The new climate change law condemns the combustion car to death

2040. From that year onwards, cars that emit carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, will not be able to be sold in Spain. And by 2050 they will no longer be able to circulate in the country. In practice, and with current technology, this is the death sentence for combustion cars included in the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law approved this week in Congress. The standard includes measures to improve the air quality of cities and promote the implementation of the electric car, the clear commitment of the Government.

To the problems of air pollution generated by combustion engines, it is added that diesel and gasoline are large emitters of carbon dioxide – a gas harmless to human health but mainly responsible for the overheating of the planet. According to Spain’s latest official greenhouse gas inventory, from 2019, transport is responsible for 29.1% of all the country’s emissions. And road transport accounts for 26.9% of the total. While the rest of the large sectors reduce their emissions, transport continues to increase them.

“We need the electric car to be democratized,” the fourth vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, said on Friday. It did so during the presentation of the new call for incentives for the acquisition of electric vehicles and the installation of charging points that the Executive has just launched. Aid that has to give the impetus to implement the Government’s strategy. In the climate law recently approved in Congress – and which still has to receive the last approval in the Senate – several obligations are established for gas stations, from a certain volume of business, to install recharging points. And, from 2023, all non-residential buildings with more than 20 parking spaces must have the same infrastructure. In addition, the Government is already preparing an Internet portal where all public points in the country can be located. “The law will certainly give very important signals that electrification is irreversive.
this is going to be developed during this decade,” says Alberto Amores, partner at Monitor Deloitte and an expert in mobility.

The law is a letter of intent but also a race that, although with almost two decades to go, goes against the clock before the path marked by the European Union. Spain is lagging behind: only 0.2% of its 24.5 million passenger cars are fully electric in a fleet with an overwhelming majority of diesel and gasoline. And not only that, the Spanish automotive industry has yet to make the transformation to assume the changes that the Government wants to see in the market. Today, only six of the nearly 30 models assembled at Spanish plants are all-electric.

When in 2018 the Government announced its intention to veto combustion vehicles in 2040, the employers’ association of manufacturers Anfac raised its voice against the measure and demanded technological neutrality. Three years later, and with the sanctions that Europe is imposing on brands for issuing more than allowed, the discourse has changed. “For Anfac, the approval of this law is very necessary because it sets a national regulatory framework and sets long-term objectives. The automotive industry is fully committed to the objectives of decarbonization of the park that endorses the law for 2040 and 2050 and we are already working with this horizon, “says the general director of this employer of manufacturers, José López-Tafall, who has been in office for just over a year.

Rifirrafes with Industry

The main lines of the law even generated rifirrafes between the ministries of Ecological Transition and Industry for the different priorities that each one had on the table. Today that noise has disappeared, although Industry sources point out that the law approved by Congress “could perhaps improve its wording if it established or identified a coordination and oversight mechanism for the realization of that deployment. [en referencia a los puntos de recarga necesarios], on the basis of progressive objectives established according to the evolution of the fleet” of electric vehicles.

Joan Groizard, general director of the Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy, dependent on Ecological Transition, defends that the law is equally essential for an industry that exports to countries “in which they have already implemented similar decarbonization rules”. “The alternative was to stay out of photography; a few years ago it seemed that setting 2040 was a barbarity for some and now it is even defended, “he rivets about the changes of positions in the sector.

In fact, it may even seem that the Spanish standard lags behind a part of the industry. Volvo and Ford in Europe have just announced that by 2030 they will stop producing combustion vehicles. For its part, the Volkswagen consortium, which in the Old Continent sold 3.6 million vehicles last year, maintains that most of its sales will be electric from 2030.

In any case, it will have to adapt to what is dictated by the governments that, like Spain, have already marked the end of combustion on the roads. The United Kingdom, for example, will no longer allow the sale of diesel and gasoline cars from 2030, and Norway, advanced in promoting zero-emission cars, will do so in 2025. “The parent companies have taken on the change to electrification and the European funds for the recovery will also be an important boost for European industry,” says Amores. Because almost 40% of those funds will go to actions related to the fight against climate change.

NEW ALLIANCES AND LOW EMISSION ZONES

SEAT wants its plant in Martorell (Barcelona) to specialize almost entirely in the production of electric vehicles from 2025. There it now manufactures half a million gasoline, diesel and hybrid vehicles a year. The rest of the Spanish plants (Ford, Renault and Stellantis) have already shown some cards for their present and their imminent future where plug-in hybrid vehicles are also present, a first step towards transformation. But there is still time, one more generation of vehicles, to reach the 2040 deadline. Meanwhile, the government is trying to push for a new industry based on car batteries.

The process of transformation of mobility is also causing the big electric companies to try to enter this sector. “There is a need for partnerships,” explains Luis Buil, global head of Smart Solutions at Iberdrola. His company, for example, already has agreements with almost all the major car firms and with large dealer chains for the installation of charging points, Buil says. The Government’s forecasts are that in 2023 there will be 250,000 electric vehicles in Spain and 100,000 charging points. By 2030, five million vehicles and 300,000 public points should have been reached.

To the declared commitment of the Government for the electric car is added the fight against pollution, which puts combustion vehicles even more in trouble. The climate law requires that all municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants have low-emission zones – such as those of Madrid and Barcelona – from 2023. In addition, municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants should also have them if their air quality is not good.

Source: The Country