CO2/km is the “most feasible” 2020 target for industry.