EU proposes clean vehicle procurement plan

As part of its drive to promote more sustainable urban transport, the Commission has revived a proposal requiring government authorities to ensure that their public transport fleets and other public-utility vehicles, such as garbage lorries or delivery vans, are clean and energy efficient. 

As of 2012, public authorities will be obliged to include environmental criteria when acquiring vehicles, including life-cycle costs for fuel consumption and CO2 and other pollutant emissions, if proposals presented by the Commission on 19 December are approved by member states and Parliament. 

The EU executive had tabled a similar proposal back in 2005, calling for 25% of all heavy-duty vehicles (buses and trucks of over 3.5 tonnes) purchased or leased by public bodies meet an EU “enhanced environmentally friendly” standard. 

But the draft legislation was thrown out by the European Parliament for being too weak. 

The new plans would cover all road vehicles, rather than just heavy-duty ones, and would apply to all vehicles procured by public authorities, rather than just one quarter of them – thus affecting the purchases of roughly 110,000 passenger cars, 110,000 light commercial vehicles, 35,000 lorries and 17,000 buses. 

The aim is to kick-start a market in technologies that are currently not commercially viable, such as biofuels, hydrogen, natural gas or LPG, electric or hybrid vehicles. 

According to Commission estimates, the inclusion of lifetime costs for fuel, CO2, NOx, non-methane hydrocarbons and particulate matter (PM) would push the price of a normal bus up from around €150,000 to €594,030 – meaning that it would become more interesting to pay a higher price up-front for a cleaner and more fuel-efficient vehicle with lower fuel energy consumption and emissions. 

A study by the consultancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) estimates that energy savings of 22% of the vehicles covered could be achieved by 2017 under the new measure, as well as a 29% reduction in CO2 emissions. 

The proposal comes as part of plans put forward in September, with the presentation by EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot of a new Green Paper on urban transport, aimed at tackling the growing congestion, pollution and safety problems related to transport in Europe’s cities (EURACTIV 29/09/07). 

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