Not many people know that
By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie
As you know, I've been warning about this for years:
In a fit of self-loathing, the European Union has begun destroying the economic engine that pays its bills. Some of it is known, but some of it is not, and it will amaze you.
Only nine of the EU's 27 member states are net budget contributors, and Germany pays the highest amount – around 25 billion euros (£22 billion) in 2021. Without Germany's generosity, the European Commission would find it difficult to keep the Berlaymont Congress running to keep.
This wealth, in turn, comes from the manufacturing industry. Particularly due to the strong global demand for German vehicles, which account for almost three-fifths of European car exports. Just a decade ago, the streets of Shanghai and Shenzhen were teeming with German-branded SUVs.
So you'd think regulators in Brussels would pay some care to the delicate vase they're carrying around the room. But not a bit of it.
French, German and Italian car manufacturers are now in a bind. In order to achieve climate goals, vehicles that run on conventionally refined hydrocarbons are being phased out, while much cheaper battery-powered competition (BEV) from China is emerging.
While the industry will not be allowed to sell the product that European customers want, it will not be able to compete on price with a product of which it appears to have had enough. So far, so (depressingly) obvious.
What is little known, however, is how specific and vindictive the EU has become in its attack on the car.
Actually, this is not a war against the combustion engine, but rather a war against individual mobility. The EU has relaxed its dogmatic insistence on alternative hydrocarbons for shipping and aviation – but not for road vehicles.
To understand this, consider that the term “fossil fuels” is actually very misleading. Hydrocarbons aren't just dug up and refined – they can also be made from scratch using biology or chemistry.
The most “organic” method is to use algae. But you need a lot of them, and attempts to design them to produce higher yields haven't scaled.
Then there is chemistry. The Fischer-Tropsch process converts carbon monoxide and hydrogen into a complex hydrocarbon – an e-fuel that can replace gasoline.
They require energy to release the hydrogen and then create sufficient temperatures for the process itself to work. However, if these inputs are “carbon-free”, this also applies to the resulting e-fuel.
In December I reported on how Porsche is using wind power to produce gasoline and diesel in Patagonia. Or, if we had large core capacity, we would use the electricity during off-peak hours. During the day the plants would warm us and at night they could produce the gasoline, diesel and oil we need.
In fact, Japan's HTTR reactor design even produces the required hydrogen as a byproduct.
In short, in fields where hydrocarbons are superior or simply irreplaceable, we can replace the ones we dig with the ones we make and still meet climate goals. And the infrastructure of pipelines and filling stations is already in place, which cannot be said for hydrogen or electric charging.
The industry is reacting. Infinium, which is backed by both Amazon and Bill Gates, recently broke ground on a new facility that uses both carbon capture and renewable energy to produce hydrogen. There are many more. But the EU stubbornly refuses to allow cars and trucks to use it.
This is astonishing because the Eurocrats of “DG-MOVE” (the General Directorate for Mobility and Transport) have already admitted that synthetic hydrocarbons are environmentally friendly.
In July, the EU allowed the maritime sector to use “renewable fuels of non-biological origin (RFNBO),” as it calls e-fuels. In October, it also allowed the airline industry to use them.
Maybe it's ignorance or just dogma. However, opposition to the car has become one of the enduring problems of modern politics.
Just look at how vehemently our municipalities, our planners and our architects detest freedom on four wheels. A low-intensity civil war breaks out over traffic-calmed neighborhoods or development plans like in Oxford.
Nicholas Boyes Smith, the design czar for whom the Office of Place was created, posts a series of anti-car tweets.
Fifteen-minute cities are “a timeless Scrutonian ideal,” he argues. There is no garden city or new town movement today. In the 1960s, bureaucrats destroyed neighborhoods to ensure cars were convenient. Now they're destroying neighborhoods by preventing their use – or preventing them from being built at all.
“Planning now is about rationing materials, resources and space rather than their use. It’s subtractive, not additive,” says architecture critic Tim Abrahams.
“Coercion is the watchword, not opportunity.”
The Malthusians want less from us, and ideally we wouldn't go anywhere except by bike or on foot. Car companies face prejudice from all sides, but the most pressing is the EU ban on green fuel.
No wonder Renault boss Luca de Meo lamented the lack of unified thinking or strategy in an open letter to the EU published last month.
Unlike the US and China, the Commission passes rule after rule, an incoherent mess. The EU regulations alone have resulted in passenger cars becoming on average 60 percent heavier, he wrote.
Switzerland, which is part of the European Economic Area but not the EU, has blessed e-fuels.
Like the Swiss, we also have an excellent chemical industry. The madness of allying ourselves with Brussels after we leave has never been so obvious.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/22/eu-war-on-cars-destroying-economic-foundations
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