• EU helps Swiss emissions fall … and energy categories get stricter

    The Swiss transport and energy ministry has made its new car energy efficiency categories much stricter.

    Under its labelling system to encourage customers to buy the most fuel-efficient cars, it has seven categories (A-G) and also a rule that says only one seventh of all new cars on the Swiss market can fall into the top category. Because of improvements in fuel consumption, the criteria for a car to fall in a certain category are reviewed very two years. The labelling system, introduced in 2003, also gives the overall average emissions, which have come down from 204 g/km to 188g in the last two years, an improvement the ministry accredits, at least in part, to the EU’s first mandatory CO2 standards for new cars.