COPENHAGEN: November 23, 2018. The European Environment Agency (EEA) says greenhouse gas emissions from transport have increased in the EU since 2014.

Preliminary EEA estimates for 2017 put EU transport emissions at 28 percent above 1990 levels, indicating the sector won’t meet its long-term climate goals.

In its latest report on the impact of electric vehicles, the EEA says “reducing oil consumption in transport remains a challenge” with only Austria and Sweden achieving the EU's renewable energy reduction target of 10 percent in transport by 2020.

Other findings from the report include: The average CO2 emissions of new passenger cars in the EU increased by 0.4 percent last year – the first time since monitoring started in 2010. By contrast emissions from new light commercial vehicles continued to fall in 2017, showing the largest annual decrease since 2012.

Registrations of battery electric vehicles increased by 51 percent last year – but still only 0.6 percent of all new registrations. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle registrations rose 35 percent, or 0.8 percent of new registrations.

In 2017 petrol car registrations exceeded diesel (53 percent versus 45 percent respectively) for the first time since the monitoring started.

The EEA report confirms that electric vehicle emissions, with the current EU energy mix and over the entire vehicle life cycle, are “about 17-30 percent lower than the emissions of petrol and diesel cars”.

However this comparison is less favourable when considering the impact of electric car and truck production on ecosystems and the toxicity of the materials involved. The EEA suggests manufacturers could avoid the continued extraction and processing of copper, nickel and critical raw materials used in electric cars by adopting the circular economy approach of recycle, remake and reuse - particularly batteries.

In a related announcement, FedEx Express is adding 1,000 electric vehicles to its US delivery fleet with the purchase of 100 vehicles from Chanje Energy and the leasing of 900 from Ryder System. The 6,000 lbs-capacity vehicles are manufactured by FDG in Hangzhou and can travel 150 miles when fully charged and will save FedEx 20 tons of CO2 emissions and 2,000 gallons of fuel per vehicle, per year.

“FedEx continually seeks new ways to maximize operational efficiency, minimize impacts and find innovative solutions through the company’s Reduce, Replace, Revolutionize approach to sustainability,” commented Mitch Jackson, the company’s chief sustainability officer.