The European Union’s proposed regulation on end-of-life automobiles (ELVs) is at the moment beneath examination, with crucial challenges rising that would hinder its effectiveness in driving sustainability and innovation inside the automotive sector.
Stakeholders warn that gaps in readability, enforcement, and scalability may undermine the EU’s proposed end-of-life car regulation.
Over 6 million automobiles in Europe attain end-of-life yearly, posing environmental dangers and losing useful supplies. The European Fee’s proposed guidelines intention to handle this via improved round design and materials restoration, requiring 25% of car plastic to return from recycled supplies, together with ELVs.
Whereas seen as an important step for sustainability, consultants at a current Euractiv occasion careworn the necessity to fastidiously look at the principles to keep away from stifling innovation and deal with crucial obstacles to attaining their bold targets.
Round economic system: a brand new period for automotive sustainability
Silvia Vecchione, Senior Environmental Coverage Supervisor at ACEA, highlighted the business’s transformation, remarking that: “Compliance with the proposed regulation is for us not solely a authorized requirement however is a profound dedication in direction of a sustainable future.”
She warned that inflexible frameworks may create inefficiency and threat hampering innovation.
“The fragmented strategy that appears into particular person facets of the automotive worth chain could hamper our capacity to ship sustainable, inexpensive, and aggressive automobiles,” added Vecchione.
Prioritising recycled content material is vital, she famous: “The problem of recycled content material is crucial and have to be totally addressed earlier than increasing discussions to different sustainable supplies.”
Vecchione additionally emphasised the necessity for balanced producer duty, leveraging the intrinsic worth of end-of-life automobiles.
Gaining a aggressive edge in a round economic system
The European Fee has prioritised the automotive sector in its push for a round economic system. “Circularity and round economic system is a very essential coverage goal of the present and subsequent Fee,” mentioned Gaël de Rotalier, Crew Chief at DG ENV.
Figuring out automotive as a key sector for its excessive materials consumption, de Rotalier defined, “One of many first steps that was carried out is to display screen an important sectors, resource-important sectors, and the place there’s extra potential within the EU economic system.”
The proposal focuses on bettering recycling and addressing the export of scrap supplies, which de Rotalier described as a “potential lack of assets for the EU economic system.”
He emphasised the necessity to retain useful supplies inside Europe.
Lacking factors: environmental impression and eco-design
Regardless of the Fee’s efforts, vital gaps within the proposal stay.
Fynn Hauschke, Coverage Officer on the European Environmental Bureau, highlighted the sector’s rising environmental footprint. “A serious level is that the proposal, from our perspective, fails to handle the elephant within the room concerning the sector’s environmental impression, which is that we have now an ever-increasing variety of automobiles on the streets,” he mentioned.
He famous that automobiles have gotten bigger and more and more full of electrical elements, exacerbating their environmental toll. “Autos are getting larger and loaded with extra electrical elements,” Hauschke added.
Hauschke referred to as for stronger eco-design measures, together with integrating an environmental footprint evaluation within the kind approval course of.
“The proposal ought to have a stronger deal with eco-design,” he urged. He additionally advisable increasing eco-design necessities, setting reuse targets for elements, and tackling the environmental penalties of exporting used automobiles to less-equipped areas.
“From automobile to automobile”, revolutionising car recycling
Jean-Philippe Bahuaud, CEO of The Future is NEUTRAL (Renault Group, SUEZ), offered a imaginative and prescient for a extra sustainable automotive future primarily based on a “from automobile to automobile” strategy. “Sooner or later in Europe, we’re attempting to develop the idea of from automobile to automobile, taking previous vehicles and reusing every little thing inside them to make new vehicles once more,” he defined.
Bahuaud highlighted the potential of reusing supplies akin to plastics, copper, and palladium extracted from end-of-life automobiles to create new merchandise.
With roughly 11 million automobiles reaching the top of their lifecycle yearly, Bahuaud famous that solely six million are at the moment processed in dismantling centres.
“If we’re good at what we do, we may take every little thing inside this to make new vehicles once more,” he mentioned, emphasising the significance of scaling up recycling efforts.
Bahuaud additionally spoke about his firm’s lengthy historical past of working on this space. “We’ve got completely different working firms which have been working in that house for many years,” he mentioned, stressing that attaining this imaginative and prescient requires collaboration with authentic tools producers (OEMs) to satisfy each sustainability and regulatory requirements. Scaling this initiative throughout the sector is crucial to make sure a extra sustainable automotive lifecycle.
Enhancing enforcement and compliance
Stefan Schmerbeck, Head of Future Applied sciences, Public Affairs, and Sustainability at Volkswagen, voiced his help for the EU’s proposed laws but in addition identified areas that require enchancment. “First, we’d like readability on the 25% plastic content material goal,” Schmerbeck mentioned.
“We suggest decreasing it to fifteen% till the methodology is healthier outlined.” He additionally raised issues concerning the obligatory dismantling of elements like dashboards and wire harnesses, suggesting that “a few of these elements merely haven’t any marketplace for reuse, so mandating their dismantling doesn’t make sense.”
Schmerbeck additionally highlighted the necessity for stricter enforcement of the Certificates of Destruction to make sure correct dealing with of end-of-life automobiles. “The final proprietor ought to be obliged to current this Certificates of Destruction,” he mentioned, underscoring the significance of making certain correct disposal.
Whereas the EU’s proposed laws characterize a step ahead in selling sustainability and round economic system practices inside the automotive sector, vital challenges stay. Attaining the regulation’s targets would require better readability, cross-sector cooperation, and funding in know-how.
The phased implementation of recent targets for recycled plastic content material, set for 2031 and 2035, permits the business time to adapt, however sturdy enforcement and transparency throughout the worth chain will likely be important to assembly these targets.
In the end, the EU’s imaginative and prescient for a round economic system within the automotive sector hinges on innovation, regulatory readability, and collaboration throughout all phases of the car lifecycle—from design to disposal.
[Edited By Brian Maguire | Euractiv’s Advocacy Lab ]