New cars: CO2 emissions hardly fall at all
For the second time in a row, car importers have exceeded the emission limits in force since 2015. The fines for this amount to around CHF 2.4 million.
Since July 1, 2012, CO2 emission regulations for new passenger cars have been in force in Switzerland, analogous to the EU: By 2015, the emissions of passenger cars registered for the first time in Switzerland should thus have been reduced to an average of 130 grams of CO2 per kilometer. After failing to achieve this average target value in 2015, Swiss car importers also missed it in 2016.
In the 2016 enforcement year, around 319,300 passenger cars were inspected for compliance with the CO2 emission regulations. These included new vehicles and those registered abroad for the first time less than 6 months before customs clearance in Switzerland. The registered fleet consisted of around 1,500 cars from small and private importers and around 317,800 cars from 89 registered large importers.
The average CO2 emissions of the 319`300 new cars were around 134 g CO2/km (2015: 135 g CO2/km). The target of 130 g CO2/km applicable to the entire fleet since 2015 was thus again just missed on average. In contrast, only 19 of 89 registered large importers exceeded their individual targets (2015: 26 of 93), most of them by less than 4 g/km.
The CO2 emissions of the entire new car fleet of 134 g CO2/km are around 1% lower than in the previous year (see also today's media release on the fuel consumption of new cars in 2016). This corresponds to the lowest reduction rate since 2006. One reason for this hesitant reduction is that the targets have not been tightened further: The target value of 130 g/km and the sanction-relevant fleet share remained the same compared to 2015. Only the so-called supercredits (multiple credits for PW with less than 50 g CO2/km) were dropped compared to the previous year. In 2015, the weighting factor of the supercredits was still 1.5.
In the passenger car market, the shares of parallel and direct importers fluctuated widely before and after the CO2 emission regulations came into force in 2012. Since 2013, however, the share has remained constant at around 7 % of all new registrations and thus continues to be in the same order of magnitude as in 2011 before the introduction of the CO2 emission regulations.
Sanction amount and enforcement effort
The sanctions levied total around 2.4 million Swiss francs (2015: 12.6 million Swiss francs). The total sanction revenue is offset by enforcement costs of around CHF 1.3 million (2015: CHF 1.5 million). Overall, this results in net income of 1.1 million Swiss francs for 2016 (2015: 11.1 million Swiss francs), which is divided between Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein depending on the number of vehicle registrations and importers (Principality of Liechtenstein share: 2`000 Swiss francs, 2015: 83`000 Swiss francs). The Swiss net income from the 2016 enforcement year of 1.1 million Swiss francs will be allocated to the National Roads and Agglomeration Transport Fund NAF as the successor solution to the Infrastructure Fund in 2018, subject to the Federal Council's decision on the entry into force.
