In the wake of 'Dieselgate', are member states preparing the ground for a future 'Petrolgate'? That is what environmentalists fear and condemn as the European Commission is putting the finishing touches to its third regulatory package for testing polluting emissions from vehicles under real driving conditions (3rd RDE package), which is due to be implemented from 2018.
Direct injection petrol engines, which produce high emissions of fine particles are now the main concern, with air pollution causing some 500,000 premature deaths in the EU every year. According to Transport and Environment (T&E), an NGO which campaigns for sustainable transport, governments and carmakers are pushing for new petrol-engine cars to be allowed to emit over a hundred times more particles than currently permitted under EU legislation.
“A cheap and effective solution exists in the gasoline particulate filter, but carmakers want to relax the test conditions so they can save the €25 that would fix the problem for good”, said Florent Grelier, clean vehicles engineer at T&E.
The NGO bases its claims on leaked draft technical regulations being finalised, currently under discussion in the comitology procedure (with member states’ experts on the technical committee – motor vehicles) and expected to be approved by the Council and the European Commission before the end of the year, and car industry briefings.
The Commission draft regulations set out the way in which the number of particles are to be measured in road tests and how to take account of the higher NOx emissions from diesel-engined cars when the engine is cold and during particulate filter regeneration.
As things stand, the Commission draft would allow the particulate emissions limits set by the EURO VI standard to be exceeded by 50% to take account of the uncertainty in the testing procedure. The car industry wants to allow 300% higher emissions. The EURO VI regulation makes no mention of uncertainty in testing and limits must be respected on the road, T&E says.
In addition, the member states and the Commission have already agreed that particulate limits will apply from September 2017 for all new types of vehicles and one year later for all new cars on sale. Some member states, such as Spain and Sweden, want to delay the introduction of the tests. T&E is also critical of the loopholes in testing requirements and vehicle type-approval that will make it possible to test only cars using makes of petrol that produce fewer particles.
“The EU was warned about the risks of new gasoline engines three years ago. Finally the regulations are being finalised but in a way that bends to the will of the automotive industry. This is a Petrolgate scandal is in the making”, warns Grelier.
MEP Bas Eickhout (Greens/EFA, Netherlands), who sits on the environment committee and the EMIS committee that is investigating the Volkswagen scandal, says that there can be no doubt that this is a concerted attempt to weaken the proposal that was already weak. “It seems that governments are not learning from the Dieselgate scandal at all. Last year, technical working groups were diluting limits on NOx, legally agreed in 2007 (Ed: under co-decision). This year, the car industry seems to get away with the same trick on fine particles. Even after Dieselgate, member states seem to give car industry licences to pollute”, he told EUROPE on Wednesday 26 October. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)