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EU Parliament confirms 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel cars

Posted on February 20, 2023 by dishanth

The law, which requires that manufacturers achieve a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions from new cars sold in the EU by 2035, received 340 votes for, 279 against and 21 abstentions.

It sets an intermediate target of a 55% reduction in CO2 emissions for cars compared with 2021 levels and a 50% reduction for vans by 2030.

Low-volume manufacturers – those producing 1000 to 10,000 new cars or 1000 to 22,000 new vans per year – may be given an exemption from the rules until the end of 2035.

Those registering fewer than 1000 new vehicles annually will continue to be exempt thereafter.

By 2025, the European Commission will present methodology for assesssing and reporting the lifetime CO2 emissions of new cars and vans. Every subsequent two years, it will publish a report to evaluate the EU’s progress towards zero-emissions road mobility.

Then, by December 2026, it will monitor the gap between the legally determined emissions limits and real-world fuel and energy consumption data; and draw up methodology for adjusting manufacturers’ specific CO2 emissions.

Existing incentives for manufacturers selling more zero- and low-emissions vehicles (0-50g/km of CO2) will be adapted in line with sales trends, said the EU Parliament in a statement. These are expected to fall as uptake of battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles increases.

The legislation was agreed in October 2022 and will now be sent to the Council of the European Union for formal approval. This will take place in the coming weeks.

Jan Huitema, the EU Parliament’s lead negotiator for the law, said: “This regulation encourages the production of zero- and low-emission vehicles. It contains an ambitious revision of the targets for 2030 and a zero-emission target for 2035, which is crucial to reach climate-neutrality by 2050.

“These targets create clarity for the car industry and stimulate innovation and investments for car manufacturers.

“Purchasing and driving zero-emission cars will become cheaper for consumers and a second-hand market will emerge more quickly. It makes sustainable driving accessible to everyone.”

Numerous manufacturers have existing electrification targets that put them on pace to comply with the new legislation.

French brands Renault and Peugeot also aim to go all-electric in Europe by 2030, while Volkswagen aims to reduce its carbon emissions per vehicle by 40% compared with 2018 levels by 2030.

Premium makers have also made headway on electrification: 41% of Volvo’s 615,121 new car sales in 2022 were plug-in hybrid (23%) and electric (18%), while Mini’s best-selling model was the Mini Electric.

Other manufacturers, such as Dacia, have plotted a different course: the Renault-owned company plans to meet CO2 targets by building lightweight, fuel-efficient ICE cars, critical to maintaining the brand’s price advantage.

Nonetheless, its sole electric car, the Dacia Spring, was one of Europe’s best-selling EVs in 2022, beating the likes of the Cupra Born, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Polestar 2.

Source Autocar

Carbon capture: UK’s first plant could remove 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 from the air a year

Posted on December 13, 2022 by dishanth

A huge carbon capture power station has won planning permission for the first time in the UK.

The Keadby 3 plant in north Lincolnshire is the first carbon capture and storage (CCS) project to be greenlit by the government.

The news came the same day as Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove approved a new coal mine in England – the first in 30 years, which will release an estimated 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (equivalent to 200,000 extra cars on the roads).

Carbon capture technology was part of the justification for allowing a new coal mine – which Gove claimed would be “net zero compliant”. But commentators were quick to point out the as-yet unproven technology is not in commercial use in the UK.

The new CCS project seeks to change that as soon as 2027. It is backed by Britain’s SSE Thermal, part of SSE, and Norwegian energy company Equinor – better known as an oil and gas major.

Grete Tveit, senior vice president for low carbon solutions at Equinor, describes it as “a significant milestone for our joint ambition to deliver clean, flexible and efficient power to support intermittent renewable generation and maintain security of supply.”

Business and Energy Secretary Grant Shapps signed off the proposed plant following extensive consultation, SSE said in a statement on its website on Thursday.

Keadby 3 would have a generating capacity of up to 910 megawatt (MW) and capture up to 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, according to SSE. It says this represents at least 5 per cent of the UK government’s 2030 target.

It will be situated next to Keadby 1 and 2; two gas fired power stations in northern England’s Humber region.

The plan is for carbon pulled from the air to be sent through CO2 pipelines being built to transport emissions from industrial plants across the Humber to storage under the North Sea.

This is subject to final approval and investment; though the plant got a development consent order, the project is still in the due diligence stage of the government’s ‘cluster sequencing process’ for CCS.

Advocates of the technology say it has a key role to play in decarbonising the grid. But using CCS alongside gas fired power stations remains controversial among green groups.

“It is perverse that the world’s biggest polluters are in fact using CCS to extract more fossil fuels, creating more emissions,” Ken Penton, climate campaigner at Global Witness previously told Euronews Green.

“The time has now come for governments to stop chasing the CCS unicorn and instead build vibrant renewable energy sectors and massively increase energy efficiency of homes and businesses. The best and most proven way to stop climate change is to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

Source euronews.green

Tech companies just made a bold climate commitment

Posted on May 25, 2022 by dishanth

DAVOS, Switzerland — Davos is living up to its name as a place for movers and shakers. On Wednesday, a group known as the First Movers Coalition announced major climate commitments intended to create markets for everything from green steel and aluminum to carbon dioxide removal.

Microsoft, Alphabet and Salesforce are among the heavy hitters in tech at the forefront of the coalition that includes more than 50 companies with a total market cap of $8.5 trillion. That’s a large chunk of the U.S. stock market, and the pledge means those companies will start procuring climate-friendly products that are more expensive than their standard counterparts as well as services that don’t really exist at scale (yet). The companies’ commitments could give industries that we know we need to grow down the road the confidence that demand will be there.

The coalition launched last year at United Nations climate talks as an initiative spearheaded by Climate Envoy John Kerry and Bill Gates. The focus then was mostly on steel, shipping and aviation, all sectors of the economy that are incredibly hard and costly to decarbonize. Wednesday’s announcement threw CDR — Silicon Valley’s favorite climate solution — into the mix, along with green aluminum.

“Today is a great milestone in a very difficult long-term project,” Bill Gates said.

Indeed, the trio of major tech companies collectively committed $500 million to CDR between now and 2030. Alphabet joined a handful of other tech companies in pledging $925 million to purchase CDR services last month. It didn’t respond to Protocol’s request about if its First Movers Coalition money was the same as its commitment to Frontier, but Bloomberg confirmed the $200 million is the same money. Microsoft has also made its own investments in removing carbon from the atmosphere while Salesforce founder Marc Benioff has invested in companies that do so.

Right now, a handful of startups are removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using techniques ranging from protecting forests to growing kelp to relying on machines to do the dirty work. Paying those companies to do that is currently pretty pricey, costing hundreds of dollars per ton. That adds up fast when you’re talking about a company that pumps millions of tons of carbon dioxide per year into the atmosphere when factoring in Scope 3 emissions.

Obviously Alphabet, Salesforce and Microsoft are good for it, though, and their early investments could help bring prices down by signaling there’s going to be a market for CDRl. At numerous events at the World Economic Forum this week, Kerry echoed a phrase coined by Gates called the “green premium,” which refers to the idea of paying extra for the more climate-friendly option. For companies, that can refer to paying a bit of extra cash for green steel or CDR. (Though to be clear, there’s no alternative to the latter outside cutting emissions.)

“No government has the money to be able to solve this problem by itself,” Kerry said. “No government can move fast enough to solve this problem by itself. We need you. We need the private sector around the world to step up.”

While that first point is a bit up for debate given that the federal budget for the military alone is north of $700 billion per year, it’s clear that procurement is a huge avenue for both corporations and the government to spur new markets and bring down costs of the technology we need to address the climate crisis. The Biden administration itself has pulled on some of those levers, notably with a plan to purchase only electric vehicles by 2035. With 645,000 vehicles, that would help drive costs down for batteries, charging and other parts of the EV equation.

The government is also investing billions in direct air capture R&D, which could bring down costs. But tech companies’ commitment to buying those services offer another avenue to do that. Right now, most tech can remove maybe a few thousands of tons from the atmosphere a year. To keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a key guardrail, the world will need to pull multiple billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the sky each year in the coming decades. Exactly how much will depend on how fast we deploy renewables, EVs and other climate solutions we already have at the ready.

Kerry noted that the government partners in the First Movers Coalition are also working to create more regulatory certainty and policies that can speed the adoption of new, cleaner technologies. Tax credits and even more R&D investments are some of the avenues that could open the door to reimagining polluting industries and creating new sectors of the economy to clean up the carbon pollution already in the atmosphere.

The new commitment from the First Movers Coalition will give CDR companies a little more certainty that the market will develop for their services. That, in addition to commitments for green steel and aluminum as well as other products, is, in Kerry’s words, the “highest-leverage climate action that companies can take, because creating the early markets to scale advanced technologies materially reduces the whole world’s emissions.”

Source Protocol