Despite all of the fanfare that went on at the time, it seems that there are currently only 3 European Union countries pursuing climate policies that put them in line with the agreements made at the Paris Climate Change Talks, according to recent reports.
Germany’s lower parliamentary house, the Bundestag, has approved the regular use of self-driving vehicles and features in the country, according to reports. As the country relies on a bicameral parliament, though, the upper house known as the Bundesrat will apparently also have to approve the legislation, and the executive branch will have to as well, before the law can be changed.
Auto manufacturers should be held to a minimum electric vehicle sales quota, the head of Germany’s Federal Environment Agency, Maria Krautzenberger, recently argued in an interview with the German paper Die Zeit.
The concentration of global solar demand has contracted to the point where the world’s top four markets — China, the US, India, and Japan — are expected to account for 73% of a global total of 85 gigawatts in 2017.
Workers at Audi’s main assembly plant are asking management to expand plans for building electric cars. They worry that the world is changing and they may be left with nothing to build.
The Volkswagen challenges for cheating have been mounting, as have challenges for other automakers found to be cheating the system with regard to diesel emissions and fuel economy claims. Now, another target for purposeful wrongdoing and perhaps criminal activity is German motor authority KBA.
Three European transmission system operators have signed a trilateral agreement this week that intends to develop a large renewable European electricity system in the North Sea, the North Sea Wind Power Hub, which could supply as many as 70 to 100 million Europeans with renewable energy by 2050.
Audi’s two largest factories, along with a number of other sites in the country, were searched by German prosecutors on Wednesday, according to reports. The prosecutors were of course looking for new evidence relating to the Volkswagen (VW Group) diesel emissions cheating scandal.
As speculated in the comments section of our article on Stuttgart’s decision to begin selectively banning diesel cars from the city during times of high air pollution, diesel car sales in the region appear to have fallen notably. Presumably, public discussion on the possibility of future bans has put a damper on diesel cars.
The upcoming G20 (Group of 20) talks will see finance ministers from the US, China, Germany, and others scale back — and back away from — earlier commitments to “combat” climate change, going by reports.
