European carmakers taken to task over warming

Carmakers in Europe are missing their targets for reducing the amount of greenhouse gases their vehicles release, new data indicates. In 1998, the Association of European Automobile Manufacturers (ACEA), promised that the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by their cars would fall to 140 grams per kilometer (140g/km) by 2008. Data gathered by the European Commission suggests that ACEA will almost certainly fail to hit that target. In 2006, its cars emitted an average of 160g of CO2, the main gas blamed by scientists for causing climate change, a drop of only 0.2 percent on the previous year. ACEA bands together the manufacturers of more than 80 percent of the cars driven on Europe's roads, including Renault, Fiat, Volvo, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors and Volkswagen. The data, which has not yet been formally published, also suggests that despite how climate change has featured increasingly prominently on the international political agenda, the typical cars found in some EU countries are emitting more CO2 now or just a fraction less than the average European vehicle did in the mid 1990s. In 1995, the average European car emitted 186 g/km. In Sweden, Finland and Estonia last year, the typical cars emitted between 179 and 190 g/km. Europe's best-performing countries, on the other hand, were Portugal (144g/km), Italy (148g/km) and France (149g/km). The proliferation of large cars such as sports utility vehicles (SUVs) has had a negative effect on efforts to improve the fuel efficiency of cars. The weight of the average new car sold in the EU rose from 1,347 kg in 2004 to 1,374kg last year. The European Federation for Transport and the Environment (T&E), a green campaign group, says that EU policymakers should resist lobbying from carmakers to allow weight be used as a criterion in determining the CO2 emissions from different models of vehicles. "Over the last decade cars have become heavier every year and this is an important reason why we have higher emission levels," T&E spokesman Aat Peterse told IPS. "The heavier a car, the more CO2 emissions there will be." The total amount of CO2 released by Europe's transport sector rose by 32 percent between 1990 and 2005, with cars comprising about half of that increase.