Don’t let the car manufacturers off the hook
David Toke on sticking to electric vehicle timetables and Labour U-turns
It is vital to defend the current timetable given to the car manufacturers for ratcheting up the proportion of new cars that are electric vehicles (EVs). Currently, the car manufacturers are, contrary to the impression you might sometimes get, meeting the benchmarks set by the Government for the EV rollout. Indeed, if EV prices are to fall as much as they should be, then the market must be rapidly expanded.
That’s because now, according to Lucien Mathieu in Transport and Environment magazine, the car manufacturers are (my words) playing a game with us. Essentially, far from losing money over the EV rollout they are making big bucks out of selling expensive EVs to the “high end” of the car market. We need to see more smaller or mid-range EVs available, and that will only come if the car manufacturers are made to make more EVs for a wider market! The market is expanding – this year around 20 percent of all new cars will be pure EVs.
A recent YouGov UK survey indicated that the leading reason why more people are not buying EVs is the upfront cost. But the cost of batteries is plunging and EV ranges are getting much bigger. As a result, prices for new EVs ought to be coming down much more quickly than they are doing. Hence the need to expand the market to stop car manufacturers from playing games.
A better car charging infrastructure will also help, especially in London where home charging is more difficult. But on-street charging is feasible with a strong local authority lead. Of course, there’s an irony here in that people expect that an EV has to be charged at or near home, whereas of course, this expectation does not apply to fossil fuel-powered vehicles!
Labour’s “u-turn” on the clean power target?
Is this a lot of flim-flam about not very much? There was a spate of articles in the media attacking the Government for its recent “adjustment” to the manifesto’s 100 percent-by-2030 clean power commitment. The Government say the target is now 95% of electricity from “clean power” by 2030. I must say, though, as Government U-turns go, its scale was underwhelming. All of the energy experts I know always assumed that the 100% target was nearly, but not quite 100% anyway. It is too soon to easily replace some residual power from natural gas-fired power plants.
More attention should really be focussed on whether the Government is going to issue enough contracts (which guarantee that a set price will be paid for each unit of power generated). An increased supply of contracts will pave the way for renewable energy schemes needed to fulfil the target. Currently, we are heading for about 80 percent of electricity from non-fossil sources by 2030. Ed Miliband ordered the issue of a lot of new contracts for renewable energy projects, but he will have to speed up the process to meet the target.
On the other hand, there are lots of solar farms, offshore windfarms, and onshore windfarms being given planning consent. They are waiting to be given contracts to provide power at a guaranteed price. Recent guaranteed prices have been less than the power price being paid to fossil fuel power stations (mostly gas these days).
There are also plenty of batteries in the planning pipeline as well. These will come in useful to balance out periods in a particular day when there is too much, or too little wind or solar power generation compared to demand. Indeed, the number of batteries in the planning pipeline is astonishing – more than the capacity of all the wind farms and solar farms currently operating! What is also needed, though, is a quicker way to get them all connected to the grid.
There’s a boost for jobs in the pipeline from renewable energy. That’s because from now on companies that make successful bids for offshore windfarms will have to promise, as part of the contract, to source most of their supply chain from the UK. This should improve the past situation where often the bulk of the value of the projects was sourced from abroad.