Speaking to the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership in London’s City Hall (June 9th), the FIA Foundation’s Director General, David Ward called on the automobile industry and governments to develop a more coherent global strategy to reduce CO2 emissions and promote fuel economy.
“For too long” David Ward explained, “fuel economy and emissions policy has been dealt with at a regional level with the US, Europe and Japan developing policy in isolation. This has lead to the absurd situation in which global car makers took legal action to prevent California adopting fuel economy rules that are less stringent than standards which the same companies voluntarily accepted in Europe. Now, with the failure of their US legal action, the arrival of the Obama Administration, and their growing dependence on government and taxpayers support car makers must adopt a more constructive and credible approach”.
Presenting the ’50 by 50’ Global Fuel Economy Initiative launched earlier this year in partnership with the UN Environment Programme, the International Energy Agency and the International Transport Forum, David Ward outlined the opportunity to achieve firstly a 30% fuel economy improvement in all new cars in the OECD by 2030, followed by a 50% improvement from all new cars worldwide and finally a 50% fuel efficiency goal for the world’s passenger car fleet by 2050.
If successful the ‘50 by 50’ campaign would save two billion tonnes CO2 per year by 2050 and simultaneously generate hundreds of billions of cost savings especially to oil importing countries and consumers. It would also support further improvements in air quality and safety benefits related to lighter vehicles which would especially reduce injury to pedestrians and non-motorized traffic. Manufacturers could also anticipate cost savings from greater efforts at global harmonization of regulatory systems that should be cheaper to comply with than the current patchwork of different systems.
The LowCVP Conference was attended by around 200 delegates and featured a keynote address from the UK’s Secretary of State for Transport Lord Adonis. Other speakers included the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. The presentations given by all speakers are now available on the LowCVP website. See: http://www.lowcvp.org.uk/news/1187/lowcvp-conferencecity-hall-8-june-presentations-now-on-line/
