Nobody said it would be easy, but who would have told the institutions of the European Union that one of the star measures to achieve climate neutrality, the retirement of combustion cars from 2035, would turn into a headache led by Germany , accompanied by the important lobby of the car manufacturers. After three weeks of negotiations, Brussels and Berlin finally closed a pact yesterday that will allow the legislation to go ahead.
“We have reached an agreement with Germany on the future use of synthetic fuels in cars,” announced Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission in charge of the European Green Deal, on his Twitter account. “Now we will work so that the CO2 standards for cars are adopted as soon as possible”, he added.
The pact reached has been achieved thanks to the “innovative solutions” that Brussels always tends to find when negotiations get complicated. The European Commission proposed this same week in Germany the creation of a new category of vehicles with combustion engines that run on synthetic fuels and that their sale be authorized beyond 2035. In return, manufacturers will have to ensure that vehicles with synthetic fuels cannot also run on petrol or diesel, in the event that this class of hydrocarbons is introduced: they will not be able to start. This will ensure that, effectively, from 2035, no new car registration emits carbon dioxide. Synthetic fuels or e-fuels are neutral in CO2 emissions, they are manufactured with hydrogen and carbon previously captured or obtained with biomass.
The German Transport Minister, the liberal Volker Wissing, was pleased with the agreement because it “paves the way for carbon-neutral internal combustion engines”. “This was an important point in the coalition government”, he pointed out. The minister explained that the first step will be to introduce the new category of vehicles with e-fuels and then it can be added in the regulation, something that Berlin hopes to finish in the autumn of 2024. For Wissing the pact offers the population the possibility of to have more options for “climate-neutral and affordable mobility”.
The pact does not change the legislation previously agreed between the institutions late last year, which took almost two years to negotiate, and which is part of the plan known as Fit For 55. An ambitious series of measures that aims to reduce at least pollutant emissions by 55% by 2030 in the EU, according to 1990 values.
The Executive himself admitted that the measure was ambitious, but he also saw that there was no turning back. In its impact assessment when it presented the legislation, the Commission warned that, if no measures were taken against pollution, without the elimination of combustion cars, it would not be able to reduce emissions sufficiently by 2030 and, neither well, to reach climate neutrality by 2050.
The agreement was ratified in the Eurochamber in February and the countries should have given the final approval at the beginning of this month, until Germany, at the last minute, showed its objection and left join another nurtured group of countries (Italy, Poland and Hungary, which also had reservations for different reasons). The aim of the agreement reached was, above all, to bet on electric vehicles, at a time when the automobile industry itself has also started to manufacture more cars of this kind. However, the pact never specified what kind of engines should be used, only that they should not emit carbon dioxide. In fact, during the negotiations, precisely because of the pressure exerted by Germany and Italy, the commitment began that by 2026 the Community Executive would open itself to study the inclusion of synthetic fuels as an option, also to leave room to a technology that is currently residual and very expensive.
But this commitment, for Germany, the first car manufacturer in the EU, was no longer enough. The Minister of Transport, from the Liberal Party, who supports a large part of the demands of the car lobby, and after several electoral setbacks, has wanted to become the champion of such an important industry for the country. So, Berlin asked for more guarantees so that, indeed, cars with e-fuels could circulate beyond 2035. It did not suit him that the option would be studied in 2026. He wanted certainties.
Germany’s insistence has surprised. Synthetic fuels are expensive, around 2.8 euros per liter, according to a recent study by the environmental association Transport
In general, the automobile industry invests in electric vehicles. The big companies have already been preparing for the transition. Peugeot has already planned for its entire car range to have electric or hybrid versions by 2025, Fiat wants to phase in by 2030 and Opel, Ford and Volvo have started preparing for all their vehicles to be electricity in the next decade. But some manufacturers such as BMW have insisted on the option of combustion engines with e-fuels. Instead, Julia Poliscanova, from Transport
