In Europe, Germany May Have to Take the Wheel in Going Green March 8, 2007
In getting European automakers to adhere to new limits on carbon dioxide emissions, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will have to take on the industry at home.
GENEVA, March 6 – Europe prides itself on its pioneering approach to climate change – a commitment that Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany aims to deepen in her term as president of the European Union.
There is just one problem: her country, home of the autobahn and the Porsche sports cars that tear along it, is among Europe’s worst offenders when it comes to cars that spew carbon dioxide into the air.
To persuade Europe to accept stringent new cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, as Mrs. Merkel plans to do at a European Union summit meeting in Brussels this week, she must also face down the German auto industry, which has, until now, done little to make its cars more climate-friendly.
German auto executives concede that they will have to do more, especially since passenger car emissions account for 12 percent of Europe’s total emissions, and are rising rather than falling, unlike overall greenhouse gases here. But the industry’s reluctance to fully embrace the fears about climate change was palpable at the International Motor Show in Geneva this week.
“We are at the moment in a hype phase, or you can say, a hysterical phase, and we have to wait until the smoke is gone,” Norbert Reithofer, the chief executive of BMW, said in an interview. “When we have all the facts on the table, we can have a realistic view about the future.”
Skepticism aside, Mr. Reithofer said BMW was already equipping its cars with new technology that made their engines burn less fuel and emit fewer gases. The public would be surprised, he said, by the reduction in emissions that BMW will achieve by the end of next year.
Still, BMW and its rivals Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Audi, will fall well short of the reductions they and other European manufacturers pledged to reach voluntarily, from 1998 to 2008.
Stung by this failure, the European Commission has proposed making those cuts mandatory by 2012. Under its plan, new cars could emit no more than 120 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer (192 grams per mile). In 2004, average emissions were 163 grams per kilometer.
“They had a long time to comply, and they didn’t do it,” said Stephan Singer, the head of the European climate and energy unit at the World Wildlife Fund in Brussels. “It tells us that voluntary agreements don’t work.”
Not all European carmakers are climate offenders. Fiat of Italy, which has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by almost a third since 1997, is not far above the 120-gram target. The French carmakers Renault and Citroën, which emphasize smaller cars, are also within striking distance.
And the Germans do make some climate-friendly cars: DaimlerChrysler showed off its Smart minicar here, which falls under the emissions cap, while BMW’s new diesel 1-series, a subcompact, comes close.
The trouble is, Germany’s auto industry derives most of its profit, not to mention its global renown, from its speedy high-performance cars. Unlike Toyota, which has turned hybrid vehicles like the Prius into a calling card, German carmakers emphasize engineering brawn.
In Geneva, for example, Audi thrilled enthusiasts with its new R8, a two-seater that has more in common with a racecar than with other Audis. Across the hall, visitors mobbed Porsche’s sports cars.
“The top speed of an average new car made by BMW, Mercedes and Audi is 235 kilometers per hour,” or 146 miles per hour, said Werner Reh, head of the transport department at Bund, a German environmental group. “If you build racing cars, you can’t really reduce consumption.”
Environmentalists argue that the simplest way to cut emissions would be to impose a speed limit equivalent to 75 miles an hour on the autobahn. Germany is the only European country that permits drivers to go as fast as their cars, or their nerves, will let them – though on limited stretches.
Yet few German politicians, even Mrs. Merkel, have come out in favor of a speed limit. To Germans, newspapers here say, a no-limit autobahn is like pasta to an Italian or a baguette to a Frenchman.
Some German auto executives predict dire consequences if the new limits become law. A strict emissions cap of 120 grams, some note, would rule out most of the models that BMW, Mercedes and Audi now produce – to say nothing of Porsche, the biggest emitter. That would have untold consequences for an industry that is one of Germany’s largest employers.
They also argue that it is unfair to penalize companies whose high-end cars may emit fewer gases, in the aggregate, than small cars.
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