By JUSTINE CALMA
Mar 28, 2023
The EU finalized its plan to phase out polluting cars and
vans, but it carved out an exemption for vehicles that run on e-fuels.
Luxury carmakers’ push for synthetic e-fuels has weakened
the European Union’s plan to get internal combustion engines off the road in
the future. After weeks of delay, the Council of the European Union adopted
regulations today to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and vans
by 2035. That would have amounted to an effective ban on cars with internal
combustion engines (ICE) if not for a last-minute update that carves out an
exemption for ICE cars that swap out gasoline for e-fuels.
E-fuel is a synthetic alternative that can be made from air
and water using electricity. While running on e-fuel instead of gasoline might
reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it’s still costly and inefficient. And some
experts worry that making room for e-fuels within plans to transition to clean
energy only keeps more gas-guzzling cars on the road.
“We’re afraid it’s a stalling technique to try to save the
internal combustion engine and to create a future for it,” Stephanie Searle,
fuels program director at the nonprofit research group the International
Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), previously told The Verge as the EU was
still debating its new rules.
The regulations the EU adopted today set a goal of reducing
planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions from cars and vans by 100 percent by
2035. There’s no way a car running on gasoline can hit that target, which is
why it could have created a de facto ban on selling new cars with internal
combustion engines. The rule was expected to be finalized at the start of the
month, but Germany essentially withheld its vote until the rules were revised
to explicitly allow traditional cars to run on e-fuels.
E-fuel can be made by taking carbon dioxide out of the air
and hydrogen out of water. Those molecules are combined to make new synthetic
fuels. There’s new technology called direct air capture that makes it possible
to pull that CO2 out of the atmosphere, which is why e-fuel made using renewable
energy can be considered “carbon neutral.” Burning e-fuel still produces carbon
dioxide pollution, but the idea is that pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere to
make the fuel cancels out those emissions.
German automaker Porsche promotes e-fuel as a way to address
climate change while continuing to make lightweight combustion engine vehicles
— as opposed to electric vehicles that are typically heavier than traditional
cars because of the battery. Porsche has invested more than $100 million in
developing e-fuels, including $75 million in a company operating a small e-fuel
plant in Chile.
But there could be some big snags in the road ahead for
e-fuels in the EU’s climate plans. There’s no commercial supply of this alternative
fuel today, and it would be very expensive to make — costing around $7 a liter
(more than $25 a gallon), the ICCT estimates. Pulling molecules out of air and
water is also energy-intensive, making it four times more efficient to use
renewable electricity to charge an EV battery than to use it to make e-fuel for
a car, according to the ICCT. (The Verge has a more in-depth breakdown of how
e-fuels are made and the challenges here.)
Crucially, the EU still has to figure out how to assess
whether an internal combustion engine vehicle on the road after 2035 is
actually running on e-fuel and not plain old gasoline. That’s not entirely
clear yet with the rules adopted today. Moving forward, the EU says that “the
Commission will make a proposal for registering vehicles running exclusively on
CO2-neutral fuels.”
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