Carmakers and fuel producers want to wish away transport’s climate challenge

Wishful thinking: Auto Fuel Coalition’s 2030 CO₂ forecast is 20% below EU’s own research

The Auto Fuel Coalition massively underestimates the gap between laboratory test results for car CO₂ emissions and real-world performance and ignores two decades of stagnation in truck fuel economy. Unsurprisingly their suggestions for emissions reductions include producing more biofuels and continuing to bias the market for diesel cars through cheap fuel and tax breaks.

Carlos Calvo Ambel, transport and energy analyst at T&E, said: “Carmakers, oil companies and biofuels producers are making a desperate bid to dissuade Europe from undertaking fuel efficiency standards for cars, vans and trucks, a push for electric vehicles and many of the other badly needed actions in the transport sector. If the EU misses the opportunity that the transport decarbonisation strategy gives us, Europe will not achieve its greenhouse gas targets and we will be left behind in the race for the mobility solutions of the future.”

The coalition’s plan to get transport in the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS) is also a bad idea: the carbon price would need to be way above €100 to produce any reduction, while it would postpone action in the transport sector, cause higher oil imports, and weaken the ETS itself.

Notes to editors:

[1] European Commission, 2014. Trends to 2050. Reference scenario 2013.

[2] European Environment Agency, 2015. Trends and projections in Europe 2015.

[3] Ricardo Energy & Environment, 2016. SULTAN modelling to explore the wider potential impacts of transport GHG reduction policies in 2030.