I think we should be aware of the framing the car industry has successfully introduced here.
The car industry and conservative politicians keep ranting about the “combustion ban” and proclaim that we should remain “technologically open” when in fact the opposite is true.
The regulations do not ban a specific technology nor do they codify which technology to use.
They just set emission targets. Car makers can use any technology that meets these targets. If they invent a miracle combustion engine without emissions they are free to build it.
Imho, we should not follow their framing and whenever someone talks about keeping combustion engines we should immediately change the narrative to whether or not we want to keep emissions and only talk about emission no matter how often they try to derail the discussion with their talk about technology.
But there’s a big difference between polluting emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions. So far, CO2 hasn’t been considered anything but a harmless byproduct but it’s one of the main drivers of global warming. So unless there’s a combustion engine that does not produce that (maybe hydrogen-based?)…
And the car/petrol industry has systematically ignored these things for decades. It would have been possible to build more sustainable cars that consume less than half the fuel, decades ago. Or invest into alternatives (hydrogen, electricity etc.).
There is a ICE fuel that does not produce co2, at least considering the whole fuel cycle, it’s called biofuel and it’s already used by half a century in some places like Brazil
In general, biofuels emit fewer greenhouse gas emissions when burned in an engine and are generally considered carbon-neutral fuels as the carbon emitted has been captured from the atmosphere by the crops used in production.
That does not mean they do not produce CO2 when burned, sorry.
edit:
The very next sentence in that wikipedia article:
However, life-cycle assessments of biofuels have shown large emissions associated with the potential land-use change required to produce additional biofuel feedstocks. The outcomes of lifecycle assessments (LCAs) for biofuels are highly situational and dependent on many factors including the type of feedstock, production routes, data variations, and methodological choices.
As you said. This CO2 is “harmless”. For the atmosphere it does not add any more co2 than it existed, since you are releasing the one was captured by the crop.
So it does not create more greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s what you meant on your first post. You don’t care about local emissions, but global overall emissions of CO2, sorry.
I think we should be aware of the framing the car industry has successfully introduced here.
The car industry and conservative politicians keep ranting about the “combustion ban” and proclaim that we should remain “technologically open” when in fact the opposite is true.
The regulations do not ban a specific technology nor do they codify which technology to use.
They just set emission targets. Car makers can use any technology that meets these targets. If they invent a miracle combustion engine without emissions they are free to build it.
Imho, we should not follow their framing and whenever someone talks about keeping combustion engines we should immediately change the narrative to whether or not we want to keep emissions and only talk about emission no matter how often they try to derail the discussion with their talk about technology.
But there’s a big difference between polluting emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions. So far, CO2 hasn’t been considered anything but a harmless byproduct but it’s one of the main drivers of global warming. So unless there’s a combustion engine that does not produce that (maybe hydrogen-based?)…
And the car/petrol industry has systematically ignored these things for decades. It would have been possible to build more sustainable cars that consume less than half the fuel, decades ago. Or invest into alternatives (hydrogen, electricity etc.).
And now they’re whining.
There is a ICE fuel that does not produce co2, at least considering the whole fuel cycle, it’s called biofuel and it’s already used by half a century in some places like Brazil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel
That does not mean they do not produce CO2 when burned, sorry.
edit:
The very next sentence in that wikipedia article:
As you said. This CO2 is “harmless”. For the atmosphere it does not add any more co2 than it existed, since you are releasing the one was captured by the crop.
So it does not create more greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s what you meant on your first post. You don’t care about local emissions, but global overall emissions of CO2, sorry.
No, but in contrast to fossil fuel, burning them does not add to the amount of co2 in the atmosphere
I mostly agree with you but “so far” is pretty generous considering that the effects of CO2 as a greenhouse gas has been known for over a century.
Talking about car emission regulations here, and in that context “so far” is correct.