FCAI holds big oil to account for CO2 emissions

The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) has jumped on a report by the National Transport Commission (NTC), to call for higher-quality fuel standards.

FCAI Chief Executive Tony Weber says that Australia’s fuel standards are a long way from matching world-best practice.

“There’s no doubt about the importance of the decisions which need to be made this year around getting Australia’s transport standard fuel quality up to match that of the European standards,” he was quoted saying in a press release last week.

“Australia has the lowest quality petrol of the 35 countries in the OECD, below Mexico, Turkey and Estonia.”

According to the press release Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg noted during a recent vehicle emissions review forum that Australia’s fuel quality was ranked 66th in the world.

No government support for EVs
Last year the FCAI demanded government offer more concessions for green-car buyers, on the basis that the local industry can do little more to reduce CO2 emissions without incentives for consumers to buy more expensive hybrids and electric vehicles instead of conventional vehicles powered solely by internal-combustion engines. It’s a point that the FCAI has reiterated in this latest press release.

According to the NTC’s report, the average figure for CO2 (carbon-dioxide) emissions from new cars fell by 1.1 per cent during 2016. While that decline remains consistent with the downward trend over the past decade, it’s less than half the average annual reduction during the period back to 2005 – 2.4 per cent a year.

It could be an early sign that the downward trend since 2005 is beginning to level out. There’s a possibility that within a year or two the FCAI may have to defend the automotive industry, should automotive CO2 emission levels begin to rise. The relatively small decline last year is at odds with conventional wisdom that the lower number of traditional Aussie family cars being built and bought would organically reduce CO2 emissions overall.

Large as life and twice the pollutants
In the press release the FCAI did observe that Australian consumers have traditionally chosen larger, more powerful cars than European buyers.

“Our sales data shows quite clearly that in general, Australian consumers prefer very different types of vehicles to European consumers and this preference flows through to our CO2 emissions,” Weber said.

That situation is unlikely to change, even with the end of local manufacturing. According to the Green Vehicle Guide, combined tailpipe emissions of CO2 for the Holden Evoke is 193g/km, which is nearly double the maximum figure demanded by European regulators. And that was from the ‘small’ (3.0-litre) V6.

Nevertheless, last year – in a larger local market of 1,178,133 vehicle sales – just 87,096 Aussie-built cars were sold. That was over 6000 fewer than the year before, and just 7.4 per cent of the total.

So the influence of Australian-built cars on national emissions is diminishing, yet the rate of reduction is leveling out. There’s a problem somewhere, and it isn’t necessarily related to the ‘dinosaurs’.

There has been a much lower level of diesel-engined vehicles sold in Australia over the years, the FCAI also notes, and that has had some impact on the reduction in average CO2 emissions here, versus Europe.

AAA pushing for real-world testing
The FCAI, drawing on the report to take pot shots at the oil industry and government, was joined by the AAA (Australian Automobile Association), although it’s uncertain the FCAI would have welcomed the support. In its own press release, the AAA re-asserted the need for real-world emissions testing.

The AAA noted from the NTC report that sales of micro, light and small cars had dwindled by over 45,000 sales during the reporting year, but SUVs of all sizes and shapes had increased by over 88,000 units. This supports the view that Australians are choosing to buy larger vehicles that are more practical – and disregard the environmental issue. That may change if petrol prices begin to climb.

What the AAA doesn’t state explicitly is that many of those SUV sales probably displace traditional large family sedans, and the small SUVs are similarly displacing micro, light and small passenger cars. In a growing market, the balance of extra SUV sales volume simply reflects more people and organisations buying more cars.

The AAA argues that government could be encouraging more new-car buyers to opt for vehicles that are environmentally cleaner than their first choice, if they had more information available to them concerning fuel economy and emissions. At the core of the argument is the AAA’s call for the government’s Green Vehicle Guide to be reformed, with a simple star rating based on real-world emissions testing conducted in Australia.

Volkswagen’s ‘dieselgate’ scandal is the ammunition the AAA needed to lobby for emissions testing to be taken out of the hands of the car manufacturers. The AAA’s real-world emissions testing indicates that CO2 is up to 60 per cent higher than the ADR81/02 figures supplied by the car companies and disseminated by the government. That’s the basis for the AAA lobbying to place fuel economy and emissions data for consumers “at the top of the Government’s list of priorities in this area”.

The issue at this point, however, is that no one can properly define ‘real-world testing’.

You can read the NTC’s report in full as a downloadable file online.