EEA report that average CO2 emissions from new cars and new vans increased again in 2019

The European Environment Agency (EEA) has published provisional data for the average carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new passenger cars and vans registered in the EU, Iceland, Norway and the UK in 2019.

The provisional data reports that after a steady decline from 2010 to 2016, of almost 22 grams of CO2 per kilometre (g CO2/km), average emissions from new passenger cars increased in 2017 and in 2018 by 2.8g CO2/km in total. This upward trend continued with an additional increase of 1.6g CO2/km in 2019, reaching 122.4 grams of CO2 per kilometre. This remains below the target of 130g CO2/km that applied until 2019, but well above the EU target of 95g CO2/km that phases-in this year. The EEA report the reasons for the increase in car emissions include the growing share of the sport utility vehicle (SUV) segment, and the market penetration of electric cars remaining slow in 2019.

Vans registered in the EU, Iceland, Norway and the UK in 2019 emitted on average 158.4g CO2/km, which is 0.5g/km more than in 2018. This remains well below the target of 175g CO2/km that applied until 2019, but is still 11g CO2/km higher than the EU target of 147g CO2/km, which applies from this year onwards. Several factors affected this emission increase, including an increase in the average mass and only a limited increase of the share of electric vans (BEV sand PHEV) from 0.8 % in 2018 to 1.3% in 2019.

Source: EEA, 26 June 2020