Neyslustýringar hins opinbera geta skapað stórhættu

Dísilbílar eiga ekki góða daga nú um stundir. Kröfur um að þeir verði bannaðir, eða í það minnsta reynt að draga úr fjölda þeirra heyrast úr mörgum áttum. Það eru ekki síst stjórnmálamenn í ýmsum löndum sem beita sér í málinu, en segja má að það sé ekki síst vegna stjórnmálamanna (ekki þeirra sömu þó) sem vandamálið er jafn stórt og raun ber vitni.

Undanfarnna 3. áratugi eða svo hafa margir evrópskir stjórnmálamenn gert sitt ítrasta til að fjölga dísilbílum. Skattaafslættir og ýmis forréttindi hafa verið notaðir til að ýta undir kaup almennngs á dísilbílum.

Afleiðingar þeirrar stefnu blasa nú við. Sívaxandi loftmengun víða um lönd og stjórnmálamenn sem krefjast "útrýmingar" á dísilbílum.

En þó að öll þessi dísilást hafi verið sýnd í þágu "græna hagkerfisins" og umhyggju fyrir umhverfinu, bjó þó í raun ekki síður viðleitni til þess að hyggla evrópskum iðnaði, enda stóð hann nokkuð sterkum fótum í díselnum.

Ég vil vekja athygli á góðri grein á vefsíðunni Vox, eftir Brad Plumer. Fyrirsögnin er: Europe's love affair with diesel cars has been a disaster

Í greininni er m.a. rakin þróun og ástæða þess að dísilbílar urðu svo vinsælir og segir m.a.:

"But starting in the 1980s, French and German automakers began showing more interest in developing diesel cars. The reasons why have always been a little murky, although Cames and Helmers suggest it traces back to the OPEC oil crises of the 1970s. After global crude prices spiked, France decided to swear off using diesel for electricity and built a fleet of nuclear plants. Germany, similarly, switched from oil to natural gas for heating. When the crisis subsided, Europe's refiners were still producing lots of diesel with no buyers. So governments began urging automakers like Peugeot to look into diesel-powered vehicles.

...

At the time, there were lots of different paths Europe's automakers could have taken to green itself. They could've pursued direct injection technology for gasoline vehicles, making those engines more fuel-efficient. They could've ramped up development of hybrid-electric cars, as Toyota was doing in Japan. But European companies like Peugeot and Volkswagen and BMW had already been making big investments in diesel, and they wanted a climate policy that would help those bets to pay off.

Europe's policymakers obliged. The EU agreed to a voluntary CO2 target for vehicles that was largely in line with what diesel technology could meet. As researcher Sarah Keay-Bright later noted, these standards were crafted so as not to force Europe's automakers to develop hybrids, electric vehicles, or other advanced powertrains.

Meanwhile, European nations — including Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Austria — had been cutting taxes on diesel car purchases and diesel fuel to promote sales, all in the name of thwarting climate change. Diesel sales soared. Back in 1990, just 10 percent of new car registrations in Europe had run on diesel. By 2011, that had climbed to nearly 60 percent."

Og nú er svo komið segir í greinni að dísilbílar eru orðnir að alvarlegu heilsufarsvandamáli:

"Diesel engines do have one notable pitfall. They may be more fuel-efficient and emit less CO2 than gasoline engines, but they also tend to emit higher levels of other nasty air pollutants, including soot, particulates, and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Heavy exposure to these pollutants can exacerbate heart and lung disease, trigger asthma attacks, and even cause premature death.

This was largely known back in the 1990s. Europe's policymakers simply considered the trade-off acceptable. "At the time, the prevailing belief was that climate change was the really hard problem and should be the priority, whereas we'd had experience improving air quality, so everyone assumed we could easily fix that issue later," explains Martin Williams, an air pollution researcher at King's College London who previously worked for Britain's environmental agency.

That assumption turned out to be wrong. When European regulators later moved to clamp down on NOx and other conventional air pollution from diesel vehicles, they failed badly."

Og niðurstaðan í greininni er einnig að allt "dísilfárið" hafi ekkert gert til að draga úr "gróðurhúsaáhrifum".:

"If Europe's diesel surge over the last 20 years had helped mitigate climate change, then maybe (just maybe) you could argue that all this extra air pollution was worth it. Except here's a depressing plot twist: The climate benefits appear to have been negligible, at least so far.

In their 2013 paper, Cames and Helmers argued that Europe may well be worse off today, from a global warming perspective, than it would have been if automakers had just focused on improving gasoline-powered cars all along. And it's arguably much worse off than it would have been if automakers had started investing in hybrid-electric technology back in the 1990s.

The authors start with the chart below, showing that Europe's diesel cars may have once had a sizable CO2 advantage over traditional gasoline vehicles. But today that gap has narrowed considerably, as various technological advances have made modern gasoline engines nearly as efficient as diesel cars:"

Það er því ef til vill ekki að ástæðulausu að greinarhöfundur varar við opinberri neyslustýringu í þessum efnum og hvetur frekar til þess að hið opinbera setji markmið, sem markaðsöfl keppi um að leysa:

"So one approach here might be to pursue technology-neutral policies focused on preferred outcomes — say, tightly enforced standards that require lower emissions — rather than favoring specific industries and technologies just because they happen to seem promising at that moment in time.

This conundrum is likely to come up again and again. For years, governments have been laying down big bets on emerging clean energy technologies. France did it with nuclear power in the 1970s and '80s. Germany did it with wind and solar power in the 2000s, through feed-in tariffs. The United States has done it with corn ethanol in the past decade.

Done right, this sort of government support can be valuable, helping useful new energy options break into the mainstream against entrenched competition. But there's also a huge risk that governments will end up gambling on badly flawed technologies that then become the entrenched competition — and prove impossible to get rid of. The US arguably made that mistake with ethanol, which has had unintended ripple effects on the food supply and deforestation that are proving politically difficult to untangle. The drive for diesel looks like it belongs in that category, too. It's not a story we'd like to keep repeating."

En ég hvet alla til að lesa greinina í heild sinni.

 

 

 

Vilja banna dísilbíla í London

Athugasemdir

[Bjarni Gunnlaugur (IP-tala skráð) 4.11.2015 kl. 15:35]

Það er orðið bráðmál að bjóða hér upp á litað bensín, þ.e. bensín án vegasatts.

Gæti bjargað einkaflugi á Íslandi og smávélar eiga ekki að borga vegagjald.

[G. Tómas Gunnarsson, 4.11.2015 kl. 17:35]

 @Bjarni Gunnlaugur Þakka þér fyrir þetta. Ég verð að viðurkenna að ég þekki ekki málið.

Fljúga ekki flestar einkaflugvélar á Íslandi fyrir "flugvélabensíni"? Varla er vegaskattur á því, eða hvað?

Mér þætti gaman ef þú útskýrðir aðeins nánar hvað þú átt við.

[Hrólfur Þ Hraundal, 5.11.2015 kl. 07:52]

Verð munur á bensíni og díselolíu var mikill en svo er ekki lengur.  Sportbátar og minni björgunarbátar slysavarnafélaganna, svo og vélsleðar borga vegskatta af bensíni og reyndar díselolíu líka sé hún notuð.  En vegskattur ætti ekki að koma mengun mikið við.

Einhverstaðar taldi ég mig hafa lesið að mengun frá fólksbílum væri un um 4% á heimsvísu og gaman væri að fá það hrakið eða staðfest.  Það eru hinsvegar skip og flutningabílar sem brenna miklu af díselolíu og ef það er vandamál þá þyrfti hugsanlega að setja bensín vélar í flutningabíla, togara og flugvélar með þotuhreyflum því þær brenna líka olíu.