Dieselgate 2: Electric Boogaloo?

A new ruling in Germany could be the tombstone on the diesel engine

If you own a diesel car, it has not been a great couple of years. Since the so-called “dieselgate” hitting Volkswagen in 2015, it has been a non-stop worsening of the engine’s future, which just got a little bit worse this week with a sentence from the Bundesgerichtshof, Germany’s Federal Court.

With the ruling, the Leipzig-based court established that plans for improving air quality can be left to local authorities, therefore opening the possibilities for individual cities to enact bans on diesel (or other) cars from entering their limits. The federal government regulation, meanwhile, is stuck on “euro 3” models and the cabinet hasn’t pushed deeper than that for the moment.

With this decision, the court has started a domino that will put at risk more than 15 million cars equipped with “old” diesel engines, saving only the most recent Euro 6.

Many cities are looking into implementing a full ban on diesel car in the near future, from Paris to London passing from many German cities and even Rome, as announced by its mayor Virginia Raggi on a visit in Mexico. My personal experience on the issue comes from my hometown, Torino, where there is a semi-permanent ban on diesel Euro 3 and Euro 4 that lasts all winter (depending on pollution levels). It has been met with lukewarm results in terms of lowering the emissions and with a fierce anger from the citizen that saw the move as a PR stunt rather than an effective method of combatting the issue.

Nevertheless, this ruling could set a precedent and open the door for many other countries in Europe to really start tackling a problem that has been plaguing our big cities for decades. The global and European conscience about this issue has risen sharply in the past few years and skyrocketed thanks to the scandal that involved car manufacturing giant Volkswagen in 2015, which was then followed by a series of rulings in Germany that touched all of the core cities of “the industry”, from the courts in Munich, home of BMW in February 2017 to Stuttgart, home of Daimler and Porsche, in July 2017 and then finally arriving in Leipzig just at the eve of the referendum of the SPD members on the Große Koalition (of which we will get the results on Sunday). It seems, in fact, that a key issue in forming the coalition was the promise not to put any further restrictions on an industry that’s so strategic for the German’s economy.

The new government (if the SPD approves it) will have a rocky start from the get-go, as the issue is ever more at the centre of the debate in Germany as well as Brussels, with the Commission’s summoning of nine European government to ask countermeasures on pollution. Berlin proposed a new filter that would slash the emission by up to 70% on diesel Euro 5 but has a cost that varies from 1400 and 3300 euro per car, which would pose the question of who would have to pay the bill, the citizens via state sponsorship or the producers?

While the debate continues, one thing is undeniable: since the beginning of the scandal in 2015 the diesel sector has dropped dramatically in sales and it seems it will not recover anytime soon. The new ruling would spell the end of the used market of diesel in the country, since it would basically render them useless and could, therefore, result in a further crisis for the sector.

Associations for clean air are rejoicing all over the country with Ugo Taddei from ClientEarth calling the ruling “an incredible result for people’s health”. But it might be a little earlier to celebrate. A study from the Journal of Industrial Ecology called “Comparative Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Conventional and Electric Vehicles” has stated that taking into account current methods of energy productions, electric vehicles could, surprisingly, be more polluting than a diesel car. Considering all the life cycle of a car, from production to the energy used to make it run, they found only a handful of countries “clean” enough to make it work: France, Paraguay, Sweden, Iceland, and Brazil. All the others, especially coal-dependent ones, are at the moment faring worst with electric vehicles than with diesel ones. Furthermore, there is an environmental concern regarding the materials used in the production of the batteries (even though this is not only related to cars) which is not being addressed at the moment. Only with the advent of renewable energy production, we will be able to tackle these emissions and, as we all know, many countries including EU members states are working towards that goal. Still, since that moment is a few years away, the discussion on the issue of car emission has the potential of turning ideological and missing out on a rational analysis of what to do in the immediate future, which would be counterproductive for an issue that affect us all on one of the most sacred of rights, our health.