E-fuels for new combustion cars must be 100% climate neutral: EU Commission draft

E-fuels must be climate-neutral for new vehicles with combustion engines to be sold after 2035, according to a new draft regulation – which resolves an internal dispute within the EU Commission – seen by Euractiv.

In March 2023, EU countries adopted updated rules for new cars and vans, allowing only zero-emission vehicles to be registered as of 2035, de-facto banning cars with internal combustion engines from registering after that date. However, after a showdown with Germany, an exception was included, allowing the registration of new combustion engine vehicles even after 2035, provided that they run “exclusively on CO2 neutral fuels”.

For this to be implemented, the Commission committed to creating a new vehicle category of combustion engine cars, which can only be filled with synthetic fuels, known as e-fuels.

In a new draft implementing regulation seen by Euractiv, the Commission clarifies that for e-fuels to be eligible for this, they need to reach full climate neutrality, namely a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 100%.

This comes after an internal dispute emerged between the Commission’s Department for the Internal Market (DG GROW) and the department in charge of climate protection.

An earlier draft, written by DG GROW and seen by Euractiv, obliged synthetic e-fuels to only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70% compared to fossil fuels, as defined in the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED).

This received pushback from environmental organisations and within the Commission, as the department responsible for climate action (DG CLIMA) warned that it could set a precedent for technologies being considered “CO2 neutral” despite not reaching actual neutrality.

German transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP), however, who had set the ball rolling on the e-fuels exception by threatening to block the CO2 standard’s adoption without a written commitment from the Commission, had instead called for “practical” solutions and said that this “can’t be 100%” emissions reductions, thereby backing DG GROW.

E-fuels, which take large amounts of electricity to be produced, can reach climate neutrality by being produced with green energy sources which would otherwise not be built and CO2 sucked from the atmosphere, using a technology called “Direct Air Capture” (DAC).

Through this, the emissions emitted when burned in the combustion engine are offset by CO2 taken from the atmosphere earlier in the production process of the fuel.

However, e-fuel proponents have argued that it was “currently not technically feasible” to produce e-fuels in a fully climate-neutral way due to the emissions calculation methodology.

The new CO2 norms for cars, adopted by Member States in March, include a so-called recital clause, normally non-binding, which sets the basis for the Commission’s new proposal.

In a second step, the Commission will present a delegated act to clarify how vehicles of the new category can still be registered after 2035 despite having emissions at the tailpipe.

A meeting for member states’ representatives to discuss the proposal is planned for October.

(Jonathan Packroff | Euractiv.de)

Read more with Euractiv

Slovakia’s likely future coalition wants to build a new nuclear reactor