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Petrol pump (licensed CC BY 2.0 by isox4 on Flickr)Prime Minister brings forward ban on petrol and diesel cars to 2035 – but is slammed on his handling of climate crisis
Boris Johnson has brought forward plans to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans to 2035 instead of 2040 in an attempt to position the UK as a leader in the fight against global warming – but the pledge comes on a day when his leadership on climate change and understanding of the issues involved has come under fierce attack.
Formally launching the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Summit, being held in Glasgow in November, at London’s Science Museum today, the Prime Minster urged countries around the world to invest in cleaner technology, preserve biodiversity and fight climate change by setting net zero emissions targets.
Joined at the event by broadcaster and environmentalist Sir David Attenborough and Giuseppe Conte, Prime Minister of Italy, which bid jointly with the UK to host a series of environment-focused UN events this year, Johnson said: “Hosting COP26 is an important opportunity for the UK and nations across the globe to step up in the fight against climate change.
“As we set out our plans to hit our ambitious 2050 net zero target across this year, so we shall urge others to join us in pledging net zero emissions.
“There can be no greater responsibility than protecting our planet, and no mission that a Global Britain is prouder to serve.
“2020 must be the year we turn the tide on global warming – it will be the year when we choose a cleaner, greener future for all,” he added.
Once the ban, which is subject to consultation, comes into effect, it will only be possible to buy new electric or hydrogen powered vehicles.
Johnson said that the government would continue to work alongside industry on developing zero emissions vehicles.
The date for ending sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans, as well as hybrid vehicles, was brought forward after experts advised that the existing date of 2040 would be too late to enable older, fossil-fuelled powered vehicles to be phased out completely by the net zero target date of 2050.
Today's speech by Johnson was intended to push forward his and the UK's credentials in being at the forefront of fighting the climate emergency.
But earlier today, former Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth Claire O’Neill, who stepped down as an MP for Devizes ahead of December’s general election, told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme that Johnson had “admitted to me he doesn’t really understand” climate change.
She said he had shown a “huge lack of leadership and engagement” over the UK hosting COP26, and that the when it came to fighting the climate crisis, the country was “playing at Oxford United levels when we really need to be Liverpool.”
O’Neill had been appointed President of the COP26 summit in September but was sacked from the post last Friday by Johnson’s advisor Dominic Cummings, with Number Ten viewing the post as a ministerial appointment – although a scathing letter she sent to Johnson yesterday suggests other factors were at work.
In her letter, she said that the UK is “miles off track” where it needs to be to tackle climate change, with pledges of action “not close to being met” and also pointed out that a cabinet sub-committee on the COP26 summit, chaired by Johnson and which she would have attended while in office, had not met once since being set up in October.
Concluding her letter to Johnson, O’Neill said: “I know you like quotes. So, let me end this long letter with one from Proverbs: ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’
“You had a vision for Brexit and you got Brexit done.
“As I write, we have less than 7,000 hours before the start of COP26 where we have a chance to set a new global vision for climate recovery and build a new consensus for global climate action.
“Please get this done too.”
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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We're being sold a lie (surprise!) by the government and the car industry. The battery car won't solve much, as cars only emit roughly 20% of emissions, so changing them all won't solve world problems. Even if we did switch all the cars over, we'd still have congestion, nowhere to park, inactivity, obesity, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks etc etc. We need much more drastic stuff, a complete reduction in car use, make it simpler to walk or cycle places, investment in public transport (not HS2 which is only useful if you want to go from London to B'ham and not stop anywhere else) but the government won't tell our feeble society this because they are liars who just want to stay in power.
Also amazing how a lot of people agree there's a climate emergency, yet the sale of SUV's in the UK is going through the roof.
If you want to get to 'net zero' you need to reduce or offset 100% of emissions.
You can't ignore one sector because it 'only' accounts for 20%.
But CO2 is not the only thing that vehicle produce. It's just the hot topic at the moment. Plenty of other fumes vehicles produce that have nasty and lasting consequences.
Whether ye be pro electric or pro ICE, electric cars won't make the roads safer for cyclists. Although the relatively high cost of ownership will price most of the yobs off the road.
Climate Emergency?
Whats the plan to stop the billions of Chinese from owning ICE autos?
Or a billion Indians?
UN projections have the continent of Africa at 7 BILLION people by 2050. How we stopping them from owning ICE vehicles?
The house is on fire some autistic depressed half wit is running past the living room, down the hallway past the den and rec room to fling open a small cupboard and screech at us to blow out a candle.
We live in fascinating times. If Labour made this same pronouncement you dolts would practically fellate each other over it.
If I am bold enough to represent at least some of the 'dolts' you refer to.
It is not thr target, the Scottish government for example announced a similar plan some time ago. It is the complete lack of a plan to make it possible.
A bit like, 'we will double cycling journeys ', but we won't spend money or put in any effort to change anything. It will just magically happen.
In terms of plans to remove ICE cars the government has given a huge tax break to EVs through BiK rates of 0% from April 2020.
This is already driving a surge in EV registrations.
There was a survey published recently suggesting that 96% of EV drivers intended to buy another EV.
If that figure holds up at all then we will see a huge snowball effect over the next 5-10 years.
Current economics still favour ICE. If you look at Norway you will see what could be done in terms of a tax environment. By that perspective EVs don't have a huge tax incentive in the UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p07bjc52/focus-why-is-norway-the-l...
If the Government wants to get the 'huge snowball effect' really going it has to do more.
I think it should do more. Even the fuel exise duty escalator was scrapped as successive Governments have not had the nerve to see it through.
Current economics favour EVs IF you are getting a company car.
A lot of my friends have crunched the numbers and they're going to be a lot better off with an EV from April than they would be with an ICE.
That may well be true, but the majority of ICE cars are not company cars. Can't find an up to date number at the moment, but just about 950,000 cars a few years ago. Doubt it has gone up markedly.
There are more than 32 million passenger cars in the UK.
Which means roughly 3 million are likely to be current or ex company cars.
That's not an insignificant percentage.
Oh dear oh dear; when in doubt, distract. Just because 99.9% of climate scientists agree that there is a climate emergency "Climate Emergency?" you think differently.
I know, let's ask imbecelic questions to distract, like "What's the plan to stop the billions of Chinese from owning ICE autos?"
Your comments about Greta Thunberg are frankly disgusting, and if you had any morals, you'd be ashamed, but I strongly suspect that you have none. Your last sentence could only be described as the height of irony, given what the tories are doing.
If you respond to this, please don't expect a reply. I refuse to enter a battle of wits against an unarmed man.
Ouch, you sure told me.
*yawn*
So the better plan is to do nothing?
Forget the fact that air polution caused by ICE vehicles has caused asthma rates in this country to rocket and is contributory to many premature deaths and diseases?
If you think the gases of the vehicles aren't harmful, lock yourself in a room with one and let the engine run.
If you wish to preach to others, first look at yourself and lead by example.
I just love it when the ignorant point their finger at the Chinese, in a vain attempt to justify their own reluctance to act.
Several major cities in China already have in place a total ICE ban, as a result of which the percentage sales of plug in domestic vehicles in China is higher than ours. So it seems we don't need to worry about the Chinese, now back to our own problem.....
I agree with that, though traffic jams in Beijing reminded me of lots of other World cities.
I worry about the US with a climate change denier in charge. A nation with much higher per capita CO2 emissions than China or India or almost any country outside the Gulf States.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/10296/economics/top-co2-polluters-hig...
I find this hatred for gas and diesel cars comical when transportation, which includes ALL forms of transportation only account for 14% of CO2, what they don't tell you is that factories, electricity and heat for homes and businesses adds up to about 46%. Hmm, doesn't it make more sense to do away with the largest contributer of CO2 first by shuttering natural gas, oil and coal generation plants and go to nuclear energy, or better yet thorium reactors?
Once they convert all power generating plants to nuclear then they can think about the transportation sector, but it's a lot easier to convert to nuclear power than it is to convert all cars to electricity which would simply increase the CO2 production by power generating plants, so we don't gain anything. If they want to go with electric cars then go all nuclear.
And no word whatsoever about hydrogen fuel, which in reality is far less damaging to the enviroment then mining for the ore needed to make batteries, plus less hazardous to first responders who are at risk for severe electrical shock and death from such shock.
The other thing that gets my goat is how products made today last less than half as long as they did 40 years ago so factories are having to make at least twice as much stuff then they did 40 years ago, go back to making quality long lasting products and reduce factory produced CO2, of course going to nuclear power would negate the CO2 production anyways.
I know, this all about the interest of big oil.
I am not sure where you are getting your data on transport being 14%. Seems low with figures I have seen quoted. For example lifted from the BBC website story today.
'About a third of CO2 emissions in the UK come from transport.' Source BBC.
On the wider point, coal has already gone, and if we want to make s difference we want to reduce emissions in all sectors. With viable options in cars already here or probably more accurately, soon to be here, why wouldn't there be an action in this area?
I do prefer reducing the use of cars whatever they are powered by. It would just make the world a healthier more pleasant place if unnecessary car journeys were eliminated.
How is this supposed to work? Where is the green generating capacity to replace the energy value of petrol & diesel? Where is the grid capacity to distribute it? How long does it take to plan, build and commission just one new nuclear power station?
Its not as much of a problem as you might think. Average UK mileage is around 7000 miles, or about 20 miles per day. Electric car users tend to plug in their cars every night, and therefore on average, they just get topped up by 20 miles worth each day. What we do need is the long awaited "smart grid" in place to allow appliances such as car chargers to connect at 4:00 am while demand is low. (Admittedly, it would be a problem if 30M cars were all trying to get on charge at 6pm when commuters arrive home!) Nuclear plants often have to vent excess steam overnight when demand is low, and wind turbines also produce overnight, so the problem is not total capacity, its about avoiding peaks.
True, 95% of all car journeys are less than 35 miles per day.
We use our EVs alot, over 50000 miles in 2 years.
We charge overnight to give us our 100mile a day capacity
A bigger problem is how people are going to charge their EVs. An awfully big percentage of the country live in houses/streets built before cars were a thing, or an everyday thing at least. Without off road parking charging your vehicle from your home becomes tricky at best.
I live in a mid-terraced house in a pre-WWI urban street and most evenings can't even get parked on the road outside my own house. Without some sort of public infrastructure of sufficient capacity to deal with all the cars down the street an EV would be a complete dead loss for us.
This is definitely a big issue for EVs.
However I don't think an insurmountable one, after all you current ICE vehicle doesn't charge at home - so given that most people now fill their vehicles at the supermarket it wouldn't be a huge leap to think you could have chargers in the car park and charge while you shop.
As battery technology advances the range would probably easily get most people a week to charge at the weekly shop.
My office also has charging point in the carpark so you can charge while at work. Admittedly not many at the moment, but this could become far more common practice by 2035.
Which is fine but, as someone who rarely shops at a large supermarket and generally walks or takes his bike when he does, it seems counterproductive to make me use the car more than I do now, just in order to be able to "fill er up".
I agree the problem is not insurmountable but I don't think copying the system we use for ICE vehicles is going to work unless charging time and vehicle range are a lot closer to what we can get from our current pollution wagons.
“As we set out our plans to hit our ambitious 2050 net zero target across this year, so we shall urge others to join us in pledging net zero emissions."
And as we all know, Boris the Liar never lies. ‘If lies were flies we couldn’t see your face’ wrote one Facebook user, while the prime minister lied to him. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-brexit-peoples-pmqs-f...
If what he said was true, we could all relax and enjoy the prospect of billions every year being spent on cycling.
Cue tory snowflakes happy to defend someone totally unfit to be in any level of government, let alone PM.