The European Commission funded a study on aviation taxation, which was completed in mid-2018 but never published. It finds that Europe is chronically undertaxing the sector in comparison to other major markets. It further finds that increasing aviation taxation could cut emissions while having no net impact on jobs or GDP. T&E's briefing paper analyses these findings.
Are consumers unwilling to buy electric cars or are carmakers reluctant to sell them? In a poll conducted by Ipsos Mori for NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), 40% of citizens surveyed say it is likely the next car they’ll buy or lease will be electric or fuel cell powered. A considerable 5-12% of citizens across the countries surveyed say it is very likely they'll buy an electric next. The survey shows there is an immediate opportunity to grow the 2% of sales that presently can be plugged-in.
There are now 43 million dirty diesels on Europe’s roads, and their numbers continue to grow three years after the Dieselgate scandal was exposed, a new report concludes. Even a diesel car that passed the EU’s new on-road test emits nine times the legal amount of nitrogen oxides (NOx) when driven in a way more representative of typical driving, new testing shows. NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), which authored the report, said it shows combustion engines – including those which passed the official Real-Driving Emissions test – are not clean and will continue to pollute in the foreseeable future.
This paper presents evidence to dispel many of the myths about electric vehicles and explains why they are key to reducing CO2 emissions from personal mobility.
T&E is about to undertake an ambitious new programme of vehicle emissions testing. We are looking for a motivated professional with experience in emissions testing to manage this programme and contribute to T&E’s work on vehicles, air quality and climate.
Carmakers are manipulating the results of a new test for CO2 emissions, evidence uncovered by the European Commission indicates. The new lab-based WLTP test was supposed to fix the testing problems that in the past allowed manufacturers to cheat EU emissions targets. But Commission documents indicate the industry is manipulating the new test results to inflate the CO2/fuel economy results of its vehicles. This will reduce the stringency of the EU’s proposed 2025 CO2 targets by more than half.
City breaks are supposed to be refreshing. But tourists are being warned that spending a long weekend in Europe’s 10 most popular but polluted cities could have the same health impacts as smoking between one and four cigarettes.
In response to congestion and high local pollution cities are increasingly using vehicle access restrictions to limit the number of cars on their roads and ensure those which grossly pollute are not allowed in. Following the dieselgate emissions scandal (that exposed the failure of modern diesel vehicles to adequately control toxic fumes when operated on the road), there is a new focus on deploying Low Emission Zones and Diesel Bans. Today there are around 40 million grossly polluting diesel cars and vans on the EU’s roads but national vehicle approval authorities remain reluctant to mandate manufacturers to implement fixes.
The EU should fill its post-Brexit budget gap with new revenues from taxing transport, which is Europe’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta, ex-WTO head Pascal Lamy, former finance minister of Germany Hans Eichel and 14 other economists have told EU leaders. In advocating a green tax shift, they called for a higher minimum tax on road diesel, VAT on airline tickets for the first time and taxing aviation kerosene which is currently exempt. Sustainable transport group Transport & Environment welcomed the letter, citing its own analysis that such a green tax shift would generate additional revenues of more than €50 billion a year which would allow for the income tax burden to be reduced.
Shifting to zero-emission vehicles in Europe will create jobs and drive economic growth, a major new study released today by Cambridge Econometrics for the European Climate Foundation reveals. The analysis, endorsed by Transport & Environment (T&E) and a host of corporations, including from the motor industry[1], found that moving away from vehicles powered by oil to ones driven by renewable energy will create 206,000 net additional jobs by 2030.