The Council of the European Union, the body in which the member countries agree on the content of the community regulations, decided at its meeting on December 20 to propose to the Commission and the European Parliament that in 2025 both trucks and new buses reduce by 15% its CO2 emissions in relation to those registered during the year 2019, and for the year 2030 a mandatory reduction of 30% is fixed. Thus, the Board is stricter than the Commission, which was responsible for this initiative, to set the limit of 30% by 2030 as definitive, unless otherwise decided in the revision that will be made of this regulation in the year 2022; On the other hand, the Commission proposal was not binding.
However, the general approach reached within the Council reduces the pretensions of the European parliamentarians, who asked for reductions of 20% and 35%. As reported by ACEA, the European association of vehicle manufacturers, the first meeting between the three institutions: Council, Commission and Parliament, which have to agree on the final limits, is scheduled for Tuesday, January 8, 2019, as the Presidency Romanian Council has given priority to the completion of the processing of this regulation, which is to be approved during the first quarter of 2019. The members of ACEA are not particularly happy with this decision.
The regulation will include an economic penalty for those manufacturers that do not meet the objectives of reducing CO2 emissions. Keep in mind, that from 2019 brands have to produce a statement of CO2 emissions of virtually every heavy vehicle they sell, information that will be taken as a reference to set the limits of 2025 and 2030. An incentive system, called super-credits, will also be established, whereby vehicles with low and zero emissions will be counted as more than one vehicle when calculating the specific emissions of a truck manufacturer.
Faced with the proposal of the Commission, the Council has decided to exclude buses and coaches from this incentive system. According to the Commission, with the agreement reached between 15 and 35%, between 2020 and 2030, 54 million tonnes of CO2 will be emitted. Currently, CO2 emissions from heavy vehicles, including trucks, buses and coaches, account for approximately 6% of total CO2 emissions in the EU and approximately 25% of total CO2 emissions from road transport.
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