EU Agrees to Ease CO2 Rules

The European Union has agreed to give carmakers an additional year to meet its fleet average for carbon dioxide emission limit of 95 grams per kilometer.

The EU also added flexibility to the use of so-called supercredits. Companies earn the credits which are used to offset above-average emissions from larger or more powerful vehicles by producing ultra-clean or zero-emission cars.

Both concessions resulted from months of heavy lobbying by Germany to modify rules the EU agreed upon in June. Germany argued that the original targets would put an extra burden on its luxury-car makers, whose vehicles are relatively less efficient than mainstream European cars.

Under the June agreement, carmakers had to achieve 100% compliance by 2020. The new target for full compliance is 2021.

The June agreement also capped supercredits at 2.5 g/km of CO₂ per year. The compromise plan will allow carmakers to apply a total of 7.5 g/km of credits in any proportion during 2020-2022. Thus a company might apply 6 grams in the first year and 1.5 grams in the second but would have none available in the third year.