A wee ahead of the vote at the European Parliament plenary 3 October on the draft regulation to reduce CO2 emissions post-2021 for new private cars and vans in European (see EUROPE 12093), the European Commission’s 'Action for the Climate’ department published a document on Wednesday 26 September analysing a range of scenarios and how they would impact on jobs.
Among other things, the document says that in the societal perceptive, a CO2 emissions reduction target of 30%, and to a lesser extent, of 40%, would led to clear net savings for the consumer. On the other hand, higher levels would lead to net economic costs. The document also stresses the risk of destroying exiting jobs in the combustion engine sector if the transition to electromobility takes place too fast.
The contents of this ‘non paper’ and the timing of its publication have generated the ire of MEPs on the Greens/EFA group at the European Parliament, who accuse the institution of giving way to the siren calls of industry – which the European Commission immediately denied.
The European Commission has given way to a stupefying exercise of demagogy and as the Parliament prepares to adopt legislation laying the basis of a conversion of the automobile industry, the Commission has found nothing better to do than to be the mentors of industrialists whose cunning strategies have led to a planned decline, said the chair of the European Parliament’s transport committee, Karima Delli of France.
She added that by taking on board their blackmail over jobs rather than putting forward the broadly positive impact on jobs of emission-free mobility, the Commission is undermining in advance the decarbonisation strategy for 2050 that it will be publishing in November.
Asked to explain the status and timing of the publication, a Commission spokeswoman, Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, said it was a modeling and analysis document of the impact of various higher levels of ambition and the aim was to inform decision-makers. She said there had not been any change in position and the Commission’s final position would depend on the vote at the Parliament and Council. She said a similar analysis had also been published ahead of the political agreements reached on the new renewable energy and energy efficiency targets for 2030.
The spokeswoman said the document is part of the impact analysis, but in that case, why not publish it in November 2017? Because things have changed since last year, she said.
The Parliament’s environment committee has sharply increased the ambition of the Commission’s proposal (a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2025 for both lorries and vans and by 45% by 2030 on the 2021 level, with zero emissions by 2040), the car industry represented by ACEA is constantly ringing the alarm bell, fearing the impact on jobs of a too-rapid transition to electromobility and calling for the level of ambition to be subordinate to the availability of recharge stations (see EUROPE 12088, 12056). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang