Electric drive vehicles in EU

On June 30, 2011 the ICCT, with the help of CE Delft, organized a workshop in Brussels on accounting for electric drive vehicles in the context of European CO2 emission legislation. Twenty five participants were invited to discuss potential approaches on how to incorporate emissions from various types of battery electric and fuel cell electric drive vehicles into the EU regulatory system, with a focus beyond the year 2020. Among the participants were technical staff from the European Commission, EU member states and Switzerland as well as technical experts from various research organizations.

Throughout the discussions there was a general agreement that upstream emissions of electric drive vehicles are of interest. At the same time there were different opinions on whether upstream emissions need to be taken into account in the EU CO2 emission legislation in the near term. Furthermore, the implications of different potential approaches for accounting for upstream emissions of electric vehicles were discussed in more detail.