Deal struck on car emissions limits

MEPs and member states last night (24 June) reached a deal on carbon dioxide limits for cars from 2020.

The deal, which needs rubber-stamping by leaders of the member states, does not include a 2025 target range in the legislation itself, a move that had been demanded by the European Parliament.

The new rules will limit average fleet emissions to 95 grams of CO2 per kilometre (g/km) from 2020, down from the 130g/km limit set for 2015.

MEPs wanted to insert an indicative range of 68-78 g/CO2km as a 2025 target, subject to an impact assessment. But this was rejected by member states.

As a compromise, the European Commission has said it will conduct an impact assessment on improved fuel efficiency of 4–6% per year after 2020 – roughly equivalent to the range defined by the Parliament for this five year period.

One of the more controversial parts of the talks involved the ‘supercredits’ scheme, in which electric cars count more towards the average emissions of a fleet. The scheme was meant to stop after 2015. However, after intensive lobbying from Germany, the Commission proposed bringing back the scheme in 2020; allowing one electric vehicle to count 1.3 times toward the fleet average from 2020-23.  

During talks between Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers, Germany, home to many makers of larger, more polluting cars, had tried to expand the supercredits scheme. But a German proposal to allow carmakers to ‘bank’ the credits they earn before 2015 and use them after 2020 was rejected by other member states. Germany had also sought to increase the amount that each electric car would count towards average emissions to three from 2020. As a compromise, the final deal will increase the multiplier to two.  

The threshold for which cars could be double-counted has been raised from the Commission’s proposed 35g CO2 emissions to 50g CO2. The higher threshold will likely mean that plug-in hybrid vehicles can also count, not just battery electric vehicles. But conventional hybrids will not count.

MEPs were successful in their push for better testing methods for determining a car’s fuel efficiency and CO2 emissions. These will come into effect from 2017. The test cycle currently being used dates from the 1980s and was not originally intended to be used for fuel consumption tests. Critics say it is easy for carmakers to conduct the test in advantageous ways that would never be used in the real world.

The new test – the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure – is more accurate and less easy to manipulate, and will have to be
used from 2017. Member states had initially resisted this move, seeking to delay its introduction until at least 2020.

Green transport group T&E said the deal agreed last night should mean that the average fuel economy of new cars, currently around 6 litres/100km, will fall to 4 litres by 2020. The agreement anticipates further improvements in fuel efficiency of between 4%–6% per year after 2020, which could result in fuel economy by 2025 being below 3 litres/100km and CO2 emissions of below 70g/km.

But T&E said the effect of the supercredits scheme will raise the 2020 target from 95g/km to 97.5g/km.

Carmaker association ACEA indicated that it hopes that the proposals for expanding the supercredit will still make their way into the legislation before final approval. “There still is some way to go before a final agreement is voted in the plenary of the European Parliament,” said Ivan Hodac, ACEA Secretary General.  “If super-credits are to achieve their aim of fostering innovation and bringing ultra low-emission vehicles to the market, they need to be applied in a more meaningful way, as is the case in other regions of the world.”

A report published yesterday (24 June) by a consortium of transport stakeholders found that reducing car fleet emissions by cutting fuel consumption would deliver between €58 and €83 billion a year in fuel savings for the EU economy by 2030. The development of technology to decrease fuel consumption could create up to 1.1 million net additional jobs.

The study, conducted by Ricardo-AEA and Cambridge Econometrics, was backed by car companies such as Nissan, power company association Eurelectric, automotive suppliers association CLEPA, General Electric and T&E.