EURACTIV — 2023-02-01
News from Brussels
Lorries running on fossil fuels will continue to be allowed beyond 2035, with a potential phase-out coming in 2040 at the earliest, a draft proposal by the European Commission on revised CO2 emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles shows.
For cars and vans, EU institutions reached an agreement last year to reduce allowed tailpipe CO2 emissions to zero by 2035, which de-facto bans new combustion engine vehicles at that point.
However, the law did not yet include targets for heavy-duty vehicles such as lorries and tractors, for which the Commission plans to publish revised CO2 standards on 14 February 2023.
According to a leaked draft of the proposal, those vehicles will continue to be allowed to emit CO2 beyond 2035, with a potential phase-out coming in 2040 at the earliest.
The document, seen by EURACTIV, leaves untouched the carbon emissions reduction targets for 2025 to 2029 and does not yet specify the necessary emissions reductions afterwards.
However, it defines three subsequent “reporting periods”, with three to-be-defined emissions reduction targets going from 2030 to 2034, 2035 to 2039, and 2040 onwards.
From the document, it appears that a potential 100% emissions reduction target, a de-facto ban of new diesel trucks, would happen by 2040 at the earliest, if at all.
The draft also extends the application of the standards to heavier vehicles, covering all subgroups that are defined in the law.
A specific sub-target for city buses is also included, requiring manufacturers of city buses to sell a minimum share of zero-emission vehicles. This share is yet to be defined.
European Union legislators agreed to a deal late Thursday evening (27 October) requiring new cars and vans to be zero-emission as of 2035, a momentous agreement that sets Europe on a trajectory to a largely electric automotive future.
Lifespan argument not applied
The 2035 end date for new petrol and diesel cars was justified by EU climate chief Frans Timmermans on the basis of the average life cycle of cars and vans, which is 18 years on average in Western Europe and even 28 years in Eastern Europe, according to a study by ETH Zürich.
“With the European Union’s legal commitment to become climate neutral, nearly all cars on our roads will need to be zero emission by 2050,” Timmermans wrote in an op-ed published on EURACTIV last December.
“Considering the average lifetime of cars, 2035 is the right date,” he added.
However, for heavy-duty vehicles such as trucks, this logic doesn’t seem to apply.
“With an 18-year average life span of trucks in Europe, 2040 would be too late for the climate,” Freight Manager Fedor Unterlohner of green group Transport & Environment (T&E) told EURACTIV.
The NGO has called for the same 2035 phase-out date to also apply for heavy-duty vehicles.
In November 2021, this was also publicly supported by a range of companies, including logistics giant Maersk and consumer goods brands such as Unilever, Henkel and PepsiCo.
Most European car makers have already declared that they will go full electric by 2035, some of them sooner. The EU’s task is to ready for this transformation, writes Frans Timmermans.
Get infrastructure ready, industry says
Representatives of the car industry, meanwhile, are relieved by the draft as it leaves targets before 2030 unchanged.
“A tightening of the target by 2025 is simply unrealistic due to the market maturity of technologies and the lead time requirements,” a spokesperson of the German car industry organisation VDA told EURACTIV.
“The fact that the current proposal on CO2 standards for heavy-duty vehicles does not provide for this is positive,” the spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, the organisation also called on lawmakers to get the charging infrastructure ready for a broad roll-out of battery- and hydrogen-based trucks.
“In order to actually achieve ambitious goals, a sufficiently dense network of electric charging and hydrogen filling stations for heavy commercial vehicles throughout Europe is a decisive prerequisite,” the spokesperson said, adding that “this is currently not even close to being in place”.
Targets for charging and fuelling stations are defined in the Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR), which is currently being negotiated between EU institutions. Member states are pushing back against Parliament targets on the number of charging points and hydrogen fuelling stations that must be provided, as they fear a too heavy cost burden.
The next meeting between negotiators of the European Parliament, Commission and the Swedish presidency is set for 7 February.