Decarbonizing Transport in the European Union: Emission Performance Standards and the Perspectives for a European Green Deal
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a well written paper in a very important period that calls for the decarbonization of all modes of transport. However, it is not clear to me that this is an academic paper, it seems more like an overview of Europe's approach.
I think that the authors must make the academic contribution of their work clearer, otherwise this could easily be a thoughtpiece published in some popular science magazine, and not an a academic journal. Yes, it is important to discuss the shortfalls of the proposed policies (which in my opinion has set unrealistic targets), but you also must propose solutions or improvements.
Other modes of transport are not discussed, although there are commitments to reduce GHG from all modes of transport, and in Europe (since the authors focus on cars) there are efforts to create modal shifts from road based modes to other alternatives (mainly short sea shipping and rail). Perhaps these (and some academic papers focusing on these modal shifts) should be mentioned somewhere in the manuscript.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are very grateful to your insightful and lucid comments on the draft manuscript. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to your suggestions, and have highlighted all of the resulting changes. The reviewers' suggestions have improved the quality of the manuscript. We feel that the revised paper makes a strong contribution to mobility research, and hope that it meets the criteria for publication in your journal.
The following contains a point-by-point response to your comments and suggestions.
- This is a well written paper in a very important period that calls for the decarbonization of all modes of transport. However, it is not clear to me that this is an academic paper, it seems more like an overview of Europe's approach.
Answer: The paper deals with different social science approaches to European environmental and transport policy. We have taken a closer look at the argumentation in the revision and have added certain aspects in the abstract and introduction. Furthermore we included additional literature in the final section.
- I think that the authors must make the academic contribution of their work clearer, otherwise this could easily be a thoughtpiece published in some popular science magazine, and not an a academic journal.
Answer: In the introduction we have made it clear once again more clearly that in the existing literature power relations are not sufficiently taken into account (lines 56-58). We have expanded the final section and defined research needs (lines 549-562).
- Yes, it is important to discuss the shortfalls of the proposed policies (which in my opinion has set unrealistic targets), but you also must propose solutions or improvements.
Answer: Social science is based on the analysis of social phenomena. The aim of the article is to analyze the controversy surrounding the EU Emission Performance Standards. Science can develop proposals for problem solutions, but it does not have to. We do not see any simple proposals for solutions to overcome EU’s high carbon society, nor do we claim to develop any in the context of this article. This might be the task for a new article.
- Other modes of transport are not discussed, although there are commitments to reduce GHG from all modes of transport, and in Europe (since the authors focus on cars) there are efforts to create modal shifts from road based modes to other alternatives (mainly short sea shipping and rail). Perhaps these (and some academic papers focusing on these modal shifts) should be mentioned somewhere in the manuscript.
Answer: We have taken up this suggestion and in the final section we have determined further research needs. See lines 549-562: “The article has a narrow focus on the automobile and thus also refers to research gaps that need to be filled in the future. First, greenhouse gas emissions are rising not only in automobile traffic but also in freight or air traffic. In addition, the entire transport sector is facing major upheavals [61], also against the background of advancing digitalization and automated driving [62, 63]. In this respect, future research should focus more on analyzing the dynamics within the transport sector and different modes of transport.
Second, it is of great importance, as this article suggests, to think of mobility as a social relationship and to articulate the issues of decarbonization strategies with debates on mobility justice [64]. For it is by no means certain that the ambitions of the European Green Deal will be fulfilled and whether more than an ecological modernization of transport will take place at the European level. This points to a third aspect, namely the need to relate the interaction processes between developments on the European scale to debates in national and regional contexts. It is therefore a matter of better decoding the dynamics of the European multi-level system.”
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
- Redo the annotation because it is not representative. It merely states the facts of what has been done in the article. Some sentences are almost identical to the text of the article.
- Abbreviations used for the first time must have the full title. For example, although everyone knows what the EU means, there must be a full name for the first time.
- It is recommended that the title of Section 2 be corrected and not formulated in the form of a question.
- English needs to be corrected. There are also a number of phrases that are used more in everyday language than in scientific.
- Structure does not meet requirements of the journal: no sections: methods and methodology, rezults, and so on. Only at the end of the introduction is it mentioned in a few sentences that a survey of 21 experts was conducted, but nothing is detailed below in the article. Therefore, it is not clear what the contribution of the authors of the article is, including literature sources, document analysis and politicians statements.
- The names of organizations must be written in English, as well as their abbreviations (For example, on line 280 - the name is written in English, and the abbreviation is VDA, which does not correspond to the English name) and so on.
- Chapter 4 and its subsections are a statement of facts and contain no insights from the authors. The authors' analysis is lacking.
- Conclusions - review of literature sources, lack of authors' insights, and the direction of further research.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are very grateful to your insightful and lucid comments on the draft manuscript. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to your suggestions, and have highlighted all of the resulting changes. The reviewers' suggestions have improved the quality of the manuscript. We feel that the revised paper makes a strong contribution to mobility research, and hope that it meets the criteria for publication in your journal.
The following contains a point-by-point response to your comments and suggestions.
- Redo the annotation because it is not representative. It merely states the facts of what has been done in the article. Some sentences are almost identical to the text of the article.
Answer: We are not sure what you mean with “annotation”. In case that it is the abstract we made some minor formal revisions. However, the abstract should exactly summarize the key aspects of a paper. Therefore, in our opinion it is basically suitable for the paper.
- Abbreviations used for the first time must have the full title. For example, although everyone knows what the EU means, there must be a full name for the first time.
Answer: We checked the manuscript. We changed in the title “European Union” instead of EU, introduced “European Union (EU)” in the abstract (line 11-12) and introduced other abbreviations like “non-governmental organisations (NGOs)” line 69.
- It is recommended that the title of Section 2 be corrected and not formulated in the form of a question.
Answer: We changed the title to “The EU: an alleged environmental leader” (line 75)
- English needs to be corrected. There are also a number of phrases that are used more in everyday language than in scientific.
Answer: The paper was carefully proofread by a professional native speaker. I went through the manuscript again carefully and found no everyday language instead of scientific language. Examples would have been helpful to make changes if necessary.
- Structure does not meet requirements of the journal: no sections: methods and methodology, rezults, and so on. Only at the end of the introduction is it mentioned in a few sentences that a survey of 21 experts was conducted, but nothing is detailed below in the article. Therefore, it is not clear what the contribution of the authors of the article is, including literature sources, document analysis and politicians statements.
Answer: In order to strengthen this aspect, I have expanded and specified the interviews and the section on methods. It now reads: " The empirical part of this paper is supported by 21 guideline-based expert interviews conducted during 2018 and 2019 with different stakeholders (from the automotive industry, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), think tanks, political parties and ministerial bureaucracy), focusing on the struggles over the German Verkehrswende (transition in transportation). Some interviewees also provided important insights concerning the negotiation of the EU car fleet limits and the roles of German actors therein, especially the German Government. The interviews were recorded, completely transcribed and evaluated by means of a content analysis. To validate the findings, the interviews were triangulated with primary and secondary data.” (lines 67-74)
- The names of organizations must be written in English, as well as their abbreviations (For example, on line 280 - the name is written in English, and the abbreviation is VDA, which does not correspond to the English name) and so on.
Answer: There are fixed abbreviations such as ACEA and VDA, which do not originate from the English but from the French or German spelling. I have marked this accordingly in the lines 284-287. See also the additions on the CDU (lines 369-370) and the FDP (line 368).
- Chapter 4 and its subsections are a statement of facts and contain no insights from the authors. The authors' analysis is lacking.
Answer: We do not share this assessment. In this chapter we provide a historical reconstruction of the negotiations on fleet limits and develop the argument that the latest fleet limits of 2019 are much more ambitious than the previous ones. We attribute this to the fact that the context conditions have shifted and that the German automotive industry has not succeeded in generalizing its particular interests as the national interest. The argument is clearly developed especially by the historical reconstruction and in our opinion there is no need for revisions in this part.
- Conclusions - review of literature sources, lack of authors' insights, and the direction of further research.
Answer: The authors’ insights are that the new fleet-limits indicate a growing pressure for ecological modernization of transportation in the EU. However, existing power relations prevent more fundamental changes (lines 507-542). We added the direction of further research in the following way: “The article has a narrow focus on the automobile and thus also refers to research gaps that need to be filled in the future. First, greenhouse gas emissions are rising not only in automobile traffic but also in freight or air traffic. In addition, the entire transport sector is facing major upheavals [61], also against the background of advancing digitalization and automated driving [62, 63]. In this respect, future research should focus more on analyzing the political dynamics within the transport sector and different modes of transport. Second, it is of great importance, as this article suggests, to think of mobility as a social relationship and to articulate the issues of decarbonization strategies with debates on mobility justice [64]. For it is by no means certain that the ambitions of the European Green Deal will be fulfilled and whether more than an ecological modernization of transport will take place at the European level. This points to a third aspect, namely the need to relate the interaction processes between developments on the European scale to debates in national and regional contexts. It is therefore a matter of better decoding the dynamics of the European multi-level system.” (Lines 549-562)
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper has been improved, but I still feel that it would be better suited in a different journal. I suggest minor revisions, and I leave the decision of publishing this or not to the editor. In my view, Sustainability is not the right outlet for this work.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments. We have again extended the abstract and the description of the methods and thus made our findings and the methodological approach more precise. Thus we are convinced that the paper can make an important contribution to the SI in Sustainability.
Comment 1: The paper has been improved, but I still feel that it would be better suited in a different journal. I suggest minor revisions, and I leave the decision of publishing this or not to the editor. In my view, Sustainability is not the right outlet for this work.
The abstract now says:
“The transport sector is a major driver of climate change both globally and in the European Union (EU). While the EU as a whole is showing declining carbon emissions, transport-related emissions are higher than in 1990. Car traffic is responsible for around 12 percent of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen underlined the efforts to strengthen the decarbonization of the EU at the end of 2019 by publishing the European Green Deal (EGD) communication. In this paper we analyze the controversy surrounding the emission performance standards for cars adopted in spring 2019. Car manufacturers must reduce the average carbon emissions of their fleets by 37.5% between 2021 and 2030. In this respect, the new emission performance standards are more ambitious than the previous ones. However, our argument is that without a major shift in the balance of power, extensive decarbonization and a departure from car-centered transport development will not be possible. Therefore, it is crucial for mobility research to critically engage with lobbying power in the EU and with concepts such as environmental leadership, which often underexpose the structural power of incumbent actors and existing path dependencies.”
The part on the methodological approach now says:
“The empirical part of this paper, which is based on qualitative methods, is supported by 21 guideline-based expert interviews conducted during 2018 and 2019 with different stakeholders (from the automotive industry, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), think tanks, political parties and ministerial bureaucracy), focusing on the struggles over the German Verkehrswende (transition in transportation). Some interviewees also provided important insights concerning the negotiation of the EU car fleet limits and the roles of German actors therein, especially the German Government. The interviews were recorded, completely transcribed and evaluated by means of a qualitative content analysis. To validate the findings, the interviews were triangulated with primary and secondary data like newspaper articles, position papers and reports from key stakeholders in the field and scientific literature.”
This is a brief but concise and from our perspective sufficient description of our methodological approach which satisfies the criterion of intersubjective comprehensibility of the course of argumentation.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
- Redo the abstract because it is not representative. It merely states the facts of what has been done in the article.You are writing, " In this paper we analyze the controversy surrounding the emission performance standards for cars adopted in spring 2019" - this information needs to be expanded to make it clear to the reader what the outcome is.
- I still think so, that structure does not meet requirements of the journal: no sections: methods and methodology, rezults, and so on. This must be clearly separated and the available information presented (compiled) according to the structural requirements of the journal, even taking into account the title of the sections. When compiled according to these requirements, you will see that the description of the research methodology is too narrow.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments. We have again extended the abstract and the description of the methods and thus made our findings and the methodological approach more precise. Thus we are convinced that the paper can make an important contribution to the SI in Sustainability.
Comment 1: Redo the abstract because it is not representative. It merely states the facts of what has been done in the article. You are writing, " In this paper we analyze the controversy surrounding the emission performance standards for cars adopted in spring 2019" - this information needs to be expanded to make it clear to the reader what the outcome is.
We have taken up the suggestion and supplemented the abstract. It is now:
“The transport sector is a major driver of climate change both globally and in the European Union (EU). While the EU as a whole is showing declining carbon emissions, transport-related emissions are higher than in 1990. Car traffic is responsible for around 12 percent of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen underlined the efforts to strengthen the decarbonization of the EU at the end of 2019 by publishing the European Green Deal (EGD) communication. In this paper we analyze the controversy surrounding the emission performance standards for cars adopted in spring 2019. Car manufacturers must reduce the average carbon emissions of their fleets by 37.5% between 2021 and 2030. In this respect, the new emission performance standards are more ambitious than the previous ones. However, our argument is that without a major shift in the balance of power, extensive decarbonization and a departure from car-centered transport development will not be possible. Therefore, it is crucial for mobility research to critically engage with lobbying power in the EU and with concepts such as environmental leadership, which often underexpose the structural power of incumbent actors and existing path dependencies.”
Comment 2: I still think so, that structure does not meet requirements of the journal: no sections: methods and methodology, rezults, and so on. This must be clearly separated and the available information presented (compiled) according to the structural requirements of the journal, even taking into account the title of the sections. When compiled according to these requirements, you will see that the description of the research methodology is too narrow.
As far as we are informed, there is room for different methodological approaches in Sustainability and also with regard to its presentation. We do not claim to develop an innovative methodological approach in the paper and have therefore chosen a short, concise description, which we have, however, slightly supplemented in the following way:
“The empirical part of this paper, which is based on qualitative methods, is supported by 21 guideline-based expert interviews conducted during 2018 and 2019 with different stakeholders (from the automotive industry, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), think tanks, political parties and ministerial bureaucracy), focusing on the struggles over the German Verkehrswende (transition in transportation). Some interviewees also provided important insights concerning the negotiation of the EU car fleet limits and the roles of German actors therein, especially the German Government. The interviews were recorded, completely transcribed and evaluated by means of a qualitative content analysis. To validate the findings, the interviews were triangulated with primary and secondary data like newspaper articles, position papers and reports from key stakeholders in the field and scientific literature.”
This is a brief but concise and from our perspective sufficient description of our methodological approach which satisfies the criterion of intersubjective comprehensibility of the course of argumentation.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
