EURACTIV — 2022-10-19
Land transportation
A European association representing automotive industry suppliers has criticised the EU for violating the principle of technology neutrality in road transport, saying that policymakers might soon table a ban on the sale of combustion engine trucks.
Road transport is under pressure to reduce emissions in line with the EU’s climate targets, with the European Parliament and member states in the Council currently negotiating the details of the phase-out of internal combustion engines (ICEs) for cars and vans.
Both institutions have endorsed the measure to apply from 2035.
Now, similar discussions are arising regarding heavy-duty vehicles, according to key industry players.
The European Commission was expected to make proposals on this before the end of the year, but this is now delayed to next year, Benjamin Krieger, secretary general of the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA), told the “Green Auto Summit”, a conference of car makers and suppliers held on 17-18 October in Stuttgart, Germany.
Regarding the content of the CO2 standards for trucks, Krieger expects a “similar discussion as for cars and vans,” including “likely a ban, an implicit ban on the internal combustion engine”.
“Nothing is adopted yet, nothing is decided yet politically, but we are fairly certain that we see a quite steep level of ambition,” he said during a question and answers session at the conference, “not unlikely” including a target of 100% emissions reductions, which de facto bans the use of internal combustion engines.
“We must remember that trucks are quite different from cars in terms of maturity and feasibility of technologies,” Krieger told EURACTIV.
Electric carmakers agree that there’s a difference between cars and trucks, but for different reasons.
“For cars, people choose with their heart, but trucks are chosen with a calculator,” Espen Hauge, president of the European Association for Electromobility (AVERE), told EURACTIV.
“I think the industry wants to have clear signals because uncertainty makes it more difficult to make the right investments,” he said.
“We know that the TCOs [total costs of ownership] for electric trucks will be winning in a few years, and then it’s going to go very fast. We also know that this is a huge contributor to emissions, so it’s important that it’s passed,” he added.
Devil in the details for cars and vans
Chief negotiators of the European Parliament and EU countries, represented by the Czech EU Council presidency, will meet on 27 October to find common ground on the details for the CO2 standards for cars and vans file.
CLEPA supports the Council’s addition of a sentence on e-fuels in the non-binding part of the regulation, so-called recitals, which had been proposed by the German government.
The proposed recital asks the Commission to make a proposal to allow vehicles running on carbon-neutral fuels “outside the scope of the fleet standards”, even after 2035.
“We are not going to get around renewable fuels because we need to reduce emissions from the existing fleet. The recital sends a signal that there is a willingness to consider them,” Krieger told EURACTIV.
Asked if the recital would apply only to special vehicles not covered by the regulation, such as emergency vehicles, or whether it allows for a broader role for e-fuels also for cars and vans covered by the CO2 standards, Krieger told EURACTIV that this was for the regulator to decide.
“If I can offer a preference, then I would of course say this should apply to newly registered vehicles that are running on renewable fuels,” he said.
AVERE’s Hauge was cautious of this. “It is important that we finalise [the CO2 standards for cars and vans] without loopholes,” he told the Stuttgart conference, speaking one day after Krieger.
“There is a tendency sometimes that a good ambition is there, but then some loopholes are implemented in the last rounds, which makes it not efficient,” he said. “The devil is in the details here.”
With positions on the EU’s ‘Fit for 55’ climate laws mostly defined, the coming months will see the European Parliament and Council enter negotiations. The outcomes of this inter-institutional wrangling will shape transport policy across the EU for decades to come.
Technology diversity
Krieger agreed that “electrification plays an important role” but would also like to keep other options open. “Where there’s not yet the ideal solution, there should be a choice,” he told EURACTIV.
“We would like to have technology diversity so that suppliers and users of mobility can decide what works best for them.”
In Krieger’s view, this should include fuel cell vehicles, which use an electric engine but hydrogen as an energy storage instead of a battery, and also plug-in hybrids – internal combustion engines combined with electric motors – which could either burn hydrogen directly or other “sustainable renewable fuels”, including biofuels, biogas and synthetic fuels (so-called e-fuels).
Those, Krieger stressed, “will be needed to decarbonise the existing car fleet of over 300 million vehicles”.
Responding to criticism from the clean mobility organisation Transport & Environment (T&E), he disputed the claim that e-fuels are a distraction from electrification.
“We believe that there isn’t one sole energy carrier that fits all mobility needs, which is why we support technology diversity. The transition needs an ‘and/and’ approach, not ‘either/or’. Fossil fuels are the common enemy, not technologies,” Krieger said.
To decarbonise Europe’s car fleet, internal combustion engines running on synthetic fuels are not a viable alternative to electric cars, writes Julia Poliscanova of clean mobility NGO Transport & Environment.
Availability of synthetic fuels
Krieger also questioned a scenario recently published by T&E, which described the potential of e-fuels as limited also for the existing car fleet.
“If there is the political will and the demand in the market for renewable fuels, then we are going to see the creation of the production capacity that we need,” he said.
T&E’s scenario, based on fuel suppliers’ targets for increasing supply, had shown that e-fuels would only be able to power 2% of all existing cars in Europe by 2035.
In contrast, Krieger told EURACTIV he hopes for a global market where northern Europeans can import e-fuels from countries where energy is “abundant”.
For T&E, this is not a viable option.
“It is naïve to assume that developing countries, some of whom lack power for their basic needs, would spare their renewables for e-fuels in Europe’s cars just to suit the vested interests of engine makers,” Yoann Gimbert, e-mobility analyst at the environmental group, said in a statement.