EU: Ministers place transport in the eye of climate-change storm

The transport sector, with its significant contribution to greenhouse-gas emissions and ever-increasing growth rates, is going to feel the heat of EU regulation, European transport ministers pledged at a meeting on 8 June.

With growth rates expected to soar to around 50% between 2000 and 2020 for freight alone, the transport sector – up to now overlooked in EU strategies to tackle climate change – is about to take centre stage as EU governments work to fulfil their ambitious energy and climate-change commitments.
Alongside measures to cap CO2 emissions from cars and to include aviation in its carbon emissions-trading scheme, the Council also called for maritime shipping, inland waterways and railways to take up a larger share of freight transport and said that further efforts were necessary to strengthen these modes of transport against road and air.

Nevertheless, trains and ships will also have to become cleaner and more efficient, said ministers, adding that infrastructure-charging will be key to ensuring that each individual transport mode bears the full cost of its “ecological footprint”. The Commission is due to present a general model to calculate this by June 2008.

Developing alternative and renewable fuels is also a top priority, ministers said. However, warning of the potential negative side-effects linked with the development of biofuels, they requested that the Commission present a scheme for the certification of biofuels on the basis of sustainablility criteria and their contribution to cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. They also called for a larger focus on so-called second-generation production technologies.

EurActiv