EU: Average CO2 emissions from new cars increase in 2019
4 June 2021
The average CO2 emissions of new cars and vans registered in the EU, Iceland, Norway and the United Kingdom increased for the third consecutive year in 2019, reaching 122.3 g/km, according to final data by the European Environment Agency (EEA). Average emissions increased by 1.6 g/km compared to 2018.
The average emissions figure of 122.3 g CO2/km is well below the 2015-2019 target of 130 g/km, but well above the 2020-2024 target of 95 g/km. The CO2 emissions target of 95 g/km must be met by 95% of each manufacturers’ new passenger cars registered in 2020, and by 100% of cars from 2021 onwards. Hence, manufacturers are facing a significant challenge of meeting their 2020 targets.
New registrations of battery electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars continued to increase in 2019 but remained low, at 3.5% of new registrations, compared to 2% in 2018.
The average CO2 emissions of new vans registered in the EU, Iceland, Norway and the United Kingdom remained relatively stable. In 2019, average emissions of new vans were 158.0 g/km, which is below the target of 175 g/km that applied until 2019, but about 7% above the 2020 target of 147 g/km.
The share of electric vans in registrations nearly doubled between from 2018 (0.8%) to 2019 (1.4%), but the vast majority (94%) of new vans still ran on diesel, the EEA indicator shows.
2018: EU-28 + Iceland; 2019: EU-27 + Iceland + Norway + UK
Four small-volume car manufacturers, each responsible for less than 10,000 new cars registered in 2019 and to whom a derogation had previously been granted, as well as one van manufacturer, were found to have exceeded their emission target in 2019. As a result, they will be required to pay excess emission premiums (fines) totaling over EUR 13.6 million.
According to the European Commission, the increase in average CO2 emissions for new passenger cars in the years 2017-2019 was affected by two main market trends:
- The shift from diesel to petrol cars, which continued in 2019, with the diesel car share decreasing by 5 percentage points compared to 2018.
- A segment shift towards larger and heavier sport utility vehicles (SUVs) powered by petrol. Between 2018 and 2019, the market share of SUVs increased from 35% up to 38%.
The European Commission said it will soon notify all car and van manufacturers of the provisional calculation of the average specific CO2 emissions of their new vehicles registered in Europe in 2020.
Source: European Commission