Off-the-pace emissions standards in Australia are leaving the door open for car manufacturers and importers to ‘dump’ high-polluting new vehicles in Australia, a Griffith Business School researcher says.
The unforgiving focus the Volkswagen emissions scandal has brought on the motor manufacturing industry reveals a failure to impose current international standards in Australia, Dr Anna Mortimore explains.
“Australian air pollution and CO2 emissions standards lag well behind EU and US standards,” she says.
“While Australia does have air pollution standards, it has no regulatory CO2emission standards to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas from fossil fuels and its impact on climate change.”
In an article in The Conversation, Dr Mortimore (left) explains that from September 2015 all new vehicles sold in the EU must be Euro 6-compliant. Euro 6 limits bring overall emissions of diesel and petrol vehicles close to parity, provided that vehicles of both fuel types conform to standards in real-world driving conditions.
However, Australia’s current air pollutant standards are Euro 4, which were fully implemented by July 2010. Euro 5 standards will not apply until November 1, 2016 and Euro 6 will take effect from April/July 2017 and April/July 2018 for all models.
“Failure to impose the current international standards means importers of new vehicles can dump high-polluting Euro 4 compliant vehicles into Australia, vehicles which cannot be sold in their own country,” Dr Mortimore says.
“Clearly government intervention is required to upgrade the emission standards for air pollutants.”
- Read the full article in The Conversation here.
