Fairly or not, the EU usually appears in the
Butchers, greengrocers, tugboat captains and dog breeders are a few of the persecuted minorities singled out for inexplicable directives from
Whatever the rights and wrongs of these cases, there is a certain novelty in seeing the EU pitted against a worthier foe than, say, the Worshipful Company of Dog Breeders, whose bark is far worse than their bite and who can easily be hounded into submission.
A foe like
And the exact figure is 130g of CO2 per kilometre of emissions, around 20 per cent lower than the current average.
Now, the automotive industry has rather more heft than the continent’s greengrocers, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of jobs and untold millions of euros worth of investment
It isn’t happy, and is warning
For its part, the environmental lobby is standing on the sidelines complaining that the 130g target is a stitch up and demanding that it be lowered even further.
All the ingredients for an entertaining contest then, but the eventual consequences will be deadly serious.
Few would argue that the EU has a duty to get emissions down, but the problem for the auto industry is that every technical innovation it comes up with to reduce emissions is offset by another imperative that pushes them back up.
For example, make a car lighter and therefore more fuel efficient on the one hand and you might be required to add a new safety measure (probably, oh the irony, by the EU) that puts weight back on again.
And here’s one thing the EU and the automotive industry have in common. The EU’s citizens are the industry’s customers, who have thus far shown scant appetite for the types of vehicles that already meet
In the end it is the consumer that decides, and the EU probably needs to spend a bit more time convincing its people that, on this issue, it’s more a benefactor than a bully.
Andrew Lee
Editor
The Engineer & The Engineer Online
We should be spending far more money, time and effort on alternative energy sources rather than have this debate on carbon-based fuels.
I drive for a living and yet cannot get my employer to find me a greener vehicle that suits my job. I am struggling to find factory-fitted options anyway, and I am told that any subsequent changes to the vehicles we get allocated, such as having them converted to LPG, invalidate their warranties.
When I write to the government I get pages of unintelligible waffle in reply that clearly demonstrates they do not take global warming seriously. Charging us by the mile to drive – as is being proposed – is simply another form of taxation and I for one do not believe this money will go into reducing carbon emissions.
This is an industry built on science.
OK, there are a few dissenters, but why do we find it so hard to believe the 90 per cent plus of wise men who are advising on climate change? Many people stick doggedly with their head in the sand.
You are right to say that persuasion is needed and it is our leaders who are letting us all down.
Let us look at some figures. CO2 emissions from cars in Europe have dropped by 15 per cent since 1995 resulting in an average car emission of 160gm/km in 2005.
The total CO2 emission from all European cars contributes 1.5 per cent of global carbon emissions.
If we are forced by politicians to reduce the average emission to 130gm/km we will reduce global emissions by less than 0.3 per cent but at what cost to the people of Europe?
I am afraid the politicians are jumping on a bandwagon to be seen to be doing the right thing.
The numbers simply do not support the ‘save the planet’ argument.