In May 2021, the Congress of Deputies approved the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law, which has as one of its main objectives to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline and diesel vehicles. Furthermore, another of its purposes has been the creation of Low Emission Zones (ZBE) in cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. This legislation was added to the creation in 2016 by the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) of environmental labels. These badges arose in order to classify vehicles according to the polluting emissions they generated.
Currently there are four environmental badges that classify the vehicle fleet in Spain. In general, the yellow B label includes gasoline internal combustion passenger cars and vans registered since January 1, 2001 and diesel vehicles from 2006 onwards. The green C label includes registered passenger cars and vans. gasoline from January 2006 and diesel from September 2015. The vast majority of hybrid, gas or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vehicles have the ECO label. For its part, the O emissions or blue label is intended for battery electric passenger cars (BEV), extended range (REEV), plug-in hybrid electric cars (PHEV) with a range of 40 km or fuel cell vehicles. Taking these classifications into account, doubts often arise about the possibilities of changing the label if certain modifications are made to the vehicle. But is it possible to change the environmental label?
If the environmental label classifies the car based on the harmful gases it emits, to change from one label to another it is necessary to make modifications to the engine to reduce the emission of polluting particles. For example, if you have a combustion vehicle, you can convert it to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) by modifying the engine or you can carry out the process called retrofit, which seeks to extend the useful life of the combustion vehicle by converting it to electric and thus ensure that it complies with sustainability or zero emissions standards.
Of course, we recommend that you visit a specialized workshop to find out if modifications can be made to your combustion car that comply with the regulations.
