The European Commission has published the second part of the Mobility Package. This part is focused mainly on environmental aspects of transport as well as on changes of the multimodal transport directive. The publication was carefully synchronized with the start of the Climate conference taking place in Bonn.
Environmental impact will certainly be one of the big challenges in the years to come. With a growth of transport volumes of 60% until 2050 and the foreseen decarburization, supply chain partners are faced with a huge challenge to overcome. The proposals of the European Commission are, as they describe them themselves, “ambitious but realistic”. The Commission is aiming to provide standards and tools for buyers of transport means to facilitate their choice on the procurement of trucks. This can be seen as a follow up of the already developed Vector-tool (the measurement tool based primarily on the sustainability measurement to see what kind of trucks suits your company best).
ESC applauds the transparency and the higher reliability of information. For companies, it is also important that they get certainty on their investments. If companies make investments these should be safe along the whole economic lifetime of the investments. ESC for that reason asks the Commission to provide clarity for investments. Hopefully Member States will not jeopardize this with their national rules. To have a European policy on environment measures, for example on bio fuels, would allow companies to have a common policy base for their investments decisions. This should not lay on the shoulders of the Members States as it creates too much diversity in the policy within the EU.
In their proposals the European Commission also pays attention to transition fuels such as Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). ESC welcomes this development as full electric deployment will take some time especially for heavy duty vehicles. For these transitional fuels, is it important that the policies in MS will not be too divergent either. The same transport means are often used in several MS and a coherent view among the members states is important.
For the multimodal transport, the ESC applauds that the rules are made a bit more flexible. Strict limits (such as the limit not to exceed 150km in the road leg) have been taken off from the proposals. As benefits can be also obtained nationally, the new proposals could potentially facilitate 44-ton trucks to be used more frequently.