“Do we need diesel for our climate targets?”

The German government praises diesel technology as an important component of climate protection in the transport sector - but this claim is more and more contested by transport and climate researchers, Bernhard Pötter writes in Tageszeitung (taz). Claiming that diesel engines were necessary to achieve Germany’s climate protection targets due to the technology’s lower consumption was “nonsense”, says Peter Mock, of the environmental research association ICCT. Cheap diesel fuel had fostered the increase in registrations of bigger and more fuel-intense vehicles, which outweighs the lower consumption level of diesel engines lying about 15 percent below that of gasoline engines, Pötter writes. According to the ICCT, a quick transition to hybrid and e-cars was far more conducive to climate protection than a continued use of diesel cars.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW article Merkel at second diesel summit: must avoid driving bans "by all means" and the CLEW factsheet The debate over an end to combustion egnines in Germany for more information.