cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11173505
Here is the study (pdf).
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- Purely battery-electric vehicles reduce CO₂ emissions by only 41 percent on average compared to combustion vehicles. Yet the European Commission counts them as 100 percent climate-neutral.
- The reason: EU regulation measures CO₂ emissions only through tailpipe exhaust. Fossil carbon released during a vehicle’s production and through the electricity used to operate it, or not recovered during recycling, is not captured by EU Regulation 2019/631.
- This scientifically indefensible stance by the EU will cause the passenger car sector’s 2030 target of reducing CO₂ emissions by 188 million tons to be missed by more than 100 million tons. Combustion vehicles are expected to still make up 78 percent of the vehicle fleet in 2030.
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If a manufacturer invests in near-CO₂-free steel, a supplier decarbonizes battery production, or a recycling company keeps critical raw materials in the loop, none of that improves the regulation’s metric under the EU’s current rules by a single gram. Regulation that does not capture relevant contributions to decarbonization cannot reward them either. And what it does not reward, industry will not finance at scale.
“The greatest economic and environmental misdirection lies in the fact that the European Commission’s regulation is based exclusively on CO₂ emissions from tailpipe exhaust,” says Prof. Johannes Fottner. “Under this logic, purely battery-electric vehicles are considered climate-neutral. The industry’s diverse efforts to reach climate targets – through green steel or circular economy practices, for instance – go unrewarded as a result.” Europe, he adds, can no longer afford to overlook this emissions reality.
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The researchers therefore propose a life-cycle-based standard for defossilization.
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As one report says, the EU rewards China’s coal power as Europe’s climate rules could end up favoring electric cars from China that are produced with high emissions.
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You don’t need luck, just carbon accounting software. There have been a lot of very good tools around for years now, we just need to use them.
Are you suggesting that a piece of software is enough to track the energy consumption over the entire lifetime of an EV, even if it is not built in the EU?
Lol. Lmao even.
You need the software and the data across the entire supply chain, of course. Any EV maker (or other companies) that don’t come up with the data should be banned from entering the EU, or, a less stringent measure, pay a carbon tariff. The EU’s CBAM is a first step in this direction.
Lol. Lmao even.
The world needs to do this for effectively fighting climate change as China’s supply chains fail as shown in the linked study once again.
How exactly are you going to measure the carbon impact of the energy consumed by the car over its lifetime, in a way that matters for the bigger picture?
Also, this is not even about Chinese automakers. The kind of granularity the document talks about is almost impossible to enforce unless the EU tracks every citizen at every move.
It is China that ttracks every citizen at every move, not the EU.
But this here is about tracking supply chains. And there is absolutely no doubt that it is possible (it’s ridiculous to question that even in 2026). All the tools have long been there.
Right. So your point is that the EU should track people like China does. Got it.