Fair Climate Assessment: Beyond the Tailpipe, Towards the Full Lifecycle

The transport sector is the only industry in the EU where greenhouse gas emissions have not declined since 1990, despite technological advances and political commitments. One of the central causes lies in the regulatory logic itself: the EU fleet regulation measures climate impact exclusively at the tailpipe. What happens before — raw material extraction, battery production, material cycles — and what comes after (recycling and Circular Economy) remains entirely unaccounted for. Around half of the actual lifecycle emissions of an electric vehicle are generated before the car has driven a single kilometer.

A fair climate assessment must therefore consider the entire lifecycle. And it requires the right concept: defossilisation — the goal of phasing out fossil primary energy sources — rather than decarbonisation. What matters is not whether a fuel contains carbon, but whether it is fossil. This distinction determines which technology pathways a fair climate policy permits and which it wrongly excludes. For aviation, shipping and heavy-duty transport, climate-neutral fuels such as e-fuels and biofuels are the only viable option for the foreseeable future.

CirculaTUM, the TUM Mission Network, is developing a white paper on behalf of TUM President Prof. Dr. Thomas F. Hofmann: a scientifically grounded proposal for what a complete, holistic assessment of the environmental performance of vehicles could look like. With a consistent approach to defossilisation, significantly greater climate protection potentials can be unlocked than with the regulatory logic currently in practice. The project brings together engineering and natural sciences with economics, political science and sustainability research — because only by combining these perspectives can we assess whether a regulation actually achieves what it sets out to do.

Project Lead: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Johannes Fottner (fml/TUM) | Academic Exchange: Prof. Dr. Magnus Fröhling (TUM Campus Straubing), Prof. Dr. Tim Büthe (HfP/TUM) | Deliverable: White Paper, July 2026