Commenting on the recent European Parliament Committee on Environment Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) adoption of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions standard proposal for new heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs), Natural & bio Gas Vehicle Association (NGVA Europe) points out the missing opportunity to include already available cost-effective solutions with regard to the long-term decarbonisation target.
At a European Parliament Committee on Environment Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) meeting on October 18, MEPs proposed a 35 percent reduction target, 5 percent higher than the European Commission’s 30 percent proposal, for new heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) to reduce EU emissions by 2030, with an intermediate target of 20 percent by 2025.
Today, a truck running on our European roads with bioCNG or bioLNG emits on a Well-to-Wheel basis less than 5 g CO2/km per tonne of payload, and this is passing through the current approach of this legislation, said Andrea Gerini, Secretary-General, NGVA Europe.
For this reason, NGVA Europe will continue to ask for an early inclusion of a Well-to-Wheel mechanism. Renewable gas transportation fuels are ready to play a fundamental role in making the decarbonisation process start earlier in the heavy-duty sector.
But even under the current tailpipe emissions approach, natural gas results a key technology in the future transport scenario: natural gas provides a reduction in tailpipe CO2 emissions by 12 percent compared to fossil diesel, going up to 20 percent with the new solutions based on high-pressure direct injection system.
This, in combination with low pollutant emissions level and a reduction by 50 percent of the noise level compared to diesel, represents a “concrete answer” towards a more sustainable transport model NGVA Europe says.