Cars are going green faster than British motorists

Car makers are being forced to make significant cuts in their vehicles’ CO₂ emissions, but some countries appear reluctant to buy the greenest models – British motorists languish at sixteenth place in a league table of who buys the most polluting models in Europe.

Portuguese drivers are the greenest in Europe when it came to buying cars last year with an average CO₂ rate of 138g/km (eg. VW Polo) – the least green motorists are from Latvia with a figure of 177g/km (eg. Suburu Imprezza). The average British driver comes sixteenth in the list with 158g/km (eg. VW Passat).

EU regulation is striving to cut the CO₂ emitted by cars to an average figure of 130 g/km by 2015.

Director at the Environmental Transport Association (ETA), Andrew Davis, said: “Car makers can build green cars, but they need us to buy them. The report found that strict new emissions laws are having a strong effect on the availability of cleaner cars, but wealth, motoring taxes, fuel prices and consumer attitudes, which vary wildly from country to country across Europe, have much more of an effect on how clean a car is chosen.”

“There was a fuss in Britain when road tax increased for the most-polluting cars, but we are lax by European standards – we need a more sophisticated carrot and stick approach to encouraging people to drive lighter cars if we want to do better in next year’s league table.”

British drivers are buying dirtier cars than other European motorists

The report was conducted by the European lobby group Transport & Environment, an organisation co-founded and supported by the ETA.

What is the greenest car available to buy this year in Britain?