[Auto] Ban on new petrol and diesel cars in UK from 2030 under PM's green plan

[[X]pErT-]

£1.3bn will be invested in electric vehicle charging points as part of the plan

By Roger Harrabin

BBC environment analyst

New cars and vans powered wholly by petrol and diesel will not be sold in the UK from 2030, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.

But some hybrids would still be allowed, he confirmed.

It is part of what Mr Johnson calls a "green industrial revolution" to tackle climate change and create jobs in industries such as nuclear energy.

Critics say the £4bn allocated to implement the 10-point plan is far too small for the scale of the challenge.

The total amount of new money announced in the package is a 25th of the projected £100bn cost of high-speed rail, HS2.

Will the UK be ready for a 2030 ban on sales of petrol and diesel cars?

Business Secretary Alok Sharma told BBC Breakfast the £4bn was part of a broader £12bn package of public investment, which "will help to bring in three times as much in terms of private sector money".

Mr Sharma, who is president of the COP26 international climate summit that the UK will host next year, said the money would also support the creation of 250,000 jobs in parts of the UK "where we want to see levelling up".

The government hopes that many of those jobs will be in northern England and in Wales, and that 60,000 will be in offshore wind.

The government has also given funding to boost cycling and walking

Offshore wind: Produce enough offshore wind to power every home in the UK, quadrupling how much it produces to 40 gigawatts by 2030, and supporting up to 60,000 jobs.

Hydrogen: Have five gigawatts of "low carbon" hydrogen production capacity by 2030 - for industry, transport, power and homes - and develop the first town heated by the gas by the end of the decade.

Nuclear: Pushing nuclear power as a clean energy source and including provision for a large nuclear plant, as well as for advanced small nuclear reactors, which could support 10,000 jobs.

Electric vehicles: Phasing out sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030 to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles and investing in grants to help buy cars and charge point infrastructure.

Public transport, cycling and walking: Making cycling and walking more attractive ways to travel and investing in zero-emission public transport for the future.

Jet zero and greener maritime: Supporting research projects for zero-emission planes and ships.

Homes and public buildings: Making homes, schools and hospitals greener, warmer and more energy efficient, including a target to install 600,000 heat pumps every year by 2028.

Carbon capture: Developing world-leading technology to capture and store harmful emissions away from the atmosphere, with a target to remove 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030 - equivalent to all emissions of the industrial Humber.

Nature: Protecting and restoring the natural environment, with plans to include planting 30,000 hectares of trees a year.

Innovation and finance: Developing cutting-edge technologies and making the City of London the global centre of green finance.

The plan includes provision for a large nuclear plant - likely to be at Sizewell in Suffolk - and for advanced small nuclear reactors, which it is hoped, will create an estimated 10,000 jobs at Rolls-Royce and other firms.

The government is close to giving the green light to a new nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk

The plans will also affect some people's homes.

The government will bring forward, to 2023, the date by which new homes will need to be warmed without using gas heating.

Free home insulation: Too good to be true?

Sea's heat to warm historic house

Extra £40m pledged for green spaces in England

Why the UK's carbon-free future will need rules

It will aim to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028 - these are low-energy electrical devices for warming homes.

And it has extended the Green Homes Grant for home insulation for a year after the first tranche was massively over-subscribed.

Clean hydrogen will be blended into the natural gas supply to reduce overall emissions from gas, and the government wants a town to volunteer for a trial of 100% hydrogen for heat, industry and cooking.

The hydrogen - attracting a subsidy of up to £500m - will be produced in places such as the North East of England, partly by energy from offshore wind.

unemployment and the climate emergency.

"Only a fraction of the funding announced today is new."

Mr Miliband, who served as energy and climate change secretary from 2008-10, said Labour wanted the government to bring forward £30bn of capital investment over the next 18 months and invest it in low-carbon sectors to support 400,000 additional jobs.

And Green Party MP Caroline Lucas welcomed some measures but said the plan "completely fails to rise to the gravity of this moment".

"When you put it in the context of the scale of the climate and nature emergencies that we face, and indeed the scale of the job emergencies that we face, then it's nowhere near ambitious enough, it's not urgent enough, it's not bold enough," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

She criticised the £4bn allocation, saying "the resources aren't there in order to make this a really strategic package".

Ms Lucas also said the government's message is "inconsistent" and it must make clear which technologies it wants to invest in.

She said nuclear power is "massively costly", will not be "on stream" until the middle of the 2030s, and risks undermining focus on offshore wind.

The Green Party called for a transformation of the entire economy to reduce emissions, including scrapping the £27bn road-building programme, which will actually increase emissions.

However, Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of energy supplier SSE, told the Today programme he was pleased "to see this level of ambition from the government".

He said the plan was "a really important step in getting the green recovery going" and would "help create a lot more jobs".

Mike Hulme, professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, said critics should not "nit-pick about precise details" of the plan as it was "far more important is to endorse the direction of travel that has been set for the next decade".

Tanya Steele from WWF-UK said the government had "fired the starting gun on the action we need to see".

She added: "We now need the chancellor to live up to the ambition expressed today through a spending review that tests every line of public spending to ensure it's compatible with meeting our climate goals."

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54981425