Europe needs to cut its emissions and reduce its dependency on imported gas and fuel, and transport needs to play its part in this process, European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete said at a conference on regulation of CO2 levels for the automotive industry, in Brussels in January.
The Commissioner said that the long-term goal was to reduce transport emissions by 60% by 2050, as set out in the Commission's Transport White Paper four years ago and reiterated in the Communication on a policy framework for climate and energy in the period from 2020 to 2030, published in January of last year. He stressed that to meet this goal efforts would have to be intensified after 2020,
Road transport is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, accounting for about one-fifth of the total. And while these emissions slightly fell in 2012, they are still some 20% higher than in 1990. The Commissioner stressed that the most important and cost-effective way to reduce these emissions was to increase the efficiency of vehicles on the roads.
“The EU has taken action with the CO2 emission limit targets we set in 2009 for passenger cars and in 2011 for vans. The targets have worked. In fact, our policy has been so successful that the target for cars, which was set for 2015, and the target for vans, set for 2017, were already achieved in 2013. A new car today emits on average 20% less CO2 than in 2007,” he said.
However, he went on to say that, if the targets for 2030 were to be met, then all transport modes would have to contribute. Global shipping, for example, currently accounts for 4% of the EU's total emissions. “These emissions are expected to more than double by 2050 if we don't take action to reduce them. That is why EU environment ministers recently agreed on a new regulation setting out EU-wide rules for monitoring, reporting and verifying CO2 emissions from ships. This is a first step in a staged approach to reduce shipping emissions globally,” he said.
The Commissioner also highlighted the need to reduce aviation emissions, which currently account for about 3% of total emissions in the EU, and which are growing fast. Furthermore, trucks, buses and coaches are responsible for about a quarter of CO2 emissions from road transport in the EU, but today these emissions are neither measured not reported, he said.
According to Mr. Arias Cañete, if the EU is to retain its competitive advantage, it will have to continue to drive innovation in CO2 saving technologies. He said that new targets would help to do this, but that they would have to be set early enough to allow parts companies and auto-manufacturers the lead time to develop new vehicles.