Not heard of this? Introduced in 2009 the EU CVD is an attempt to ensure that public sector organisations take full account of the impact of both carbon and air quality pollutants.
The CVD methodology requires a public sector organisation procuring a transport based service to take full account of the carbon emissions, nitrogen oxides, particulates and non-methane hydrocarbons produced by the vehicles. The service could be school bus provision or the purchase of a fleet of refuse collection vehicles. The impacts are monetised for inclusion in the purchasing decision using common rules defined in the Directive for calculating the lifetime costs linked to the operation of vehicles. This internalisation of external costs into new vehicle procurements is expected to improve the contribution of the transport sector to the environment, climate and energy policies of the Community by reducing energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and pollutant emissions.
In the longer term the Directive should result in a wider deployment of clean and energy efficient vehicles. Increased sales will help reduce costs through economies of scale, resulting in progressive improvement in the energy and environmental performance of the whole vehicle fleet.
The impact of adding the cost of the external impacts to the overall cost of the service is significant. Using the CVD methodology a EURO 1 emission standard bus has a lifetime (800,000 km) cost of about £300,000 while the external impact cost of a Euro 5 bus is only £65,000. Gfleet has recently helped an NHS Trust use the CVD methodology to compare the air quality (and therefore public health impact) of diesel and petrol pool cars.
For more information please visit the Clean Vehicles Directive Website (239 Kb)