Tuesday the Council of the European Union has approved the regulation that from 2035 will ban the registration in EU countries of vehicles powered by petrol or diesel. The ban is one of the most important steps of the so-called Green Deal, the European Union’s ambitious plan against climate change.
The approval by the Council – a body made up in this case of all the energy and environment ministers of the governments of the Union – had been given for days as a formality, after an agreement was found on Saturday to convince one of the the most skeptical countries in this regard, Germany.
The German government had in fact requested that the regulation be allowed to register heat engines fueled with fuels «CO2 neutral», the so-called e-fuel: these are particular fuels produced with technologies powered by renewable sources. In practice, they could make it possible to continue using traditional engines by reducing polluting emissions: the carbon inside the fuel is in fact obtained from CO2 present in the air, while hydrogen is produced from water with energy from renewable sources. However, no derogation was included for the use of biofuels, fuels obtained from various types of plants, which had been requested by Italy.