Exhaust Emissions: Transport

Jo Swinson
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what steps he has taken to encourage the European Commission to include carbon emissions from transport under the evaluative criteria for the European eco-label; and if he will encourage the Commission to promote water-borne freight as a means of cutting these emissions.

Joan Ruddock
The Government want to see reliable methods established for measuring the greenhouse gas emissions embodied in products (from the extraction, transport and processing of raw materials right through to the finished product) and we are actively supporting work by the British Standards Institution to enable this. The European Commission is also running a study on how carbon emissions “embodied” in products can be better reflected in future criteria under the EU ecolabelling scheme. Officials in my Department have had positive discussions with their counterparts in the Commission about the development of suitable methods for measuring these embodied emissions and the scope for wider improvements to the ecolabelling scheme to help focus on the key life-cycle impacts of particular types of product.