All new homes, offices and street lights are to be fitted with electric car charging points, under new government plans aimed at tackling pollution and climate change.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling announced the proposals today as part of the Road to Zero strategy to cut car emissions across the UK.
Grayling said: “The coming decades are going to be transformative for our motor industry, our national infrastructure and the way we travel. We expect to see more change in the transport sector over the next ten years than we have in the previous century.”
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According to The Daily Telegraph, the transport chief believes the lack of EV charging points is the main obstacle standing in the way of an “electric car revolution”. There are currently around 13,000 public charging points in the UK.
To encourage more businesses to install EV hubs, Grayling intents to launch a Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund of up to £440m, the newspaper says.
He also confirmed that plans to halt petrol and diesel car sales from 2040 will remain unchanged - news that will disappoint campaigners who had been calling for the the combustion-engined vehicle ban to be brought forward to 2030.
Ahead of the unveiling of the new strategy, Grayling said the measures would mean the UK has “one of the most comprehensive support packages for zero-emission vehicles in the world”.
“The prize is not just a cleaner and healthier environment but a UK economy fit for the future, and the chance to win a substantial slice of a market estimated to be worth up to £7.6trn by 2050,” he said.
Will the plans silence critics?
Potentially, but the measures will need to come into effect quickly. The Government has come under fire from environmental campaigners for its failure to respond sooner to rising carbon emissions.
Countries and cities including Germany and Paris are planning to ban petrol and diesel-powered cars by 2030, a decade before the UK’s proposed halt on combustion-engined car sales comes into effect.
Greenpeace UK clean air campaigner Paul Morozzo told The Independent that “ministers keep saying they want Britain to be a leader in electric cars, yet they’ve set a phase-out date for petrol and diesel that’s a decade behind other countries”.
“Ministers need to shift up a gear, or this Road to Zero will start looking like a road to nowhere,” he added.
Meanwhile, Edmund King, head of the AA motoring association, said that the measures are “a step in the right direction” but that “the electric revolution needs more than just a point at every home”.
King is calling for incentives for supermarkets and petrol stations to install charging points, to “convince drivers that they won’t be left stranded at the roadside”.
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