Having learnt lessons from the cheating in NOx emissions tests on Volkswagen cars and the recent revelations by the authorities of California of cheating in CO² emissions tests by Audi, the MEPs on the European Parliament’s environment committee attempted on Monday 7 November (in the evening) to learn more about the third real driving conditions emissions tests (RDE) package that is currently being debated in comitology with a view to adoption at the end of the year.
To this end, they invited a representative of the European Commission to brief them on the draft legislation. There are criticisms of the conformity factor that is felt to be a possible new escape route for circumventing current EU legislation (the EURO VI standards), and suspicion was expressed of the car industry’s attempts to avoid having to equip vehicles with a particulate filter (see EUROPE 11661, 11655).
The chair of the environment committee, Giovanni La Via (EPP, Italy), said at the outset of the debate that given the highly controversial nature of the earlier RDE as revealed by the Volkswagen scandal, MEPs want to monitor this question, which is of utmost importance for the general public. Although Joanna Sitkowska of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Industry wished to reassure the MEPs, the information she gave and the highly technical nature of the question did not relieve MEPs’ fears. Everyone felt, like the Commission, that the emissions tests in real driving conditions had to be robust, but they doubted the practicalities of the testing.
Sitkowska said all RDE packages should ensure that emissions in real driving conditions are properly tested, that the method is viable and that there are application and implementation tools that are covered by the legislation. The fourth package, she said, which is due to be unveiled in early 2017, will cover regulation, conformity and implementation.
The third package targets everything covered in Packages 1 and II – in other words, chiefly measuring particulate emissions, ignition of a cold engine, hybrid cars, regeneration, conformity factors, transparency through conformity certificates and also speed measurements – and she said they had consulted member states, NGOs, industry and stakeholders. In response to a question from Gerben Jan Gerbrandy (ALDE, the Netherlands), who asked why at the technical group meetings in May, June and September, more than half the participants were representatives of the car industry and only four or five member states were represented, she said people could not be forced to turn up or be turned away. If NGOs want to turn up en masse, they would be welcome, she said. The member states discuss these questions on the standing committee on motor vehicles and those that are part of the working group help the Commission draw up the rules.
The Commission representative said that unlike the debate about NOx, where people discuss conformity factors, conformity factors are not a question for particulate numbers because no margins are allowed and by using filters, manufacturers should be able to reach conformity by 2018. However, she said to cover inaccuracies due to lack of precision in measuring equipment for PN4 particulates, a factor of 0.5 was allowed when it comes to measuring accuracy for particulates. She said that review clauses would make it possible to reduce margins as equipment is improved. Bas Eickhout (Greens/EFA, Netherlands) said the Commission was playing with words. Talking about a factor of 0.5 when it comes to measuring reliability means that the limits laid down in legislation in co-decision can be exceeded by 50%. Are you going to require particulate filters to be used and why are we watering down the rules, he asked impatiently.
Too many details make the tests inefficient. Among many other technical explanations, Sitkowska said that for measuring important emissions when a car is started up from cold, the Commission suggests adding 360 seconds to the calculation of emissions during the full journey, saying that this was not a way of watering down the first five minutes of any trip because the journey is measured in urban areas (the most polluting part of the journey). Claude Turmes (Greens/EFA, Luxembourg) regretted that the Commission has not taken account of one of the lessons of the Volkswagen scandal. He said car manufacturers had told him that when you start defining things in detail, you pave the way for cheating and wriggling out of the rules. This is why in the United States, the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has total discretionary control over what is and is not tested, but Europe does the opposite. He explained that the EPA does not give details that allow industry to cheat. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)