Outcry over plan for car emissions

Date: 30/05/1996

By Michael Mann

EUROPEAN Commission proposals to limit harmful emissions from cars have run into harsh criticism from both industry and 'green' lobbies.

The proposals, which have been kept a closely-guarded secret until now because of the anticipated backlash, go hand-in-hand with widely-leaked plans for new fuel specifications.

Industry sources claim that plans to cut the amount of carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons produced by petrol-driven cars are attainable but could prove cripplingly expensive.

They also believe planned reductions in gas emissions from the EU's growing diesel fleet render the Commission's costly 'Auto-Oil Programme' meaningless, claiming the standards proposed fail to take account of results of research into air quality in seven European cities.

Environmental lobbies, such as the European Federation for Transport and the Environment (T&E), take the opposite view. They argue that the proposed standards for diesel cars represent a major retreat from draft proposals discussed in December.

Ironically, they also suspect that proposed emission levels for the year 2005 could actually prove too tough, allowing industry to wriggle out of its commitments later on by claiming it is unable to achieve them.

“Competitiveness is such an important buzz-word in the EU that they are likely to try and play that card,” claimed T&E's director Gijs Kuneman.

Meanwhile, final adoption of the proposals has been held up for at least another two weeks while arguments continue over whether the 2005 standards should be enforced through legislation or simply form the basis for a tax-based strategy to encourage car-makers to reduce pollution.

While further consultations have left the proposed year-2000 emission limits for petrol cars unchanged since December, the latest plans would impose considerably laxer standards on manufacturers of diesel cars.

Maximum emissions of nitrous oxides per kilometre would be set at 0.5 grams, compared to the 0.37 grams suggested in December, while the proposed combined limits for nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons have risen from 0.5 to 0.56 grams.

Kuneman said the new diesel standards were extremely generous and would do little to alleviate air quality problems in Europe's most polluted cities. “This is the package the oil and car industry really wanted,” he claimed.

Environmentalists are also suspicious of the apparently over-strict levels being proposed for cars manufactured after 2005.

The Commission wants to cut carbon monoxide levels from petrol-driven cars to 1 gram per kilometre and for diesel cars to half of that by 2005. Emissions of hydrocarbons, nitrous oxides and particulates would also have to be halved between 2000 and 2005.

Green lobbies are convinced that the research on which the Commission's latest ideas are based is fundamentally flawed, and it has thus miscalculated the effect of the changes on the oil industry.

There is also a feeling that northern European manufacturers will be in a better position to meet the standards than the Italians and French.

Hartmut Kämpfer of BMW said his company would be able to achieve the year-2000 standards, but added: “To reach the 2005 standards, there are some prerequisites which we feel are essential. We need diesel fuel of sufficient quality, meaning low sulphur contents and low particle emissions.”

Officials at manufacturers' lobby ACEA maintain that air quality targets set for 2010 under 'Auto-Oil' can be reached without going beyond the restrictions planned for 2000 and warn that the time it will take for ministers and the European Parliament to reach agreement will leave the sector with very little time to react.

MEPs' views on the subject are no secret. Petrus Cornelissen, chairman of the Parliament's transport committee, said: “I'm not sure that what is on the table is tough enough, and whether the car industry realises what is at stake. In the US, they are ahead of us. If they can do it, why can't we?”