EU proposes future CO₂ targets for cars

26 April 2013

The Environment Committee of the European Parliament has approved a draft report that sets a new CO₂ target for cars of 95 g/km by 2020, down from 130 g/km in 2015. The draft also sets indicative targets for post-2020 CO₂ emissions in the range of 68-78 g/km from 2025.

These emission limits are the average maximum allowed for car makers registered in the EU. Makers producing fewer than 1,000 cars a year would be exempt from the legislation.

The report also introduces additional flexibility for carmakers in the form of “super-credits”. The super-credits assign a favorable weighting to cars that emit less than 50 g of CO₂. Within each manufacturer’s balance, each of these extra clean cars would count as 3.5 cars in 2013, falling to 1.5 from 2016 and 1 from 2024.

Carmakers, particularly German manufacturers of larger premium models, have requested flexibilities that would allow them to continue producing more powerful cars if they also manufacture smaller, low-emission vehicles. In the adopted report, however, the super-credits are capped at 2.5 g/km. Under the proposal, it would not be possible to transfer any unused super-credits from one year to another.

The committee also noted that recent studies show that manufacturers have exploited weaknesses in today's NEDC testing procedure, with the result that official consumption and emission figures are far from those achieved in everyday driving conditions. Therefore, the new World Light Duty Test Procedure (WLTP) should replace the NEDC procedure in EU law “as a matter of urgency”—if possible by 2017—on the grounds that the WLTP better reflects the real conditions in which cars are used.

The proposal still has to be voted on by the full Parliament and has to be endorsed by EU ministers.

Source: European Parliament