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A study by the environmental research association, ICCT, has revealed that the difference between manufacturer estimates and actual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for new cars has widened.
In 2022, new cars registered in Germany emitted 14.1% more CO2 on average than stated by car manufacturers, the researchers announced in Berlin on Wednesday. In 2018, the difference was 7.7 percent .
For the analysis, the researchers compared official CO2 emissions data from the European Environment Agency (EEA) with real-world consumption data from more than 160,000 cars. The latter served as a measure of the actual CO2 emissions.
The fuel consumption data came from the website spritmonitor.de. The vehicle types analysed were combustion and conventional hybrid vehicles. Cars with a plug-in hybrid drive were therefore already analyzed in an earlier study.
The researchers assume that the development of CO2 emissions from the new car fleet in Germany is also a good indicator of developments at the EU level.
They justify this in the study with the fact that the German vehicle market is the largest in Europe and the fleet composition for non-electric cars also largely corresponds to the EU average.
The official CO2 emissions of new vehicle models are determined in a controlled laboratory environment. The WLTP (Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure) was introduced in the European Union in 2017 for this purpose.
This is more thorough than the previous NEDC procedure and therefore provides more realistic values for pollutant emissions and fuel consumption.
Jan Dornoff, senior scientist with the Berlin-based ICCT and co-author of the study, said: “Without counteraction, official CO2 emission values will become increasingly unrepresentative of real-world values, and mandatory reductions for official values will not be reflected in the actual CO2 emissions.”
In the first year after the changeover, the difference between the laboratory and real values therefore fell from 32.7% to 7.7%. Now the gap is widening again.
The trend undermines the EU’s efforts to reduce transport-related CO2 emissions through stricter regulations, according to Dornoff. In addition, Dornoff said consumers have to pay more for fuel than expected.
Since 2010, the EU Car CO2 Regulation has stipulated that car manufacturers must disclose the CO2 emissions of their vehicles and pay levies if they exceed certain limits. By 2035, new cars should no longer produce any emissions.
According to the authors of the study, official CO2 emission values fell by around 7.3 percent between 2018 and 2022. However, at 2.3 percent, less than one-third of the reduction remained in real-life operation on the road.
To compensate for this, the researchers suggest using the data from the fuel consumption measuring devices that have been mandatory in new vehicles since the beginning of 2021.
“EU regulators now have appropriate tools to correct these divergences with transparent and reliable data,” ICCT Managing Director Peter Mock said.
“Using these tools, a correction mechanism can ensure that the CO2 emissions reduction targets that manufacturers must meet in the coming years are proportionally updated in accordance with the intended original stringency written into the law.”
The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) is an independent research organization. It helped uncover the Volkswagen emissions scandal, known as Dieselgate, in the US in 2015.
- CREDIT: dpa
