The European Parliament (EP) and Council reached a preliminary agreement on “a single EU methodology for calculating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport services.” Despite providing a unified method across all modes of transport, participation will remain on a voluntary basis, leaving it all up to companies.
This initiative, known as CountEmissionsEU, is one of the pillars of the Greening Freight Package. In practice, the European Commission will develop “a public, simple and free-of-charge calculation tool, backed by manual on how to use it”. Companies will not be forced to calculate their emissions, but if they choose to do so, they will have to utilise this method. And here comes the first problem.
EU institutions are (too) often reluctant to make regulations mandatory, hindering their effectiveness. If the purpose of counting emissions is to showcase which modality is ‘greener’, keeping it on a voluntary basis might provide skewed data. It is not far-fetched to think that only companies with good scores will reveal their data, while the rest will keep it secret for reputation reasons.
Nothing before 2030
A second issue is the timeline envisioned in the agreement between the EU Parliament and Council. The deal is preliminary, which means that the two institutions need to give their final approval. When this will happen, only time will tell. “The new rules would apply four and a half years after its publication and entry into force”, the EP added. Thus, even if the deal is approved today (which is unlikely), the regulation would only be activated in 2030.
Moreover, the Commission is given four years to develop the tool and manual mentioned above, which also means it will not be ready before 2030. This guide, according to EU institutions, will be mostly beneficial for small and medium enterprises as it would “reduce the administrative and financial burden on companies”.
Finally, it will be necessary to wait at least another four years for a properly comprehensive methodology. The inclusion of life-cycle emissions, such as those from vehicle manufacturing, energy production, maintenance, use and end-of-life, in fact, will come “within four years after new rules will start to apply (…) once sufficient data and international progress allow”.