Pascal Canfin, President of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, said: “The CO2 standard will be so strict that, in the current state of petrol and diesel engine technology, thermal powertrains will not they will be more able to meet the new limits”
During a hearing in the French commission of the National Assembly for sustainable development Pascal Canfin (President of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety) said that the forthcoming revision of the emission standards of light vehicles by the European Parliament, scheduled for June 2021, could make it impossible to market thermal vehicles from 2035.
“In the next 18 months, about fifty laws will be revised at European level to give legislative substance to the Green Deal – Canfin recalled – and one of these texts is that relating to the Climate Law, which will set the goal of reducing emissions of CO2 of at least -55% in 2030 “. Another important package will be the one arriving in June 2021 ” with 12 directives relating to the carbon market and the new CO2, objectives that will be applied to the automotive, agriculture, energy production and housing sectors”.
As part of this review of CO2 standards for light vehicles – Pascal Canfin announced – “there will be a profound transformation of the automotive market”. Indeed, the Commission’s proposal could foresee that by 2035 it will no longer be possible to market vehicles other than electric ones. “The CO2 standard will be so strict that, in the current state of petrol and diesel engine technology, thermal powertrains will no longer be able to meet the new limits,” explained Pascal Canfin.
When asked about the CO2 impact of electric vehicles, Canfin explained that “all analyzes, including those of NGOs, show that even with a non-recyclable battery and recharges that are not part of the circular economy, the electric vehicle remains better since environmental point of view”. However, Canfin specified that “in order for the environmental performance (of electric cars) to be truly optimized and there are no negative side effects in terms of mining and raw materials, it is obviously necessary to move towards a circular economy of materials – especially rare earths – used for manufacturing. of batteries”.
For this, the European Union is taking two actions. “On the one hand – explains Canfin – the European battery alliance launched in 2017 will allow the deployment in Europe of batteries that are now largely imported from Asia. We have adjusted the competition rules to allow for very strong cooperation on the part of European players on this absolutely strategic issue of the battery. The Battery Directive should set market access standards for batteries that are much more environmentally friendly. This directive will be negotiated in 2021 for implementation probably in 2022-2023, which will significantly improve environmental obligations”.
The other area mentioned is that of the CO2 offset market, the so-called green certificates, which “could be applied to the road transport sector”. A crossroads is that of green certificates applied to the road transport sector which, if on the one hand, in a purely computational way, would artificially achieve the reduction targets set by the EU, on the other hand it would not solve the problem of pollution in the urban environment. where the primary source is transport and would potentially slow down the investments of car manufacturers for the creation of new and less polluting models. Without forgetting, as Julia Poliscanova of the European ecological NGO Transport & Enviroment pointed out, that “national incentives have helped sales to regain momentum in the face of the pandemic, but we would not have had many electric cars to buy if the car manufacturers had not rushed to produce them to avoid heavy fines compared to “, as evidenced by the NGO’s report on automotive market in 2020 and the related recommendations to the European Commission chaired by Pascal Canfin.
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