The Committee for the European Construction Equipment (CECE), together with the European Committee of associations of manufacturers of Agricultural Machinery (CEMA), is organising a major event in Brussels (Autoworld, Parc du Cinquantenaire), on 11 October, to open the dialogue with the EU institutions on how to cope with the ‘green challenge’, in particular when it comes to CO ₂ emissions. Ralf Wezel talks about the reasons that motivate the industry. 

The construction equipment industry fulfills a social mission: machines reshape the territory in a more sustainable way, build new communication ways, modernise the life of the citizens by installing new modern infrastructures and communication systems and intervene when natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, happen.

Agricultural machines help to feed the world and provide intelligent solutions for improving the use of the territory.

Together, the two sectors employ circa 300,000 people and have a turnover of around €60 billion.

We have made huge progress in improving the environmental performance of our equipment, but we are still perceived as a polluting, noisy and in general environmentally unfriendly industry. It is time to say it loudly what we have been doing for the planet and to open a discussion with all stakeholders on what more we can do.

Communicating our efforts

We now need to explain that in the past we have by far done our part, for instance by decreasing our emissions of particulates very significantly, sometimes up to 90%. But this was not acknowledged by the decision makers, and therefore lately things went too far. For instance, legislation on engines’ emissions became a huge burden, especially in a period of a terrible crisis, such as these last three years.

Now the big challenge is CO ₂ emissions…I say, let’s avoid making the same mistake twice and let us talk together about the way forward.

As an industry, we care about the environment, we want to improve the performance of our machines and decrease our impact. But our message is ‘let’s work together’ and let’s choose the correct approach if we want to save the European industry and keep it in Europe.

Our event in Brussels

The large majority of the legislation we apply in the different countries comes originally from Brussels, from the EU Institutions.

It is a crucial moment to discuss CO ₂ emissions as the EU has great objectives in terms of fighting climate change and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. We want to have an open debate with the politicians, academics, people from other industry associations (related sectors) and companies. The aim should be to find together the way forward for protecting our planet and remain in business for the years to come.

We have therefore invited the European Commission, Members of the European Parliament Jo Leinen, José Bové and many others to have an open debate with the CEOs of the leading companies of the sector, such as Claas, Volvo, Amman, Caterpillar or John Deere.

In the first part of our event, many speakers from the industry will recount our accomplishments and give an account of our current activities in order to cope with the challenge of CO ₂ emissions. Academics and users of our equipment will also participate in the discussions.

People will hear success stories that will demonstrate how much we care about reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and fuel consumption. It will become evident that the combination of optimisation of different processes, activities and technologies, and the use of alternative energy sources is an approach with a lot of efficiency potential, which sometimes results in decreasing emissions by up to 40%. What should be avoided by all means is to go for isolated measures for machines and components, which would not solve any problems.

Future is out there

While we are working hard to improve ourselves, we also need to look at the future: how best to tackle the problems ahead? What is the way forward?

There will be a discussion between politicians, industry and environmental NGOs (WWF has been invited, for instance) on “the way forward”.

Once again, we believe our industry’s proposals are all reasonable and proactive, but we want to hear what the others think about that.

What we expect from the legislator is to accompany the industry in this effort, to provide the tools, such as data and studies on the correct measurement of the actual fuel consumption of the sector, a reasonable timing to adapt to new legislation, and support for autoregulation measures through, for instance, ISO CEN standards.

For us, our commitment is clear: we are ready to contribute to further reducing emissions in an intelligent way and within a reasonable timeframe. People should understand that we are very serious about this and we hope that a common way forward can be identified at our event.

(*) Ralf Wezel is secretary-general of CECE and CEMA