VWDarkside

After nearly two years of campaigning by more than 526,000 of you across the planet, VW has turned away from the Dark Side and committed to make cleaner and more efficient cars.

That means VW will also meet strong EU CO2 reduction targets.

This is big, because using less oil means less pollution, less impact on the climate and less pressure on vulnerable places like the Arctic.

After nearly 2 years and 520,683 people pressuring VW, they've finally agreed to make cleaner and more efficient cars. VW announced that it will meet new EU car efficiency targets for 2020. That means its entire fleet will average 95g/km (about 4 litres/100km) per vehicle by 2020. VW is Europe’s biggest car-maker, the seconde biggest in the world, so this is big news. Using less oil means less pollution, less impact on the climate and less pressure on vulnerable places like the Arctic. Here's how you made it happen...

"Environmental protection is the top priority for Volkswagen". So says the blurb for VW’s latest PR initiative. But according to a story in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper it seems no one told their lobbyists…

The story reveals that the VDA, the lobby group that represents VW along with fellow German carmakers BMW and Daimler, wants to make a big hole in a proposed EU law to control CO2 emissions from even bigger cars.

This week the European Commission published a new draft proposal on car efficiency for 2020. They agreed to stick with their original target but have missed a chance to go further towards getting us off our oil addiction.

For several months, our intrepid active supporters Jedis have been out in force, persuading thousands of members of the public to sign VW Darkside cards - which we've been sending through to the top brass at the VW's headquarters in Milton Keynes, and to their biggest dealerships.

For almost a year now, you’ve been asking VW to turn away from the dark side and reduce its fleet’s CO2 emissions. Today we took that message to the company’s AGM in Hamburg with a giant banner reading "Take responsibility seriously! Honest climate protection now" (in German, obviously).

This morning, two activists in Germany climbed the towering VW office building, dropped a banner reading “CO2 - Das Problem”, demonstrating that VW’s boss needs to show more responsibility when it comes to climate change. The climbers were removed, but another Greenpeace activist has since managed to paraglide around the tower - sending the message that the rebellion will continue until VW commits to real climate protection.