Europe’s ICE truck ban in danger with new fuel loophole from EU Parliament

MEPs of the European Union voted to adopt strict new rules regarding emissions from trucking and busses today, seeking a 90% reduction in total fleet CO2 emissions by 2040 — but there’s a big loophole involved. While initial planning from the EU Commission sought to categorize effectively all ICE trucks and busses as CO2-emitting, the EU Parliament has other ideas.

Under the proposed rules adopted today, medium and heavy-duty trucks using biofuels and e-fuels will be exempt from fleet CO2 calculations, and in effect considered zero emission. Busses using biomethane will be similarly exempted. The change was adopted at the behest of more conservative ministers in Parliament, including those from the German CDU party. Their reasoning is, at best, duplicitous: Ministers in support claim not to want to take “green” fuel technologies under development off the table, but it’s plain that truck manufacturers and trucking interests are the key beneficiaries of such a change.

Biofuels (fuels derived from organic waste products, crops, or biomass decomposition) and e-fuels (synthetically manufactured replacements for gasoline and diesel) are deeply controversial in the context of sustainable transportation. While both theoretically come with far smaller carbon footprints than traditionally refined crude oil products (gas, diesel), both also mean vehicles that produce emissions.

Proponents of e-fuel argue that the production of such fuels is sustainable and carbon-neutral by design, because they use carbon capture and renewable-powered hydro-electrolysis to synthesize end compounds like e-methanol, e-kerosene, and e-methane. Biofuel, on the other hand, is a very squishy term — technically, hugely environmentally impactful practices like industrial-scale corn or sugar cane agriculture can be used to make biofuels. After all, they’re made from plants. But it’s not clear what the working definition of biofuels will be under the EU Parliament’s proposed rules or if sustainability requirements will be built in, so it’s possible naked greenwashing will be skirted. Biofuels derived from waste wood chip biomass or spent food oil are at least putting someone else’s trash to work. But, again, the end product must still be burned and thus produce some level of harmful emissions, particularly CO2.

The rules adopted by EU Parliament today are not binding, and must still be negotiated with the EU member state councils into final legislation. But it’s clear that there’s a substantial lobby pushing to keep ICE trucks on the road in Europe, and it’s all but certain that the truck manufacturers and many of their largest customers are pushing hard on this.

The rules, otherwise, are still far stricter than anything you’ll likely see the US adopt this century. By 2030, Europe is targeting a 45% reduction in fleet CO2 emissions for trucks and busses. By 2035, the target increases to 65%. Finally, in 2040, 90% reduction in fleet CO2 emissions must be achieved.

For more about the decision, check out the reporting over at Electrive and the EU Parliament’s press release.

Electrek’s take

The EU’s targets for fleet emissions reductions in trucking and bussing are admirable — on paper. 90% CO2 reduction for some of the biggest emitters on the road by 2040 is a seriously lofty goal. But when you put in a carve-out for e-fuels and biofuels (with the latter, again, being kind of fuzzy as a category), this mandate starts to lose some of its teeth.

For one, such an exemption all but guarantees massive investment in e-fuel and biofuel commercialization — an investment in continuing to produce vehicles that put CO2 and other harmful compounds directly into our atmosphere. Dress up the arithmetic any way you want, a truck belching e-fuel is putting a ton of CO2 back in the air. And biofuels are an even more complex topic, with some being far dirtier than others when weighing both production and end combustion.

Counterarguments about the growth sustainability of battery electric infrastructure and the struggles to commercialize true zero-emission fuels like hydrogen should be heard out, but nothing about this exception feels sourced from rigorous academic investigation into these topics. It sounds like trucking interests are just concerned they could be squeezed and disrupted by radically necessary action to preserve our biosphere and restore local and global air quality.