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EEA: Transport a key obstacle for Kyoto |
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Greenhouse gas emissions from transport are steadily increasing while energy efficiency improvements have slowed down, according to a new report from the European Environment Agency that calls EU policymakers to increase political pressure on carmakers.
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2007-03-01
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Transport is now responsible for 21% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the EU-15, with road transport alone accounting for 93% of this share. While emissions from most other sectors dropped between 1990 and 2004, GHG emissions from road transport increased by 27% over the same period, thereby remaining a key obstacle to the EU achieving its Kyoto climate change targets.
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This is one main result from the latest study on environment and transport from the European Environment Agency (EEA), published on 26 February. The report also states that progress in the reduction of vehicle GHG emissions has slowed down, causing serious doubts about whether voluntary targets of European, Korean, and Japanese carmakers to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars are still appropriate. The report supports the recent move of the European Commission to introduce a mandatory emissions cap of 120 g/km by 2012.
Other key findings from the EEA report:
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- Technological progress in passenger cars has manifested itself mostly in incremental changes of conventional engine technology rather than by the introduction of new solutions, thus leading only to small improvements in vehicles' overall unsatisfactory environmental performance.
- Fiscal measures and CO2-based taxation, which could have helped to achieve vehicle emission reductions, have been insufficiently implemented by EU policymakers.
- A thorough assessment of transport subsidies and privileged regulations is necessary to avoid environmentally harmful developments. At present, at least € 270-290 billion of annual subsidies are provided to the transport sector in Europe.
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More information:
 EEA report: "Transport and Environment..." (4.8 MB)
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