Bad news for Europe’s fight against climate change: Despite stricter emissions standards and more regulations for car manufacturers as a result of the diesel scandal, the environmental impact of the transport sector in Europe has increased. The combustion engines on European roads still emit practically as many CO₂ emissions as they did twelve years ago, as a report by the European Court of Auditors published on Wednesday shows. This is also due to the significantly increased number of heavy SUVs on Europe’s roads.
Since 2010, the EU Passenger Car CO2 Regulation has required manufacturers to report the CO₂ emissions of their vehicles and pay taxes if they exceed certain limits. New cars should no longer emit any emissions by 2035.
According to the report, emissions from gasoline engines have fallen slightly over the past ten years, by around 5 percent. In diesel vehicles, however, CO₂ consumption remained constant. This is not due to the efficiency of the engines. In fact, according to the report, this has improved over the years.
More SUVs on the roads
The problem is that there are significantly heavier cars on the EU’s roads today. “Various factors – including, for example, the trend towards larger and heavier cars such as SUVs – have ensured that cars with internal combustion engines now emit practically the same amount of greenhouse gases in everyday use as they did twelve years ago,” says the report from the European Court of Auditors.
The vehicle weight has increased by a tenth in the ten years and the engine power has even increased by a quarter. Both together make up for the CO₂ savings through improved engine efficiency.
Combustion engines still make up the majority of vehicles in the EU today. Of the newly registered cars, almost three quarters only have a combustion engine.
E-cars crucial for decline from 2020
The fact that overall average emissions in practical driving have fallen from 2020 is solely due to the growing fleet of electric cars. While in 2018 one in every hundred newly registered vehicles was an electric car, in 2022 it was almost one in seven.
The transport sector is one of the most important levers in the fight against climate change. Compared to other sectors of the economy, only energy supply causes more greenhouse gas emissions than transport (see graphic).
In other economic sectors, the EU has succeeded in reducing climate pollution over the past 30 years. In the transport sector alone, CO2 emissions have continued to rise since 1990. Around half are caused by cars (see graphic).
So have all the EU’s efforts to curb greenhouse gases from transport been ineffective? Not quite. “The stricter EU regulations have increased the pressure on manufacturers to reduce the overall pollutant emissions of their vehicles. They have also ensured that the consumption and emissions values specified by the manufacturers are now far more realistic,” says the EU Court of Auditors. Between 2009 and 2019, manufacturers had focused on reducing emissions in the laboratory, not actual emissions.
Loopholes for car manufacturers closed
At that time, car manufacturers increasingly made use of loopholes in testing standards so that the cars emitted as few greenhouse gases as possible during laboratory tests. “The difference to the actual emissions, i.e. the emissions generated in practical driving, was enormous.” Since a new laboratory test cycle that reflects actual driving conditions was introduced in 2017 due to the diesel scandal, the emissions still differ from one another, but significantly less.
According to the report, hybrid vehicles also cause significantly higher emissions in practical driving than in the laboratory. Plug-in hybrids will be considered low-emission vehicles until 2025, which saved manufacturers almost 13 billion euros in taxes due to excess emissions in 2020 alone.
According to the Court of Auditors, “tremendous efforts are necessary” so that the EU can still achieve its climate goals in the transport sector. There would have to be masses of fully electric battery cars on the roads in order to displace combustion engines as quickly as possible. “The CO₂ emissions from vehicles will only really decrease when the internal combustion engine loses its dominant position,” said Pietro Russo, a member of the Court of Auditors. “However, the electrification of the EU vehicle fleet is very complex.”
more on the subject
From the Court of Auditors’ perspective, three factors are crucial for the ramp-up of electromobility in the EU: price, charging options and raw materials. The high purchase costs for electric cars would have to fall in order for consumers to switch. There is also a need to catch up when it comes to the charging infrastructure. 70 percent of all charging stations for car batteries in the EU are located in just three countries: the Netherlands, France and Germany. Car manufacturers are also having difficulty securing important raw materials for electric car batteries.