Green cars, the technology on which Italian industry has focused is penalized
In Europe from 2035 it will not be possible to register cars that are not zero-emissions. Among the cars considered to have zero emissions there are those that will run exclusively on “neutral” fuels in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. Between these so-called e-fuels have already been included, a technology on which the German industry is betting. E-fuels are fuels very similar to traditional petrol, but instead of being produced by refining from petroleum, they are chemically synthesized using renewable wind or solar energy.
Instead, at least for the moment, biofuels have been excluded, a technology on which Italian industry is focusing, produced instead from vegetable biomass or organic waste. Although European industry is firmly convinced of the need to make a real and effective technological transition decisively – to protect the environment, to reduce our continent’s dependence on imported raw materials, and as an opportunity for innovation – it seems to some observers that the European Commission is increasingly moving away from limiting itself to creating a neutral framework of rules and objectives. And this is a concrete example of it.
If the goal is not to increase the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the inclusion of e-fuels and the exclusion of biofuels frankly seems difficult to explain. Among the things that are altering the climate, in fact, is that to power our vehicles we are pumping out of the subsoil, and throwing back into the air, carbon which over millions of years had been absorbed by plants thanks to photosynthesis, and which then ended up buried underground like oil.
Science tells us that all of this risks creating catastrophic damage for us and for future generations. It is therefore absolutely acceptable to do everything in our capacity to stop this process. Biofuels only use carbon that is already on the surface and therefore certainly and without a shadow of a doubt contribute to this objective.
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