The development of European standards plays an important role in supporting strategic European environmental and industrial policies. Examples of this include the current initiatives on electric vehicles and the deployment of an alternative fuel infrastructure for transport and smart grids across Europe.
 

The European White Paper Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area – Towards a Competitive and Resource Efficient Transport System called for breaking the oil dependence of transport and set a target of 60% greenhouse gas emissions reduction from transport by 2050.

 

The resulting standardisation initiatives seek to address the lack of alternative fuel infrastructure and of common technical specifications for the vehicle-infrastructure interface, which are considered major obstacles to the market introduction of alternative fuels and consumer acceptance.

 

Under this EU mandate, the European Standardisation Institutes CEN and CENELEC were commissioned to develop a series of standards on safety, interoperability of charging systems, performance of chargers, metering of electricity usage and CO2 accounting.