Volvo Group Questions One Aspect of European CO2 Legislation
Oct 12, 2010 11:58 AM
The Volvo Group (STO:VOLVA) (STO:VOLVB) takes a positive view of the European Commission’s ambition to present a proposal for European carbon-dioxide legislation that will regulate emissions from trucks, but questions a requirement that emissions are measured based on the transport work conducted by the vehicles and not exclusively on the basis of the individual vehicle’s emissions.
“A truck is not a bigger car,” says Volvo CEO Leif Johansson. “Trucks perform important transport work, and emission measurements must take into consideration the load transported by the vehicles, not only how much each vehicle emits over a certain distance.”
“A better measurement is emissions per ton kilometer. Unless we also take into consideration the load transported by the vehicle, the risk is that transport companies, in order to meet the requirements, will choose to operate three small trucks instead of one large one, which will lead to considerably higher emissions, as well as increased congestion, noise and similar problems.”
Another matter that has been discussed concerns the technology to meet the emission requirements, but Johansson is not particularly worried about this.
“We don’t believe that it is impossible to meet the requirements in purely technical terms, but to achieve genuine reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions, the requirements must take into account more than merely emissions per kilometer, otherwise there is the paradox that we will risk having higher emissions.”
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