Britain to ban sale of all diesel and petrol cars and vans from 2040
Britain to ban sale of all diesel and petrol cars and
vans from 2040
Plans follow French commitment to take polluting vehicles
off the road owing to effect of poor air quality on people’s health
Anushka Asthana Political editor and Matthew Taylor Tuesday
25 July 2017 17.38 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 25 July 2017 18.51 EDT
As part of a government strategy to improve air quality,
Britain is to ban all new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040 amid fears
that rising levels of nitrogen oxide pose a major risk to public health.
The commitment, which follows a similar pledge in France,
is part of the government’s much-anticipated clean air plan, which has been at
the heart of a protracted high court legal battle.
The government warned that the move, which will also take
in hybrid vehicles, was needed because of the unnecessary and avoidable impact
that poor air quality was having on people’s health. Ministers believe it poses
the largest environment risk to public health in the UK, costing up to £2.7bn
in lost productivity in one recent year.
Ministers have been urged to introduce charges for
vehicles to enter a series of “clean air zones” (CAZ). However, the government
only wants taxes to be considered as a final resort amid a backlash against any
move that punishes motorists.
“Poor air quality is the biggest environmental risk to
public health in the UK and this government is determined to take strong action
in the shortest time possible,” a government spokesman said.
“That is why we are providing councils with new funding
to accelerate development of local plans, as part of an ambitious £3bn
programme to clean up dirty air around our roads.”
The final plan, which was due by the end of July, comes
after a draft report that environmental lawyers described as “much weaker than
hoped for”.
The environment secretary, Michael Gove, will be hoping
for a better reception when he publishes the final document on Wednesday
following months of legal wrangling.
A briefing on parts of the plan, seen by the Guardian,
repeats the heavy focus on the steps that can be taken to help councils improve
air quality in specific areas where emissions have breached EU thresholds.
Measures to be urgently brought in by local authorities
that have repeatedly breached EU rules include retrofitting buses and other public
transport, changing road layouts and altering features such as roundabouts and
speed humps.
Reprogramming traffic lights will also be included in
local plans, with councils being given £255m to help accelerate their efforts.
Local emissions hotspots will be required to layout their plans by March 2018
and finalise them by the end of the year. A targeted scrappage scheme is also
expected to be included.
Some want the country-wide initiative to follow in the
footsteps of London, which is introducing a £10 toxic “T-charge” that will be
levied on up to 10,000 of the oldest, most polluting vehicles every weekday.
Sources insisted that while the idea of charges were on
the table, there was no plan to force councils to introduce them, and that
other measures would be exhausted first.
They hope the centrepiece of Wednesday’s strategy to be
put forward by Gove will be the plan to ban diesel and petrol sales completely
by 2040, in line with Emmanuel Macron’s efforts across the Channel.
The French president took the steps to help his country
meet its targets under the Paris climate accord, in an announcement that came a
day after Volvo said it would only make fully electric or hybrid cars from 2019
onwards.
That decision was hailed as the beginning of the end for
the internal combustion engine’s dominance of motor transport after more than a
century.
Prof David Bailey, an automotive industry expert at Aston
University, said: “The timescale involved here is sufficiently long term to be
taken seriously. If enacted it would send a very clear signal to manufacturers
and consumers of the direction of travel and may accelerate a transition to
electric cars.”
Britain’s air quality package also includes £1bn in
ultra-low emissions vehicles including investing nearly £100m in the UK’s
charging infrastructure and funding the Plug in Car and Plug in Grant schemes.
There will also be £290m for the national productivity
investment fund, which will go towards the retrofitting, and money towards low
emission taxis.
The report will also include an air quality grant for
councils, a green bus fund for low carbon vehicles, £1.2bn for cycling and
walking and £100m to help air quality on the roads.
The strategy comes amid warnings that the UK’s high level
of air pollution could be responsible for 40,000 premature deaths a year.
A judge had said the government’s original plans on
tackling the issue, which included five clean air zones, were so poor as to be
unlawful. The government had been asked to present a new draft policy to tackle
air pollution from diesel traffic before the election.
The government was then called to court to explain why it
had made a last-minute application late last Friday to delay publication of a
draft policy to tackle air pollution until after the election.
James Eadie QC, representing the government, said the
policy was ready to be published but it would be controversial and should
therefore be withheld until after the election.
“If you publish a draft plan, it drops all the issues of
controversy into the election … like dropping a controversial bomb,” he said,
adding that it could risk breaching rules about civil service neutrality and
lead to the policy being labelled a Tory plan.
However, judges said the government did have to publish a
draft plan with the final version needed by the end of July.
May’s draft contained few concrete proposals and did not
specify the cities and towns where polluting vehicles might face charges, the
level of any charges or the scope or value of any scrappage scheme.
Instead, the plan puts the onus for action on local
authorities: “Local authorities are already responsible for improving air
quality in their area, but will now be expected to develop new and creative
solutions to reduce emissions as quickly as possible, while avoiding undue
impact on the motorist.”
Analysis in the documents showed increasing the number of
CAZs from the current six planned to 27 would make by far the greatest impact
in cutting pollution and provide cost benefits of over £1bn. The CAZ policy
would cut more than 1,000 times more NO2 than a scrappage scheme, even if that
scheme required old diesels to be replaced by electric cars.
But it required local authorities to exhaust all other
options before introducing CAZ charging for diesel vehicles such as removing
speed bumps and retrofitting buses.
At the time Thornton said: “The plan looks much weaker
than we had hoped for. The court ordered the government to take this public
health issue seriously and while the government says that pollution is the
largest environmental risk to public health, we will still be faced with
illegal air quality for years to come under these proposals.”
The coalition government had already set out a vision for
almost every car and van to be ultra-low emission by 2050 – a move which the
government acknowledged would require “almost all new cars and vans sold to be
near-zero emission at the tailpipe by 2040”. So it is unclear to what extent the
new pledge will further boost Britain’s ability to achieve air quality
requirements.
ClientEarth, the campaign group that has successfully
pursued the government through the courts over the UK’s air pollution crisis,
gave a cautious welcome to the announcement but said ministers must take action
now to tackle the UK’s air pollution crisis.
“The government has trumpeted some promising measures
with its air quality plans, but we need to see the detail,” said CEO James
Thornton. “A clear policy to move people towards cleaner vehicles by banning
the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans after 2040 is welcome, as is more
funding for local authorities.
“However, the law says ministers must bring down illegal
levels of air pollution as soon as possible, so any measures announced in this
plan must be focused on doing that.”
London mayor Sadiq Khan has been calling for tougher
measures to tackle air pollution which kills 9,000 people a year in the
capital.
A City Hall source was sceptical about the government’s
announcement.” We need to look at the full details but what Londoners suffering
from the terrible health impacts of air pollution desperately need is a
fully-funded diesel scrappage fund – and they need it right now.”
Areeba Hamid, clean air campaigner at Greenpeace, said:
“The high court was clear that the government must bring down toxic air
pollution in the UK in the shortest possible time. This plan is still miles
away from that.
The government cannot shy away any longer from the issue
of diesel cars clogging up and polluting our cities, and must now provide real
solutions, not just gimmicks. That means proper clean air zones and funding to
support local authorities to tackle illegal and unsafe pollution.”
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