On Monday 8 March, the European Commission forwarded to the European Parliament and the Council of the EU its report on the application of the Directive on the deployment of infrastructure for alternative fuels (2014/94).
The current directive, the Commission indicated, has enabled the implementation of policies to frame the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure and has had a “positive impact” on the adoption of alternative fuel vehicles. “The Commission services’ analysis shows that the markets would have been less developed in a scenario without the directive”, the report points out.
However, Member States’ levels of ambition and targets have proved to be far too divergent.
Member States’ projected share of electric cars in the total car fleet for 2030 varies, for example, from less than 1% to more than 40%. The planned deployment of infrastructure therefore also varies.
The Commission attributes this to a shortcoming in the policy framework set by the Directive, namely the lack of a “detailed and binding methodology for Member States to calculate targets and adopt measures”.
The European institution also notes that there is no “comprehensive and complete” network of infrastructure for alternative fuels throughout the Union and that the distribution of recharging points, in the long term, is likely to be very uneven.
Gaps in the network are expected, particularly in Southern Europe and Central and Eastern Europe, where large parts of the TEN-T core network do not have recharging points installed every 60 km, the report says.
The Commission had announced in its strategy for sustainable mobility (see EUROPE 12619/12) that this directive would be the subject of a proposal for revision as early as this year. An impact assessment is underway in this regard and it “will duly consider the findings of this report”, the institution assures.
See the report: https://bit.ly/30pmi41 (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)