In Rishi Sunak’s recent speech he is clearly still committed to “net zero” by 2050 to tackle climate change, even though the UK cutting carbon emissions is unlikely to have any significant impact on the worldwide figures. It’s a pointless gesture which will mean we incur enormous costs which the public has not been informed about and to which they have certainly not consented.
New sales of oil/petrol powered vehicles were to be banned from 2030, ahead of most other countries, when electric vehicles are still more expensive, don’t hold their resale values and are inflexible in use.
Rishi’s speech is seen as a vote winner but it’s in essence a more pragmatic approach to reducing carbon emissions and relieving the burden on certain households.
It’s certainly worth reading his speech in full (link below) which was only reported in simplistic sound bites in the national media. He concludes by saying: “We are going to change the way our politics works. We are going to make different decisions. We won’t take the easy way out. There will be resistance, and we will meet it”. That surely means he is going to face down the idealists who don’t live in the real world.
But will Rishi manage to take the Conservative Party and Civil Service with him? That is the key question the answer to which we will see in due course. That’s assuming the Labour Party don’t win the next election and reverse the direction of travel.
My view is that this speech is well argued and veers well from extremes. But he will have difficulty convincing the environmental fanatics who have not been listening to reason for some time.
But the postponement of the IC sales deadline is not as simple as it appears. There will be limits on the number of IC vehicles that car manufacturers can sell. The rules will require 22pc of cars sold by manufacturers to be electric from next year. By 2030, the quota will gradually rise to 80pc.
How will manufacturers meet the targets? No doubt by manipulating the price of vehicles. They can make IC vehicles so expensive that few people will want to buy them. So if you think that you will be able to continue to buy new diesel/petrol cars you need to think again, unless you are very wealthy.
Rishi Sunak speech in full: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-net-zero-20-september-2023
Telegraph article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/09/21/four-in-five-cars-sold-electric-2030-petrol-ban-delay/
Roger Lawson
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London
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