Automakers Want EU Fuel-Quality Standards to Remain in Place

BRUSSELS – The ACEA, the European automakers association based here, is lobbying for the continuation of current fuels standards after 2020, when a European Union law on fuel quality could be weakened or scrapped.

Concerns were raised in January with the release of a European Commission green paper that proposes new energy targets for 2030 designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

A key element in the proposal is the increased independence EU’s 28 member states would have in deciding how to meet those targets, calling for a 40% reduction in GHG levels compared with 1990 and for 27% of the bloc’s energy mix to come from renewable resources.

That would include potentially weakening or even abolishing the EU’s fuel-quality directive, allowing member states more control over fuel content.

“For the automobile industry, the key element of the directive is what is required of the quality of market fuels available for sale,” Erik Jonnaert, ACEA secretary general, tells WardsAuto. He expects the directive to remain, but possibly take a different form.

However, the EC is refusing to be drawn in on the debate as to whether the directive will disappear, with a spokesman saying any discussion would be purely speculative.

What is clear is Brussels wants new carbon-reduction targets beyond 2020, when they would replace the EU’s current 20-20-20 aims: 20% reduction in GHG emissions compared with 1990, a 20% share of renewable resources in the energy mix and a 20% improvement in Europe’s energy efficiency overall.

The latter is supposed to be delivered in part by a 10% GHG reduction in fleet emissions (including commercial vehicles) and another 10% share of renewable sources in the bloc’s energy mix.

Brussels May Follow U.S. Path

Earlier this year, Europe appeared to have abandoned the idea of setting up a target for the reduction of GHG generated by cars and CVs. With that much of the fuel-quality directive now in place to ensure cleaner gasoline, diesel and gasoil and cut the GHG intensity of the fuel used for transport 6% by 2020 also would disappear.

“The Commission does not think it appropriate to establish new targets for renewable energy or the GHG intensity of fuels used in the transport sector or any other sub-sector after 2020,” Brussels explains in its policy paper on the 2030 targets.

It laid out general ways to further reduce GHG emissions generated by transport instead, without specifying how these will be used in practice: Further development and deployment of electric vehicles; second- and third-generation biofuels; and other alternative, sustainable fuels.

“There are no new targets for the fuel-quality directive, but there are still discussions on how to proceed on fuel emissions,” the EU climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard tells journalists here. For some, this is a signal the fuels standards will not be continued beyond 2020.

However, ACEA appears confident regulations will remain on the books.

“The Commission does not intend to delete the fuel-quality directive,” Jonnaert says. “It is suggesting that the obligation on the oil suppliers to reduce their own GHG emissions by 6% by 2020 has become too difficult to manage, so they are considering replacing it with another measure.”

He believes Brussels may follow the path of the U.S. and eliminate standards on GHG intensity in fuels and replace those with a requirement to reduce GHG emissions from transport fuels throughout their entire lifecycle, including how they are manufactured and sourced.

The methods used to measure the GHG intensity of fuels has been a hot topic here over the past few years, with the Canadian government angered over suggestions its fuels produced from sands-based oil should be regarded as more carbon-intensive than those derived from oil pumped from the ground.

Meanwhile, the EU rule makers are negotiating a separate bill that seeks to impose targets for EV recharging infrastructures and hydrogen, liquefied-natural-gas and compressed-natural-gas refueling stations by 2020.

The EC presented the draft proposal in January 2013. In December, EU transport ministers said they wanted their countries to have until 2030 to implement the plan. They now are debating the bill’s final form with the European Parliament.

According to the ACEA, this new infrastructure also should be subjected to the same requirements as other fuels under the fuel-quality directive.

“(The) ACEA is asking (European Commission’s) directorate general for climate action to ensure that such fuels, if they are to be made more widely available across the EU, (are) covered in the fuel-quality directive to ensure minimum environment and health-related parameters are legislated for at EU level,” Jonnaert tells WardsAuto.

He says the priority for the industry is the harmonization of infrastructure across the EU, with maximum coverage enabling the circulation of vehicles of different alternative powertrains across the continent.

Peter Cooke, professor of automotive management at the U.K.’s University of Buckingham, welcomes the potential light-touch approach: No detailed targets for different types of fuels should be set by EU bureaucrats because of the potential for change in automotive technologies, he argues.

“(It’s) sufficient for the vehicle developers to know they are being watched,” he says.

When it comes to CO2 emissions cuts specifically for passenger vehicles, the 2020 targets barely were agreed upon at the end of last year due to strong opposition from Germany. The EC is expected to propose 2025 targets by the end of next year. No timeline for a 2030 target proposal has been set.