German Advisory Council on the Environment

Commission is responsible for limit value exceedance

The German Advisory Council on the Environment releases a special report on "Road Transport and the Environment" and a statement on particulate matter

Date 2009.09.10

Despite of considerable efforts in the past decades, road transport still causes unacceptable environmental and health damage, concludes the German Advisory Council on the Environment in its special report. The SRU suggests an integrated strategy, combining technical standards, speed limits, economic instruments and new (infrastructure) planning approaches in order to meet environmental quality objectives. High mobility with less and less risky traffic is feasible, emphasises the SRU. On the basis of existing limit values and further scientific evidence, the Council suggests quality objectives and reduction targets in the fields of noise, air pollution, habitat fragmentation, road safety and climate change.

The European Commission is responsible for greening road transport especially as regards promoting innovative technical standards for vehicles and suggesting environmental quality objectives protecting human health and nature.

In this respect the SRU criticizes the late delivery of proposals for the emission limit values on PM and NOx for cars and lorries. Therefore the Commission itself, which has to control implementation of EU environmental law, is at least partly responsible for the limit value exceedance observed in many European cities during this year. The SRU considers a limit value of 2,5 mg PM/km as technically and economically feasible. The dimension of a trade-off between climate change and the introduction of an effective filter, claimed by some stakeholders is considered to be negligible.

In its report the SRU also assesses the potential for further greenhouse gas reduction from passenger cars. It concludes that 100g CO2/km for new vehicles will be achievable by 2012. The voluntary agreement with the car industry will even fail to deliver its modest own targets The Council therefore suggests a follow-up scheme for the voluntary agreement with a mixture of instruments, including tradable fleet emission standards which should be linked to the emission trading directive, CO2-based vehicle taxation and efficiency-indexed fuel price increases in order to prevent rebound-effects from increased fuel-efficiency.
In total the Council argues, that an innovation forcing strategy will enhance competitiveness as there is a global competitive race for improved environmental performance of vehicles.

The full report and the statement on particulate matter are available only in the German version on the SRU website: www.umweltrat.de.

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