INVITATION TO MEETING
Tuesday  5 February  2008,  kl. 19:00
LERCHENDAL GÅRD,  TRONDHEIM

 
A cost effective approach to reduce CO₂ emissions from road transport

Presentation by:  

Dr. Hans-Jürgen Schäfer, Volkswagen External Relations, Science and Technology 

There is a significant growth of greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector in Europe which is not only
caused by road transport. The passenger road transport in Europe, however, which will have only moderate
growth rates in future, is in the particular focus of European politics.

The simple perception “Climate protection is not for free and will have significant influence both on GDP and
industry’s profitability” is general knowledge now. Consequences for politics were to look for a balanced share
of reduction efforts based on competition and technology neutral, cost effective measures.

So far the EU CO₂ reduction strategy is based on the “fair share”-principle which requests adequate reduction
contributions from all sectors. However, EU politics want particular efforts from sectors with future emission
growth like the transport sector and have focused on the passenger car sector since about two decades.

This climate protection strategy has not been successful due to several reasons. EU Commission has started
a new approach by publishing a regulation proposal at the end of 2007, again addressing the passenger car.
This proposal, however, has fundamental weaknesses: It does not regard the cost effectiveness of reduction
potentials in all vehicle segments, it does not request contributions from all relevant stakeholders including
the driver (“Integrated Approach”), and it misses to take strategic issues like technology innovation potential
and customer preferences into account appropriately.

This presentation will provide examples of cost effective CO₂ reduction measures and reduction potentials in
Germany’s transport sector up to 2020 including innovative passenger car technologies. Finally, this
presentation will give an impression about Volkswagen’s technical solutions and products to cope with the
future challenges.

Presentation and discussion in English
The meeting is open to the public – No fee