Amsterdam, 14/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - New cars sold in the EU are increasingly fuel-efficient, with a substantila reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, acccording to provisional data for 2015 published today by the European Environment Agency (EEA) on Thursday 14 April, the day that a combined Transport and Environment Council opened in Amsterdam to examine sustainable transport of the future (see other article).
Emissions from official testing reported by national authorities show that last year, new passenger cars emitted on average 119.6 grammes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometre, 8% below the official EU target for 2015.
NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), which fights for sustainable transport, immediately put the figures into perspective and challenged their accurancy.
“The testing system is utterly discredited and the claimed fall in emissions is largely achieved through manufacturers manipulating the outdated tests”, explained T&E, adding: “The reality on our roads is that the efficiency of new cars has been largely unchanged for four years”. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)