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Main Content
Science Is Fueling The Drive Towards A Greener Future
Green Vehicles in the EU
The EU has introduced a strategy on clean, energy efficient vehicles.
One quarter of Europe’s CO2 emissions come from cars and other forms of transport, and this causes health problems and environmental damage. To tackle this problem considerable investment has aimed at greening Europe’s car industry. The industry is now a world leader in clean, energy efficient technologies.
Green technologies include electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells and alternative fuels to burn in combustion engines. Scientists developing these technologies face challenges. Making charging points available for batteries is one hurdle in the development of electric cars. There are also concerns about the price of ‘green’ vehicles, which are significantly more expensive than regular ones. The EU will introduce incentives to encourage consumers to buy energy efficient cars.
This strategy is part of the Europe 2020’s initiative, “Resource-efficient Europe.” The intention is to “promote new technologies to modernise and decarbonise the transport sector, thereby contributing to increased competitiveness.”
Along with the EU’s initiative to promote ‘green vehicles’ there have been other advances in green technology like a new fuel made from CO2. Because CO2 is polluting the earth, using it as fuel is an ingenious way to stop climate change, and possibly even reverse it. It has the potential to remove all the CO2 from our atmosphere and use it to power cars and industry. The development of CO2 fuel may mean that industry won’t have to cut back on CO2 emissions but can carry on as before.
Although CO2 fuel is at an early stage of development it’s already possible to transform it into natural gas and petrol. And thanks to our highly polluted atmosphere CO2 is in plentiful supply. But scientists haven’t quite figured out how to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. If they figure this out, we will have an endless supply of fuel and we will be cleaning our atmosphere as we produce it. Scientists also need to work out how much energy is required to convert CO2 to fuel. Obviously, it would be a waste of time if the amount of fuel needed to convert CO2 to fuel was higher than the amount of fuel produced.
The EU is taking positive steps towards its goal of reducing CO2 emissions and improving the quality of air. Green vehicles are a great way of achieving this as they use low carbon energy sources, emit low levels of pollution and are easily recycled.