S&Ds back lower CO2 emissions of lorries
Date
14 Nov 2018
Sections
Climate & Environment
Socialists and Democrats are strongly committed to clean mobility and to decarbonising transport as a way to comply with the Paris Climate Agreement - which aims at keeping the increase of global temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels - but also to help reduce air pollution and deliver fuel savings for haulers and consumers.
Today, S&Ds backed a new regulation that will cut CO2 emissions of heavy-duty vehicles, which represent about 6% of total EU greenhouse gas emissions.
The S&D spokesperson on this report, Damiano Zoffoli MEP, said:
“The contribution of the road transport sector is crucial if we want to meet the Paris Climate goals and also to meet the EU target of reducing at least 40% the greenhouse gas emissions (from 1990 levels). We are establishing a 20% reduction target for the 2025-2029 and 35% for 2030 onwards, subject to be reviewed if new elements or technologies emerge.
“The Mobility Package now under negotiations provides some effective measures which are strictly linked to a system which will enter into force in 2019 and which will monitor and collect reliable data on fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions.
“This information will also help hauliers and mainly small and medium-sized enterprises because they will be able to choose the most energy-efficient models. In addition, local public procurement could make smarter and cleaner purchases.”
S&D spokesperson on environment, Miriam Dalli MEP, said:
“We must curb emissions from road transport as soon as possible. Having an EU monitoring and reporting scheme is just the first step. The final aim is to implement truck CO2 standards and come up with a procedure for the certification of CO2 emissions from new heavy-duty vehicles placed on the EU market.
“Other countries, such as the US, Canada, Japan and China, have recently implemented certification and fuel efficiency measures. The EU cannot lag behind.
“The regulation voted on today introduces on-road in-service conformity testing to ensure the real-world representativeness of the certified CO2 emissions and fuel consumption of heavy duty vehicles. The data for real-world emissions and fuel consumption should also be made available to third parties for independent testing."