EU car makers to get more time to meet CO2 cuts

The Associated Press
Published: December 1, 2008

BRUSSELS, Belgium: European Union governments and the European Parliament struck a provisional deal Monday that gives car makers more time to meet stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
The new rules encourage car makers to sell more small and fuel-efficient cars to balance out sales of heavier luxury vehicles that have boomed in recent years.
The deal is a partial victory for car companies such as Volkswagen AG and BMW AG that claimed they would be crippled by new climate change rules that forced them to change the kind of cars they make.
They say they cannot afford now to spend heavily on developing new technology and refitting plants because sales are slumping during the economic downturn.
Car makers will get until 2015 — three years more than originally planned — before each companies' fleet of new cars must limit average emissions to 120 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer.

That limit will be phased in with 65 percent of cars meeting the target by 2012, three quarters a year later and 80 percent by 2014.
The current EU average is 158 grams of CO2 per kilometer so there is a long way to go.
Under the deal, car makers that fail to hit these goals after 2012 would be fined €5 ($6.30) for each extra gram of CO2 per car sold — and €95 ($120) per gram if they miss the limit by more than four grams. From 2019, each extra gram would cost €95 per car sold.
The compromise pact must be approved separately by the EU's 27 governments and the European Parliament before it becomes final.
Environmentalists were unhappy saying the outcome watered down promises the car industry made years ago to hit the 120 gram target by 2012.
Campaigners Greenpeace said it would allow "car makers to continue producing gas-guzzlers well into the next decade."