Climate Minister on EU mission to ban fossil-fuel cars

Climate Minister Dan Jørgensen travels to Brussels to day to lobby for Denmark’s proposal for an EU-wide ban on diesel and petrol cars by 2030 to combat climate change.

The previous Liberal-led government announced in 2018 that it would ban the sale of all fossil fuel-powered cars by 2030 but it subsequently scrapped the idea because this would have breached EU rules – the EU aims to cut carbon emissions in the bloc by 40 percent by 2030 while its executive, the Commission, plans to reduce them to zero by 2050 to help stop global warming.

Ahead of his trip today Mr Jørgensen acknowledged that although the first priority is pan-EU legislation to phase out all diesel and petrol cars over the next two decades it’s probably ‘unrealistic’ so he was hoping individual countries would be given the possibility to lead the way. Other countries, such as France, Spain, Holland, Sweden, and Ireland have already announced a ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol cars from either 2030 or 2040.

However, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and several other countries have suggested that more must be done to stop  “carbon leakage”  in which companies transfer production to countries with weaker climate policies in order to lower their cost.

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/politik/2019-09-08-regeringen-vil-forbyde-benzin-og-dieselbiler-rejser-til-eu-for-at-fa-aendret-lov