From the UK Guardian website, the best fuel saving tip - buy a smaller car.

It's hardly rocket science and I'm surprised that a simple law of gravity that even EU trade commissioner Guenter Verheugen reluctantly agreed with in an interview in the German Bild website,

"It’s a law of nature that the more weight I move, the more energy I need”

All over Europe motorists are being persuaded, with lower road tax on fuel efficient cars in the UK and penalties for driving gas guzzlers and it's the pretty much the same story in France with the bonus-malus system. In Germany, new measures have just been announced to encourage people to switch to environmentally friendly cars, though admittedly anything that includes the Mercedes GLK has got to be a decidedly dodgy stretch of the imagination. But you get the idea - it's not just at the fuel pumps where you'll reap the benefit of driving a smaller car.

And what's good for your pocket is also good for the planet. But you already knew that.

Posted by Debra at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When McKinsey & Company asked that question surprisingly few people got it right.

51% thought they should recycle.
47% thought they should use energy efficient appliances.
41% thought they should drive less.

According to McKinsey what they should have said is:

1. Drive a more fuel-efficient car
2. Improve their home insulation
3. Eat less beef.

Does the car industry know it has the power to help people make the single biggest change to help fight climate change? When climate change is moving to the top of everyone's list (including the US since Barrack Obama was elected) they have the world's best marketing tool at their disposal.

McKinsey has some good advice to help them make the most of a marketers' dream opportunity.

Be honest, they say. Don't mislead the public with dodgy claims that won't stand up to scrutiny. Come clean about the true environmental impact of your product. People will trust you if you tell them the truth.

Offer more. If you're selling a green car, make it stylish as well functional (and green) and you'll be a cut above your competitors.

And bring your products to the people. To the carmakers, the message is that if they make more greener cars, people will buy them.

And finally a nice quote from the article that might help the car industry overcome its apparent fear of change:

"Going green while staying competitive can be challenging, and companies may rightly ask whether cultivating green consumers is worth all the trouble. We believe that it is more than just worthwhile—it is imperative for success. Once businesses remove the obstacles that now make it hard for consumers to act on their environmental beliefs, sales of green products could explode."

Posted by Debra at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's a question that's bothered me right from the start, and to a large extent the answer lies in the hands of EU, who are debating the cars issue now.

I've never been interested in cars, not in the way some people I know. But though I haven't owned a car for over ten years, I'm not completely on another planet, and I know all too well that for a lot of people a car isn't just a method of getting from A to B. For some, the relationship with their cars is a lot more complex than that.

There's an interesting article on the Guardian environment blog that sums it up nicely.

"…the car is a fearfully clever thing, a powerful mechanical servant which can transport us anywhere we want to go, while carrying tents and ovens and picnics and even playing your favourite music."

I wonder how people would feel if they could see the damage they cause to our world every time they revved the engine? If instead of car ads showing rolling hills with cars gliding quietly past, car makers were more honest, and we saw plants wilting or rivers bursting their banks with each puff from the exhaust.

If we could see the effects of our own CO2 emissions would we love the car less?

The BBC programme Top Gear epitomises some people's obsession with the combustion engine, with its laddish talk and love of fast cars. So last night I was surprised to catch a repeat of a programme by a Top Gear presenter, on energy, in the last part of the James May's Big Ideas series.

The programme looked at a number of options including a solar powered racing car and a plan to develop petrol out of thin air. Yes really. The idea is to use solar polar to convert CO2 and water into something like petrol. There's a youtube video of the clip here if you're interested.

Before you get too excited about that particular idea, there are a number of problems with it that are explained quite well here in the comments.

But the main problem I can have with it is that it involved burning coal to produce the CO2 in the first place. Creating emissions to clean up emissions doesn't sound like a solution to me.

But what interested me more is that if a high profile TV presenter who loves to drive fast cars is concerned about CO2 emissions, then why aren't the car makers falling over themselves to do something about it?

Make us more efficient cars and we'll drive more efficient cars. It's a message we’re sending to the EU right now, because the car industry just doesn't seem to want to hear it.

Posted by Debra at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While the big carmakers are worried about falling sales, some companies are doing well.

Fiat has bucked the trend with rising European sales in September compared to the same time last year. Apparently consumers in France are choosing smaller cars. It could be a case of simple economics rather than a concern about reducing their carbon footprint. Whatever the reason the planet wins out. According to the Guardian the increased demand for small cars is fuelled by the French "Bonus Malus" scheme that rewards consumers who buy more efficient cars and gives a financial penalty for gas guzzlers.

Fiat's sales have gone up 43% in France. That's 43% more small cars sold than last year. And what's even more surprising is that French car makers Renault and the Peugeot Citroen group already make small cars. So the patriotic French are moving away from French cars to even smaller foreign cars, giving a clear signal that the people want to drive more fuel efficient cars.

If only we could find a way of getting car makers all over Europe to sell the kind of cars that people clearly want to buy - smaller cars that are cheaper to run and better for the planet. Some sort of Europe-wide law that sets targets for fuel efficiency, with penalties for car makers that don't hit the mark. What would that look like?

Discussions on the legislation are continuing in the EU this week. ACEA releases its September sales figures on Wednesday. Let's hope the politician can put two and two together and come up with an answer that will help the climate.

Posted by Debra at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EU TV reports that vice president of the EU Commission Gunter Verheugen is “shocked” to learn that the EU’s legislative process is abused by special interest groups who don’t represent the public interest.

"What really shocked me that during the process I’ve done in recent years, I’ve found that in many cases, European legislation is triggered by interest groups,” said Verheugen.

It sounds like he disapproves, which is a good thing, but you’d think that someone in such a high position would be all too aware of all the lobbying that goes on behind the scenes.

But is Verheugen as innocent as he appears?

Maybe he wasn’t there in May 2007 at the leaving party for Bernd Gottschalk, the outgoing president of the VDA, Germany’s most powerful national car lobby group. Perhaps no one told him that Gottschalk thanked him for his “courageous and far-sighted” approach to “make it absolutely clear in Brussels that we will not accept a single, unified upper limit for CO2” ?

When he talked about special interest groups who don’t represent the public interest, didn’t he understand that the car lobby is one of the big culprits?

The car industry’s own figures showing that the people don’t want to buy the gas guzzling cars that they are so desperate to protect. In whose interest is that? Not mine, that’s for sure.

The way Verheugen tells it, you wouldn’t think that he’s not only aware of the lobbying, he’s taken sides as a result of it.

And it gets worse – Monique Goyens of the European Consumers Organisation, BEUC council told the conference on better regulation that the lobbying process was a “vicious game” where the lobbyist fights to gets hold of the proposal while it’s still a thought in someone at the EU’s mind. “Once it gets official,” she says, “it’s too late to influence anyway.”

But it’s not all gloom and doom. The decision to delay the vote in the Environment committee vote on CO2 emissions from cars followed a series of meetings with members of the committee by NGOs, who reminded MEPs of the weakening effect the amendments put forward by the industry committee would have on the legislation

And, last week’s result also demonstrates that MEPs do make the right decisions, despite being presented with such a powerful lobby with friends in high places, and disastrous “surrender amendments”. It just goes to show that the people’s lobby may not have all the connections, it may not have all the power, but it gets results.

Posted by Martin Lloyd at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some good news. Greenpeace France have teamed up with trade union CGT, consumers' association UFC Que choisir, and road safety expert Claude Got to form a coalition to call for a strong EU legislation on CO2 emissions from cars.

The timing couldn't be better - France holds the EU presidency and though French car makers could meet the targets under the cars emission legislation, the French - German Merkozy deal , if adopted, would put the car lobby's demands way above the need for strong action to reduce CO2 emissions.

Personally, I think it's very important that trade unions and environmentalists are working together today. We need to show that environmental and social issues are not opposed. On contrary, they fit together. Ambitious environmental measures can create many new jobs.

The responsibilities of the state and economic and social players lie in anticipating and facilitating investments in research, employment and training to face technological challenges. This requires a high level of dialogue and early social negotiations.

The signatories to this statement represent a wide range of interests - consumers, workers, road casualties, environmentalists. Together, we intend to defend an ambitious reform in the car industry for the benefit of present and future generations. We urge political decision makers to defend ambitious and legally-binding targets to combat climate change in a key European industrial sector. We also call on car manufacturers to stop hindering a regulation that would not only create an economic and industrial dynamic in the car industry, but also reduce CO2 emissions, household fuel bills and road risks. We ask car manufacturers to take their share of the responsibility beyond advertising campaigns, and to participate in the collective efforts that must be made if we are to meet the most serious global challenge humanity faces.

The coalition is calling for strong targets including a regulation that includes an objective of 120g CO2/km by 2012 and penalties severe enough to ensure all manufacturers comply. They're also asking for an ambitious and binding longer-term target to cut CO2 emissions by 2020. You can find out more here.

Anne Valette, Climate campaigner at Greenpeace France

Posted by Debra at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s good to see that the European Trade Union Confederation has come out against the recent industry vote on CO2 emissions in cars.
The ETUC is “disappointed over the outcome of the vote by the European Parliament Industry Committee because it weakens the proposals aimed at forcing vehicle manufacturers to reduce CO2 emissions from new passenger cars.”

Trade Unions and environmentalist don’t always see eye to eye. It’s all about jobs, which confuses me a bit because we’re not talking about producing fewer cars. The legislation doesn’t aim to limit the number of cars being produced. The issue is all about getting the cars on our roads to be more efficient.

I really can’t see how that leads to job cuts but I’ve heard that in France the unions are siding with the carmakers. It’s all so short sighted. But there is hope - the EUTC says “considerable economic and social benefits can be expected of such legislation, in terms of investments in research and the development of low-carbon technologies, thus helping to create and maintain long-term jobs in Europe’s automotive industry.”

Or as the environmental expert puts it, “the best way to protect the industry’s employment is to promote, as soon as possible, the development of fuel-saving vehicles which meet the needs of consumers with modest incomes.”
By the way Greenpeace has just published a report with more info on this issue. You can get it here.

Talk to anyone with a car these days and you’ll hear complaints about the rising cost of fuel.

The people understand the need to build more efficient cars.

The workers understand that their industry depends on it.

So why won’t the car industry face the truth?

Posted by Debra at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A new poll by TNS Opinion has found 87% of people in favour of reducing emissions from new cars by a quarter. The poll sample was 5000 people across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Full details of the poll available from Friends of the Earth here (PDF)

Posted by Martin Lloyd at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)