A decade ago, Volkswagen got caught in a huge scandal, having sold scads of diesel-fueled vehicles equipped with “defeat devices.” These bits of software allowed the various cars to pass emissions tests while still emitting a whole lot more of certain pollutants than they were supposed to — until the company got caught, had to pay billions of dollars in fines, and fix or buy back the offending vehicles. Well, that’s what happened in the US, at least.
In the UK and the European Union, enforcement against heavily polluting diesel vehicles has been much slower or non-existent in some places, and a new report lays bare the costs of that sort of heel-dragging. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found that primarily nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions linked to the use of defeat devices caused 124,000 premature deaths between 2009 and 2024, along with 98,000 new cases of childhood asthma and 25,000 life-years of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Then there’s the 15 million days of sick leave, but who’s counting.
“Our calculations reveal the widespread and devastating health impacts of excessive diesel emissions – thousands of lives cut short, countless children developing asthma, and an immense burden of chronic illness,” said the study’s lead author, Jamie Kelly, in a statement. “This is a crisis with a long and lingering legacy. Without action, these impacts will stretch far into the future, affecting generations to come.”
As recently as two years ago, experts estimated that millions of diesel-burning cars, including many with “suspicious” claims as to their emissions, remained on the roads in Europe — though the scandal made plenty of headlines, regulators have not responded with the kind of force needed to actually change outcomes. The new CREA report found that if something doesn’t change, another 81,000 premature deaths can be expected from now through 2040, along with almost half a trillion dollars in economic damage.
“Auto manufacturers have been trying to sweep the Dieselgate scandal under the carpet for too long,” said Emily Kearsey, a lawyer with Client Earth, an environmental law group that commissioned the report. “It’s been nearly a decade – governments must stop stalling and hold polluters accountable now.”
It feels odd given the current situation, but the US Environmental Protection Agency and other regulators set a reasonable model for how to actually approach this. Back in 2015 when the scandal broke, it issued a notice of violation to Volkswagen over the 590,000 offending vehicles it had sold since 2009, alleging that the defeat devices violated the Clean Air Act. Eventually it entered into a huge multi-billion-dollar agreement with the government, including promises to fix or buy back all half-million-plus cars, and then (notably, nine days before a change in White House occupancy) the company agreed to pay a $2.8 billion criminal penalty and a $1.5 billion civil fine.
This did not, of course, eliminate the problem of defeat devices entirely, but did send a reasonable message of their potential cost. The EPA also launched a National Enforcement and Compliance Initiative targeting aftermarket versions of the devices, which resulted in hundreds of enforcement actions between 2020 and 2023.
Clearly, Europe is still grappling with its own response. Only just this week, a German court convicted four former Volkswagen executives of fraud relating to the scandal; two of the four were sentenced to several years in prison. “In the UK, and the EU on the whole, there’s just not been anywhere near the same level of accountability” as in the US, Kearsey said, according to The Guardian. In absence of a centralized government response, millions of individual car owners have made claims against Volkswagen and other companies and are waiting for them to work through the courts.
“It’s not too late to act,” Kelly said upon release of the CREA report. “Governments have an opportunity – and a responsibility – to break this cycle.”
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