HOW CAN THE EU HELP TO ENCOURAGE TECHNICAL MEASURES ON EXISTING HEAVY
DUTY VEHICLES?
1.
KEY POINTS
This project looks at what the EU Commission can do to support and
encourage the use of technical measures such as: after-treatments, fuels, oils
and tyres, which are able to reduce emissions from in-use heavy duty and
urban captive fleet vehicles.
If the EU Commission is to assist cities and member states to introduce these
technical measures, which can bring significant emissions and therefore
pollution reductions, it needs to understand the experience of those who have
introduced such technical measures, and get their advice on how they could
be encouraged.
Key issues mechanisms that can be used to increase techincal measures
include low emission zones, road user charging and tax incentives, many of
which may be able to be assisted by the EU. Some of the issues that are
coming out of the work so far include: EU-wide certification and
‘homologation/validation’ of technical measures, a technical measures
register, EU guidance for subsiduarity issues, state aid rules.
2.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Road vehicles are among the most important sources of air pollution. The EU
is developing further Euro standards for new vehicles, however, it takes a long
time for new vehicles to penetrate into the fleet, and older vehicles will still
contribute to a large share of pollutant emissions in the medium term.
There are a wide set of technical measures for emissions performance
enhancement, which can accelerate the reduction of pollutant emissions. For
the purpose of this project a technical measure is defined as any measure
relating to a vehicle, its fuel, lubricants and other consumables, that leads to
lower pollutant emissions per vehicle km under comparable operating
conditions from in service heavy duty vehicles.
The project will identify what technical measures are available, assess their
cost effectiveness at reducing pollution, identify barriers to their up-take and
make concrete policy recommendations to the EU to encourage greater use
of these measures.
3.
OBJECTIVES
The objective of this questionnaire is to collect information on what the EU
can do to help those implementing schemes and policies to encourage the
use of technical measures on existing vehicles, from those who are involved
with implementing these measures.
For example, what is preventing schemes being implemented, what could
help increase the use of technical measures, what has worked well?
Low Emission Zones, charging systems, economic incentives, public
procurement policies, may be some of the most relevant schemes.
The replies to the questionnaire will be analysed by our team. On that basis,
we will present the most relevant options to be further investigated, and the
preliminary findings will be discussed in a workshop organised by DG
Environment, to be held in Brussels on the 11th September 2006. The
objective of that workshop and of the final report is double:
 To perform with the model TREMOVE1 an analysis of the costeffectiveness of the scenarios and the analysis of the impact on pollutant
emissions, in the context of the forthcoming revision of National Emissions
Ceilings Directive.
 To define concrete policy proposals at EU level, which could help to
support the most promising technological options. In particular, the
feasibility of a common system at EU level for vehicle certification that
takes on board improvements of existing vehicles will be thoroughly
assessed, in the context of Low Emission Zones, charging systems,
economic incentives, public procurement policies, etc.
4.
HOW TO PROCEED
Any information that you are able to provide would greatly assist us. The
most important question is what could the EU do to help increase the
use of technical measures to reduce emissions.
Please send your reply by e-mail to Lucy Sadler through the website
(www.airqualitypolicy.co.uk) as soon as possible, together with any report,
presentation, background information that you think might be useful. If you
need more time to reply, please let me know.
Please do not hesitate to send requests for clarification by e-mail, or
telephone, +49 (0)7641 9375 335.
1
See details on the TREMOVE model on www.tremove.org