The German Minister of Transport, Volker Wissing (FDP), initiated the debate again. Long after the agreement between EU member states, Parliament and the Commission that no new combustion cars should be registered after 2035, Wissing blocked the package, which is a central part of the European “Green Deal”. Wissing’s demand: Combustion cars can also be climate-neutral as long as they are refueled in a CO2-neutral manner. Therefore, according to the FDP, combustion cars should continue to have a future in the EU.
On Saturday, Wissing and EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans announced via Twitter that an agreement had been reached. Vehicles with combustion engines that only fill up with climate-neutral fuels could also be newly registered after 2035.
“The way is clear: Europe remains technology-neutral,” said Wissing. Concrete procedural steps and a schedule have been fixed in a binding manner. “We want the process to be completed by autumn 2024.” In a first step, a category should be created purely with e-fuels and then integrated into the fleet limit value regulation.
E-fuels will not suffice
Timmermans wrote on Twitter: “We have reached an agreement with Germany on the future use of e-fuels in cars.” Work will now be done to ensure that the regulation on CO2 standards for cars is passed as soon as possible.
E-fuels are climate-neutral artificial fuels that can be generated with green electricity. However, the production is inefficient and expensive. Therefore, according to the will of the EU Commission, they should be reserved primarily for shipping or air traffic that cannot be operated directly with electricity. According to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the production volume expected in 2035 is not sufficient to cover demand in these areas alone.
Irritations in Brussels
In addition, many car manufacturers have been switching to the production of e-cars themselves for years. The original EU agreement in October was aimed at boosting the production of electric cars. It did not ban cars with combustion engines, but a ban on new registrations of such.
Professor Dudenhöffer on the EU ban on combustion engines
Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, professor and director of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, describes the energy balance of e-fuels as “horrible”. From the point of view of the leading car specialist in Germany, the development is going 100 percent in the direction of battery-electric cars.
However, this agreement also provided for the further use of e-fuels to be re-examined. The passage was not legally binding, but Wissing referred to it. A confirmation planned for early March was therefore initially prevented by Germany. Countries like Austria and Italy subsequently joined Germany. Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) was correspondingly pleased on Saturday: Together with Germany, they fought against a ban on internal combustion engines. But this has a future “if we turn it into a green combustion engine and further develop technologies such as e-fuels and hydrogen drives”.
Many EU partners had reacted with irritation to Germany’s behavior in the dispute. On Thursday, for example, the Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins spoke in front of the cameras on the sidelines of the EU summit of a “very, very difficult sign for the future”. It is surprising that a government suddenly decides differently after an agreement has already been reached. “The entire decision-making architecture would fall apart if we all did that.” Some diplomats in Brussels also accused Germany of a breach of trust.
