When the European Commission proposed new targets for CO2 emissions from trucks and buses earlier this year, the reaction was predictable. seemed They are quite satisfied with the law that will require them to reduce climate emissions from their new sales by 90% by 2040 and which Exemptions 20% of heavy vehicle sales from the list.
Environmental groups including T&E have Criticize Weak intermediate CO2 targets such as a modest 45% reduction in 2030 given that manufacturers are already Goal More than 60% of their truck sales will be electric or hydrogen by the end of this decade.
And then there was the oil and gas industry, which I shouted angrily In the Commission’s decision not to introduce a so-called “carbon correction factor” for alternative fuels into the CO2 regulation, a loophole opposed By most truck manufacturers. There are several reasons why including fuel in CO2 regulation is a very bad idea.
One of the reasons is ultimately economics. Trucks are heavily used capital goods that travel more than a million kilometers over their lifespan. That means energy and fuel costs dominate the total cost of ownership. Converting a truck directly to electricity requires less than a third of the green electricity of running a combustion-powered truck on e-fuel. It would increase This means that the total cost of ownership will be reduced by about 50%, even if we assume that these e-fuels will be produced at lower cost in North Africa and imported to Europe. Anyone who claims that the tightest margins of haulage companies need alternative fuels to remain competitive is misleading the truck operators who will have to bear this high cost.
The regulation also only applies to vehicle manufacturers, so they have no way of guaranteeing how a truck or bus will be fueled once it enters the fleet. E-fuel will also Don’t underestimate Emissions of air pollutants in any meaningful way.
Crucially, the availability of e-fuels and advanced biofuels will remain limited. EU lawmakers showed that they understand the urgency of prioritizing these scarce fuels for aviation, shipping, and industry – which have no other options for decarbonization – when they recently agreed to revise the Renewable Energy Directive. Estimates That mandates under the ReFuelEU Aviation and FuelEU Maritime legislation will provide enough renewable fuels of non-biological origin (RFNBOs) to meet the 1% binding target under RED – something even e-fuel lobbyists are keen to see. Compatible with.
The fuel lobby’s proposal to include a carbon correction factor in CO2 standards would not encourage additional alternative fuels to come to market. Instead, it would double the number of fuels already incentivized under the Green Emissions Act and give them credit. This accounting trick would effectively lower CO2 targets for manufacturers, who would have to sell fewer zero-emission trucks to comply with the regulation.
At ICCT Analyzed What the Clean Carbon Fund would do: Truck manufacturers would have to sell 0.3 million fewer zero-emission vehicles by 2030, and 1.3 million fewer by 2050. That would reduce emissions savings by 200 megatonnes of CO2 by 2050, while the volume of alternative fuels used in heavy vehicles would remain unchanged. The IPCC estimates that such a radical policy intervention would be equivalent to cutting the proposed targets by 8 percentage points, meaning the 2030 target would be 37%, the 2035 target 57%, and the 2040 target 82%.
The fuel lobby’s strategy is clear. The Green Climate Fund is not intended to achieve higher climate ambitions or incentivize the use of alternative fuels. Rather, it is a covert attempt to ensure that as many fossil-fuel trucks and buses as possible enter the fleet over the coming decades to keep up with fossil fuel demand.
The European truck industry is on its way to starting to ramp up zero-emission technology. What it needs now is investment certainty and regulatory clarity, not technological uncertainty. The slow transition Risks According to a report by market research firm ACTV, up to a tenth of the EU truck market is expected to be lost to foreign OEMs over the next decade. Report by Boston Consulting GroupLet’s not repeat the slow electric transition we saw with cars and vans that started to see foreign competitors gain market share in Europe. Instead, let’s make the EU’s transition to zero-emission trucks a success from the start.
