Paris Wants to Ban the Combustion Engine by 2030
Europe's biggest cities are forcing the pace of change on
automakers.
By Geoffrey Smith
Paris wants to ban all cars with traditional combustion
engines from its streets by 2030, in the latest sign of how environmental
concerns are increasingly dictating the rules of the game for the auto sector.
“Transport is one of the main greenhouse gas producers…
so we are planning an exit from combustion engine vehicles, or fossil-energy
vehicles, by 2030,” Christophe Nadjovski, an official responsible for transport
policy at city hall, told the radio station France Info.
The new plans, if implemented, will increase pressure on
the car industry to adopt both new engine technology, and new patterns of
mobility, as twin concerns over Climate Change and air quality increasingly
trump the traditional lobbying power of carmakers.
The French capital has already said it will ban
diesel-powered cars – which account for more than 40% of the total on French
roads – from 2024, while the government of new President Emmanuel Macron has
promised to ban the sale of traditional combustion engine-powered cars from
2040. French health authorities estimate that air pollution causes more early
deaths than anything except alcohol and tobacco. Macron’s government is also
phasing out long-standing tax incentives for diesel from next year, which were
put in place to promote a fuel that generates less carbon dioxide than
gasoline.
France Info reported that City Hall had unveiled its
intentions at a meeting of its climate committee Wednesday. The plans are yet
to be formally adopted.
Paris was one of the first major cities in Europe to
announce such bans last year, and cities such as London, Barcelona and even
Stuttgart, the home of Mercedes-Benz, have since followed with similar
initiatives. Elsewhere Wednesday, Oxford in England also unveiled proposals to
create a “zero-emission zone” from 2020. That will initially concentrate on a
handful of streets in the very center of the city, but will expand to cover
almost all of its historic places of interest by 2030.
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