Abstract
The transport sector is a major driver of climate change both globally and in the European Union (EU). While the EU as a whole is showing declining carbon emissions, transport-related emissions are higher than in 1990. Car traffic is responsible for around 12 percent of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen underlined the efforts to strengthen the decarbonization of the EU at the end of 2019 by publishing the European Green Deal (EGD) communication. In this paper, we analyze the controversy surrounding the emission performance standards for cars adopted in spring 2019. Car manufacturers must reduce the average carbon emissions of their fleets by 37.5% between 2021 and 2030. In this respect, the new emission performance standards are more ambitious than the previous ones. However, our argument is that without a major shift in the balance of power, extensive decarbonization and a departure from car-centered transport development will not be possible. Therefore, it is crucial for mobility research to critically engage with lobbying power in the EU and with concepts such as environmental leadership, which often underexpose the structural power of incumbent actors and existing path dependencies.
Highlights
The crisis of society–nature relations is coming to a head
We argue that the emission performance standards adopted in 2019 reflect a certain emphasis on the ecological modernization of the European Union (EU) transport sector
Following on from previous considerations that the transport sector has strong path dependencies and a poor emissions balance, and that European policy is strongly characterized by unequal power relations between capital and “common good” interests and power disparities between member states, we reconstruct the negotiation of emission performance standards for cars
Summary
The crisis of society–nature relations is coming to a head. This is the broad consensus in science, as formulated, for example, in the concept of the Anthropocene. Many authors formulate criticisms of the concept by reframing the Anthropocene as the Capitalocene This term emphasizes that it is not humanity, per se, but a specific form of social development, namely under the conditions of capitalist production relations, that has triggered the crisis of society–nature relations. The EU’s existing power balance and institutional configurations inhibit a more far-reaching and problem-adequate approach to the ecological crisis in the transport sector. This aspect is often not sufficiently considered in research on European environmental policy. The article is structured as follows: we analyze the EU’s performance in the field of climate and transport policy. The interviews were triangulated with primary and secondary data like newspaper articles, position papers, and reports from key stakeholders in the field and the scientific literature
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