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Half I
How weak Euro 7 requirements may value as much as €100 billion in well being and environmental injury by 2050
The coverage advisers of the European Fee sound the alarm. Weak and delayed enforcement of the Euro 7 requirements, setting new necessities for automobile emissions, might very effectively trigger an estimated €100 billion well being and environmental damages till 2050 attributable to extra air pollution from inner combustion engines (ICE). Estimates are based mostly on evaluation carried out completely for Voxeurop by the Fee consultants, the Consortium for ultra-low car emissions (CLOVE). Europe’s prime automotive consultants scrutinised the watered down textual content agreed on the finish of September by the 27 governments on the Council (the EU co-legislator along with the European Parliament elected by residents). This lack of €4 billion a yr may very well be averted if European carmakers forfeited a tiny fraction of their annual fortune, doubled to €73 billion since 2019, to provide cleaner fashions.
Via its vote on the plenary session on 9 November, the European Parliament holds the accountability to verify or overturn the Council choice squandering the EU ambition to crack down on the poisonous legacy of Dieselgate. The scandal in 2015 uncovered producers’ tips to avoid the foundations capping tailpipe fumes by means of doctoring the degrees of NO (or NOx, Nitrogen Oxide), one of many major contaminants launched by combustion (largely diesel) engines. NO is quickly transformed into Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), which causes 49,000 untimely deaths per yr within the EU and not directly contributes to the formation of Particulate Matter (PM) which is much more dangerous: the estimated variety of extra annual deaths is 238,000.
Half of those untimely deaths may very well be averted if vehicles had the identical on-the-road emissions as reported within the laboratory exams carried out for the approval of recent fashions. Though within the wake of Dieselgate the EU tightened its surveillance guidelines by coupling the normal laboratory exams with obligatory driving exams on the highway, authorized emission limits are sometimes exceeded additionally by new automobile fashions.
Together with instances of clear violations and lack of controls by nationwide authorities, extra emissions largely occur due to legislative loopholes: certainly, the exams for the approval of recent fashions should not required to seize all actual driving circumstances (for instance chilly environments and quick journeys) and measurements don’t cowl the whole car’s lifetime.
That’s the reason the Euro 7 normal proposed by the Fee aimed to tighten each emission limits and testing procedures for vehicles, vans and heavy-duty automobiles like buses and lorries.
Nevertheless, the Council accepted a textual content which primarily continued with the virtually 10-year-old Euro 6 norms for exhaust emissions (with tighter li…