If you poured rapeseed oil into a combustion engine and declared it a “zero-emission vehicle,” you would be laughed at. But in the EU Parliament, this fiction is being drafted into law.

If you poured rapeseed oil into a combustion engine, watched toxic exhaust billow from the tailpipe, and declared it a “zero-emission vehicle,” you would be laughed at. Yet inside the corridors of the European Parliament, this exact fiction is being drafted into law.

Under heavy pressure from the fossil fuel lobby and legacy carmakers, EU lawmakers are preparing to endorse a bizarre new regulatory beast: the VEEF, or “Vehicle Exclusively running on Eligible Fuels.” In plain English, these are standard combustion-engine cars promised to run exclusively on liquid biofuels or e-fuels. In exchange for that promise, Brussels plans to grant them a legal tailpipe emission score of zero.

It is regulatory alchemy at its worst. Cloaked in the seductive language of “technological neutrality,” this proposal creates an escape hatch for an obsolete technology, all while setting up ordinary European drivers for an expensive logistical nightmare.

It is just another desperate tactic to extend the life of the combustion engine by any means possible.

To understand the absurdity of the biofuel car, look at what actually happens in the engine. It’s still the exact same combustion. A piston firing on biofuels produces the same toxic cocktail of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and fine particulates that has choked European cities for decades. Labeling these cars “zero-emission” launders the pollution through a regulatory loophole and continues to foster emission-induced pathology.

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