First confirmation in European Parliament on new truck emission standards

Brussels – With 47 votes in favor, 30 against, and one abstention, the European Parliament’s Environment, Food Safety, and Public Health (ENVI) committee today (Feb. 14) confirmed the political agreement reached with the EU Council on the regulation for new CO2 emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles, such as trucks and lorries. The final green light is presumably expected in the April Plenary in Strasbourg.

✅@EP_Environment endorsed the deal reached with Council on strengthening CO₂ emission performance standards for new heavy-duty vehicles @BasEickhout
⬆️47 ⬇️30 ↔️1#EPlenary April I (tbc)

Details: https://t.co/Ft9YWd6NUY

Provisional agreement: https://t.co/zZQwcstD3I

— ENVI Committee Press (@EP_Environment) February 14, 2024

Negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council reached a political understanding on Dec. 18,  calling for new zero-emission buses from 2035 (with an interim milestone of 90 percent in 2030) and a roadmap to reduce average emissions from new trucks by 45 percent in 2030, 65 percent in 2035 and 90 percent in 2040. Ambassadors from the 27 EU member states confirmed the agreement on Friday, with Italy, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic abstaining.

Generally, a vote on a political agreement already reached by Parliament and Council negotiators is only a formal step, but this time, it threatened not to be. In the days before the vote in COREPER, Germany threatened not to support the deal to get the European Commission to recognize in the text so-called synthetic fuels, or e-fuels, considered climate-neutral as they are produced from renewable electricity and carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere, offsetting the quantity of CO2 emitted. Germany’s liberal governing party Fdp triggered the standoff, leading the Belgian presidency to add a ‘recital’ (i.e., a non-legally binding recital) that commits the European Commission to consider a methodology for registering heavy-duty vehicles that run exclusively on CO2-neutral fuels, within one year of the measure’s entry into force. A repeat of last year’s new car CO2 emissions regulation (which, among other things, called for a stop to thermal engines, diesel, and gasoline from 2035) over which Berlin threatened the same veto. In return, it obtained from Brussels a reassurance on synthetic fuels post-2035.

The agreement maintained the 45 percent emission reduction targets set by the European Commission in its proposal for 2030-2034, 65 percent for 2035-2039, and 90 percent from 2040, applying them to large trucks weighing more than 7.5 tons (including professional vehicles, such as garbage trucks, tippers, or concrete mixers from 2035) and buses. The understanding also requires the Commission to conduct a detailed review of the effectiveness and impact of the regulation by 2027. This review will assess, among other things, the extension of the scope to small trucks, the role of a methodology for heavy-duty vehicles powered exclusively by zero-emission fuel registration, and the role of a carbon correction factor in the transition to zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles.