MEP expresses doubts about EU fuel life-cycle cuts plan
Mon 04 June 2007
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A Dutch MEP has called for significant changes to a European Commission draft that plans to cut life-cycle fuel emissions, saying that the proposed policy could penalise early innovators in cutting fuel-sourced emissions.
The Environment Committee's Socialist Rapporteur Dorette Corbey' s comments were made in response to a proposed directive, drafted in January, that would set strict 10% emission reduction targets for fuel firms over the course of a decade. They appear In a working paper discussed in the European Parliament's Environment Committee. Corbey warns that the proposed base year of 2010 will punish those firms that are already developing ways to cut their emissions.
An improvement, she suggests, would be to adopt the 'top-runner' system, as used in Japan, to improve the energy efficiency of appliances. However, no amendments have yet been proposed, and Corbey otherwise welcomed the draft, which is at an early stage, as a "courageous step".
The other principal political groups came out broadly in favour of the directive. Pilar Ayuso of the centre-right EPP called for a standardised measurement of life-cycle carbon emissions from fuels. Green MEP Claude Turmes criticised plans to raise the vapour pressure limit in order to permit higher blends of ethanol in fuels, arguing that it would increase emissions of volatile organic compounds.
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