After a tough struggle, the EU has decided: Cars with combustion engines may also be registered for the first time after 2034, provided it is ensured that only e-fuels are used in the tanks. What this should look like in practice still needs to be clarified. Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer is one of the proponents of this synthetic fuel. The Austrian automotive industry, with an annual direct and indirect value creation of 27 billion euros, must remain open to all technologies, said Nehammer at the beginning of a national car summit.
“climate and people-friendly course” demanded
Nehammer argued before the meeting with business and science representatives, which was accompanied by protests from climate protectionists, that it was important to him that the production and research location in the auto industry in particular was preserved. The co-governing Greens and the opposition parties criticized Nehammer’s focus on so-called e-fuels and pointed out the much higher energy efficiency of battery-powered electric vehicles. Green politician Gebi Mair called on the Chancellor’s conservative ÖVP to return to a “climate and people-friendly course”. Otherwise, the coalition would “go towards difficult times,” he told the APA news agency.
Pros and cons of e-fuels
Proponents of e-fuels argue that the poor overall efficiency of e-fuels plays a minor role if surplus green electricity is used. In addition, the vehicle fleet can be operated in a “climate-neutral” manner. However, this ignores the fact that green electricity also has a CO₂ footprint, albeit a small one, and that the transport of fuel from regions where regenerative energies for the production of e-fuels can be harvested more cheaply than here is by no means climate-neutral. Read and hear more about this background in these articles:
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