Paris and London mayors announce scheme to gauge car emissions

PARIS (Reuters) - The mayors of Paris and London announced a new scheme for monitoring emissions from vehicles on Wednesday, aimed at improving air quality in the two capitals. Anne Hidalgo of Paris and London's Sadiq Khan said the system would set up a scoring system to identify real-life emissions from cars, with the aim of providing consumers with more accurate information. "We should be able to set up a reliable scoring system which will be put to all our citizens and allow them to know what emissions are coming from which vehicles in reality," Hidalgo said at an international conference on air pollution. The scheme would rely on road and "real world" testing by emissions analytics and the International Council for Clean Transportation, and allocate each model of car a score based on all air pollutants emitted. This would go further than present EU labelling schemes which regulate only certain pollutants and are based on laboratory tests. "This new scheme will put an end to the 'smoke and mirrors' that has been employed and provide Londoners and Parisians with an honest, accurate and independent evaluation of the emissions of vehicles on our road," Khan said. "Tackling vehicle emissions is a priority if you are to tackle air pollution in your city," said Wonsoon Park, mayor of Seoul, which also plans to try out the scheme. Khan said 9,000 people in London died early every year because of air pollution. Hidalgo said the figure for Paris was 2,500. French media said monitoring devices would be set up on Paris streets and on different makes of vehicles in the coming weeks as part of the scheme. (Reporting by Celia Mebroukine; Writing by Richard Balmforth; Editing by Andrew Roche)