Recently the European Parliament proposed new legislation to reduce CO2 emissions from cars and vans until 2030. The goal is to reduce ’g CO2/km’ with 40% from 2021 to 2030. An important new part of the proposal is Article 7: “From 1 January 2025 onwards manufacturers shall report to the Commission, based on a harmonised Union methodology, the lifecycle CO2 emissions of all new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles they put on the market as from that date.” This new requirement is related to the introduction of battery electric vehicles on the market and how these compare with other vehicles.
The current legislation is only based upon the CO2 emission from the tailpipe. A reason for also including the CO2 emissions from upstream production is that that part of the life cycle stand for the CO2 emissions while the use phase of a battery electric vehicle is zero. Every car manufacturer will need to collect data about CO2 emission from the production of batteries, electric machines and vehicles. The demand for the skills of Industrial Ecologists will increase.
No decision has been made based on the suggestion from the parliament. Negotiations with the Council have started on the final targets and legislation. Hopefully, the final bill will be decided before spring 2019.