It looks like European automakers are winning their battle against the proposed European Union limits on automotive CO₂ emissions. While the European Commission had proposed a limit of 120 g/km for the vehicle fleet by 2012, manufacturers where claiming the limit was too aggressive. The members of parliament apparently agreed, with the Industry and Energy Committee voting 35-21 to slow things down. Instead of having the entire fleet meet the requirement, only 60 percent of vehicles will have to pass the new threshold in 2012. Over the next several years, through 2015, the rest of the vehicles will meet the standard as well. Extremely low emission vehicles with less than 50 g/km of CO₂ will also be given extra credit counting as 1.5 vehicles in the sales weighted averaging. All electric vehicles will count as three cars until 2015. In a further move sure to make environmentalists apoplectic, the fines for exceeding the limits were slashed from the EC's proposed €95 per gram of CO₂ over the limit to €40 per gram.

[Source: Euractiv.com]

Greenpeace

Everybody's favorite pre-historic family was arrested today in Brussels, Belgium. A group of protesters from Greenpeace dressed in Flintstones-style garb were taken into custody today as they approached the European Parliament building. The EU parliament is about to start debating the legislation that would impose carbon dioxide emissions limits on automakers. The European Commission had recommended rules with hefty fines for non-compliance and fleet average emissions limited to 130g/km by 2012. Under pressure from ACEA, the European automakers association, the parliament has moved to reduce the fines and stretch out the time-line for implementation. German automakers in particular are most opposed to the new rules and German legislators have vowed to protect their domestic industry. The Greenpeace protesters were opposed to the amount of influence the industry has had on the new regulations.

[Source: Reuters]

The European Commission that's working on new CO2 emissions limits looks like it might be about to tear the guts out of the new rules. While proposals up to this point had largely focused on a limit of 130g/km average for any individual manufacturer's fleet, the new proposal would let makers of bigger, thirstier vehicles off the hook. They are now looking at a proposal that would have a sliding scale limit tied to vehicle mass.

Heavier vehicles would to emit more while smaller vehicles would put out less. While companies like Peugeot and Fiat that build predominantly smaller more efficient vehicles would get no benefit from this, companies like Porsche, whose current average is about 280g/km, would be largely off the hook. German carmakers like BMW, Porsche and Mercedes would have little incentive to reduce the weight of their vehicles if these proposals are implemented.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub. req'd]

As might be expected, European car-makers aren't thrilled about the prospect of mandatory CO2 emissions limits replacing voluntary limits in the next few years. They have asked, and Environment ministers of EU member countries have agreed, that impact studies be done on the proposed limit of 130g/km from cars by 2012. The voluntary level had been 140g/km by 2008 but car-makers are currently averaging 160g/km.

The ministers had a meeting where they asked for the assessment of the costs and effects of the new limits but they didn't reach any agreement on how the limits should be assigned to carmakers. Presumably some are pushing to let certain manufacturers have higher limits while others get lower limits with the overall fleet average hitting 130g/km. If that were to happen it would certainly take a lot of pressure off of lower volume makers of high performance vehicles like Porsche and Ferrari. If they were to do implement something like this, the limits should definitely be graduated based on sales, so that Porsche with sales of 100,000 units would have a lower limit than Ferrari with sales of 5,000. Regardless of the final formula, all the car-makers need to reduce emissions.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub. req'd]