Members of the European Parliament yesterday decided that carmakers should have an extra three years’ breathing space to implement carbon dioxide emission reductions.
The report, adopted by the European Parliament’s Industry and Energy Committee by 35 votes in favour to 21 against, is a considerable dilution of original Commission proposals that wanted manufacturers to cut their vehicles’ average CO2 emissions from current levels of around 160g/km to 120g/km by 2012.
Instead, it defends legislation whereby carmakers would only be required to ensure that 60% of their fleet meets the target by 2012, with 70% compliance by 2013, 80% by 2014 and 100% by 2015.
It also recommended that manufacturers be allowed to count certain cars – for example those emitting less than 50g/km or running on alternative fuels – as ‘one-and-a-half cars’, thereby bringing their overall average down. Zero-emissions cars would count as three cars until 2015.
The committee also demanded lower fines for carmakers who breached the limits, set at €40 per excess gramme of CO2 – less than half of the €95 penalty the Commission proposed.
German Conservative MEP Werner Langen, who is in charge of steering the legislation through Parliament, said the text was a “reasonable compromise”.
But green groups accused the MEPs of bowing to pressure from the car industry. They say a phase-in would amount to another postponement of a now fourteen-year old target and would put the EU’s overall climate objectives at risk.
“The industry committee has voted for the car industry over people and the climate by supporting an opinion ridden with loopholes,” lamented Jeroen Verhoeven, a car efficiency campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE).
The phase-in is a key demand of the European carmakers’ lobby ACEA, which says proper ‘lead-time’ is “of crucial importance” to the industry’s survival due to the sector’s long development phases and the large investment involved.
While the EU executive concedes its proposals would entail an average increase in car prices of €1,300, it says this would be offset by average fuel savings of roughly €2,700 over the car’s lifetime.
The legislative proposals still have to get approval from Parliament’s full house and could be strengthened in an Environment Committee vote on 9 September. Environment ministers will discuss the proposals in October.
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