No clean fuels: fewer headaches for Commission, more for the planet

They say there are two options to push out bad news – publish it on a Friday, or bury it in a much bigger announcement. On transport fuels, the Euro-pean Commission has chosen the latter strategy.

MEPs stand up for EU aviation efforts

MEPs have sent a signal that Europe should fight back against attempts to reduce its efforts to combat emissions from air transport. The European Parliament’s environment committee has voted to support the Commission’s proposal that all carbon dioxide that aircraft emit in European airspace should be subject to emissions trading, and not simply emissions from intra-EU flights. T&E joined forces with the group of low-fares airlines to support the Commission’s proposal.

Flood of tar sands would dramatically increase Europe’s transport emissions – report

New research from the US has highlighted the dangers for the fight against climate change if the EU does nothing to reduce dependence on dirty oil such as  Canadian tar sands. The US Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says if the EU Fuel Quality Directive is not comprehensively implemented, the amount of tar sands oil imported from Canada by 2020 will be 175 times greater than in 2012. This flood of tar sands would increase the carbon intensity of European fuels by 1.5%, making it more difficult and more expensive to meet the FQD’s 6% target by 2020.

Report suggests win-win opportunity for ship owners and the environment

The most effective way to reduce carbon emissions from shipping is also the most economic. That is the message from a new study commissioned by T&E and Seas at Risk (SAR) that looks at monitoring and reducing maritime emissions. It says ship operators could save €5-9 million a year if they invested in 21st-century technology.

T&E, Mayor of London and Olympic cyclist call for safer lorries, now

A ‘once in a generation’ opportunity to make lorries safer and more fuel-efficient comes before the European Parliament this month. MEPs on the European Parliament’s transport committee will discuss loosening regulations on the dimensions of lorry cabs that will allow them to be more aerodynamic and give drivers greater peripheral vision.

Biofuel limit delay costing billions and increasing emissions

Efforts to reduce the amount of food crops used to make transport fuels have suffered a setback with the defeat of a proposal that would have limited how much of the EU’s renewable fuels target could be made up from food-based biofuels. T&E said the proposal “was ugly, but the status quo is even worse”.

Carmakers failing citizens on filters

The health of millions of European citizens is being put at risk by carmakers’ failure to put cheap particle filters on new direct-injection petrol engines. The new engines are more fuel-efficient and emit much less carbon dioxide than traditional petrol engines, but T&E-commissioned testing shows they typically emit around 1,000 times more harmful particles, which cause cancer and pose other threats to human health.

Polar Code ‘lacks ambition’

The International Maritime Organisation earlier this month reached preliminary agreement on a ‘Polar Code’ of safety and environmental rules for ships in the Arctic and Antarctic. But the final draft contains few meaningful environmental provisions, such as requiring vessels to have strengthened hulls or even operate at reduced speed in supposedly ‘ice-free’ waters.