BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Parliament on Wednesday threw its weight behind a proposed ban on cars with a combustion engine in 2035, seeking to step up the fight against climate change through faster development of electric vehicles.
The European Union assembly voted in Strasbourg, France to require automakers to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 100% by the middle of the next decade. The mandate would amount to a prohibition on the sale in the 27-nation EU of new cars powered by gasoline or diesel.
EU lawmakers also endorsed a 55% reduction in CO2 from automobiles in 2030 compared with 2021. The move deepens an existing obligation on the car industry to lower CO2 discharges by 37.5% on average at the end of the decade compared to last year.
Environmentalists hailed the parliament's decisions. Transport & Environment, a Brussels-based alliance, said the vote offered “a fighting chance of averting runaway climate change.”
The 2030 CO2-reduction target and ban on combustion engines in 2035 were proposed last year by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. Cars account for around 12% of European emissions of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for increasingly frequent and intense heat waves, storms and floods tied to climate change.
The governments of EU member nations need to give their verdicts in the coming weeks or months before a final EU agreement on the tougher car emission requirements is approved.
The car law is being scrutinized as part of a package of EU draft climate legislation covering a range of other polluting industries.
The EU plans to slash greenhouse gases by 55% in 2030 compared with 1990 rather than by just a previously agreed 40% over the period.
A big portion of the cuts would come from power plants and factories. These two sectors, unlike cars, have their greenhouse gases curbed in the EU by a European emissions-trading system that every year reduces the total supply of required pollution permits.
Earlier Wednesday, the EU parliament failed to advance that part of the climate package because of a split over the pace at which the free allocation of some emission permits — as opposed to the auctioning of them — should be phased out.
The assembly asked its environment committee to reopen deliberations on the matter. As a result, the EU parliament also delayed its decisions on two related initiatives.
One is the creation of a Social Climate Fund to help vulnerable households cope with the planned clean-energy revamp — an issue that has become more politically sensitive as Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent fuel prices soaring.
The second is an unprecedented import tax known as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. The planned CBAM is a first-of-its-kind tool that would allow the EU to raise the prices of some imported goods — including steel and aluminum — that are spared climate-protection costs faced by manufacturers based in the bloc.
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Follow all AP stories on climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.
The Associated Press
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This is excellent. Things
This is excellent. Things look bleak right now, but the move towards electric cars is accelerating. Switching to electric cars is only fairly good in itself--it isn't a panacea. But one thing it will do in no uncertain terms, is drastically cut into the power of oil companies. Oil companies have been quite successful at blocking measures which would hit them directly--they have been able to keep exploring, expanding production, polluting, maintaining and even expanding subsidies to their operations, and even to a fair extent building more pipelines. But they have been less successful at stopping measures which hit them indirectly, such as the rise of the electric car.
Consider what happens when the automobile fleet gets to even 40% electric, and is increasing at a fast pace. At that point, oil demand drops, and it is clear it will continue to drop. Oil prices drop through the floor, and it is clear they will stay down. Oil company profits plummet, and it is clear they will not recover. Investors pull out. And at that point, it will be amazing the speed at which politicians stop listening to their lobbyists. "Oh, after I get out of office I'll have some cushy directorships with ExxonMobil and Shell, huh? WHAT cushy directorships? Yeah, I'll be taking your requests under advisement, along with the requests from the Birdburg Beautification Committee."
And that loss of political power by the oil companies will weaken the fossil fuel lobby overall. In some ways the biggest early impact of the electric car will be the way it makes the politics of climate change more favourable.
Indeed. If Suncor and others
Indeed. If Suncor and others have a problem with climate policies that feature decarbonization, then they need to take it up with the CEOs of all the major car makers. Their products are currently the largest consumers of liquid fossil fuels. All of them are going electric. The proof is the stratospheric amount of investment capital they have already put into retooling their assembly plants, with lots more in the works.
Several of them have teamed up with battery makers and there is now a worldwide competitive push to limit the amount of cobalt and other expensive metals used in lithium ion battery packs. Lithium itself is being challenged by cheaper and more abundant materials like zinc and sodium, though creating an equivalent energy density is still a big challenge. Lithium recycling is now a thing.
One important idea is to understand the physics behind one-time use fossil energy. It's doubtful that the entire nation's (or world's) fossil combustion car fleet will be replaced at 1:1 with electric motors. Perhaps a 30% reduction in overall energy use is more realistic, with a focus on less car dependency in our cities. I think a 40% chunk of the car fleet being EVs is very realistic and presents lots of room to grow, and will most definitely have a serious impact on demand for oil sands and offshore oil products that require gas tanks.
It can only get better for the climate and the economy if grid-scale non-lithium banks of batteries turn all forms of intermittent renewables into stable, base load power storage available for use in milliseconds. Cheaper batteries using more common materials and fewer (if any) rare metals are in the works at these industrial levels. Limiting lithium for use in mobility and smaller-scale storage (Tesla Powerwalls for home or farm use, L-ion for portable devices like iPhones, etc.) and will help regulate the mining and processing of lithium to where it is most useful in the market. Grid storage is not appropriate for lithium.
The wisest words ever uttered in Alberta are, diversify, diversify, diversify. The name Trudeau (past and present) will be around only so long to blame for decades of internal mismanagement and economic myopia. There is still time to turn it around and become a powerhouse for clean energy and industries powered by it.
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