New rules proposed for van CO2 emissions

4th July 2013

MEPs have approved a draft law setting out rules for reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of light commercial vehicles to an average of 147g/km by 2020.

They also suggested a target of between 105 and 120g/km for 2025, with a proposal due to be published by January 2017.

The emission limits are the average maximum that would be allowed for van makers in the EU building more than 1,000 vehicles a year.  Manufacturers would have to produce, in addition to older, heavier or polluting models, a sufficient number of cleaner – or more fuel-efficient – models to achieve a balance of 147g/km in 2020, or face penalties.

To achieve this, the MEPs said, manufacturers could use ‘super credits’, which assign a favourable weighting to vans emitting less than 50g/km of CO2.  The committee proposed that each of these vehicles would count as 3.5 vans in 2014, falling to 1.3 from 2018 to 2023. However, the number of vehicles taken into account when applying these multipliers must not exceed 1% per manufacturer.

In addition, they said the top speed of vans should be electronically limited to 120km/hr from January 2014 and that, to better reflect the actual conditions in which vehicles are used, the procedure for testing fuel consumption and CO2 emission performance should be based on the new World Light Duty Test Procedure by 2017.

The proposals will now be negotiated by EU ministers, and then voted on by the European Parliament.