Car manufacturers will have to adapt.
(Photo: REUTERS)
Berlin, Brussels From 2035, only cars with electric motors will be allowed in Europe, with no exceptions or loopholes for other drives. Approval for these proposals is becoming apparent both in the European Parliament and in the Council of the EU Member States.
The Handelsblatt has received a compromise proposal from the French Council Presidency, which was sent to the other member states at the end of last week. It does not contain any new exemptions, longer transitional periods or a regulation that would allow e-fuels, i.e. synthetic fuels, to be offset against the CO2 balance of cars.
The French want to implement the original proposal of the EU Commission practically one-to-one. This would mean that from 2035 no new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles that emit CO2 while driving will be allowed to be registered in the EU. The only available technology for this is the electric car.
The compromise proposal only provides for new reporting obligations: the Commission is to evaluate every two years how the retraining measures for employees in the automotive industry are working.
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This is an offer primarily to Eastern European countries where jobs will be lost if internal combustion engines for passenger cars are no longer built in Europe. The European Association of Automotive Suppliers (Clepa) expects up to half a million jobs to be lost in the EU.
Originally, Germany was also one of the skeptics when it came to phasing out the combustion engine. But under the traffic light coalition, the federal government is now supporting the EU Commission’s proposal, Environment Minister Steffi Lemke made clear in March.
Opponents warn against over-reliance on electricity
The FDP has included a complicated wording in the coalition agreement that is intended to create a back door for e-fuels. “Outside the existing system of fleet limits” there should be a regulation so that “vehicles that can only be refueled with e-fuels” can be approved. However, how this is technically possible has never been explained.
Nevertheless, the concessions are not enough for the supporters of e-fuels. In the European Parliament, some politicians are insisting that combustion engines can also be operated in a climate-neutral manner if they are operated with cleanly produced e-fuels.
>> Also read here: “E-fuels would be absolutely amazing”: EU Transport Commissioner Valean open to alternative fuels
“We want strong climate and environmental protection, but we must not hinder openness to new technologies for political and ideological reasons,” says CDU MP Jens Gieseke.
His party colleague Gitta Connemann from the Bundestag warns: “A politically enforced dependence on electricity for motor vehicles can lead to a collapse if electricity production, storage and grid expansion are not adjusted in good time.”
The CDU will probably not be able to assert itself in Brussels. In the environment committee of the European Parliament, a narrow majority is emerging for a version of the law that also comes very close to the original Commission proposal. The vote on this should take place this Wednesday.
The last hope would then be to bring about a different majority in the plenary session of Parliament. There are two approaches to this:
- The reduction target for CO2 emissions could be weakened from 100 to 90 percent. Then the car manufacturers would have to launch many electric cars, but they could at least sell a few combustion engines.
- Or the EU could introduce an offsetting system for e-fuels, in which car manufacturers bring additional climate-neutral fuels onto the market and thus compensate for the poor CO2 footprint of their cars.
Both proposals have already found a majority among the deputies in the Parliament’s Transport Committee, but are not considered to be capable of winning a majority in the lead Environment Committee.
E-fuels are artificial fuels. They are significantly more expensive than gasoline and consume large amounts of electricity to produce. That’s why most environmentalists are reluctant to use them where batteries can do the job.
But combustion cars can be refueled quickly, have a long range and have so far been significantly cheaper than electric cars. In addition, fewer raw materials are used in their production and less CO2 is emitted.
“Instead of playing off climate protection technologies against each other, we must concentrate on phasing out the use of fossil fuels,” said Ralf Diemer, Managing Director of the eFuel Alliance, which among other things represents many companies from the supplier industry.
More: FDP rejects plans from the Ministry of Transport for higher e-car purchase premiums and scrapping premiums