Change of strategy. At the end of 2020, the then British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announced that the United Kingdom would ban the sale of passenger cars and vans with diesel and gasoline engines from 2030, that is, five years before the date established by the European Union. . However, the current government, led by Rishi Sunak, has decided to back down and will allow its commercialization until 2035.
According to the leader of the conservative party, the United Kingdom “is far ahead of any other country” in the transformation towards a green economy, but doing so too quickly could make us “lose the consensus of citizens”: “is it fair that we ask to the British to make greater sacrifices than the rest?” said Sunak.
Although this delay may convey a lack of commitment to climate objectives, the prime minister has reaffirmed that the goal remains to achieve CO2 neutrality by 2050. The measure aims to give citizens time to make a smoother transition towards electromobility: “We want them to be the ones to make the decision to change without impositions from the Government.” Furthermore, it should be noted that the ban only affects the sale of new internal combustion vehicles; Second-hand ones can continue to be sold.
The announcement has not been well received by some sectors, such as some automobile manufacturers. The director of Ford UK, Lisa Brankin, has said that her company has invested 430 million pounds (about 496 million euros at the current exchange rate) to produce electric cars in the United Kingdom. “We need three things from the British government: ambition, commitment and consistency” and the decision made affects all of them, she said.
According to the Reuters news agency, Kia sources wanted to highlight that “this disrupts complex supply chain negotiations and product planning, while potentially contributing to consumer and industry confusion.” For their part, Volkswagen points out that there is an urgent need to “have a clear and reliable regulatory framework that creates certainty in the market and consumer confidence, including binding objectives for the deployment of infrastructure.”
The registration data for electric passenger cars in the United Kingdom shows a growth in sales of this type of vehicle, despite the fact that the government does not offer incentives or aid for their acquisition – in Spain we have the Moves III Plan. The market share reaches 16%, a considerable percentage favored by fleet and company registrations, which do have tax benefits. According to information provided by ACEA, between January 1 and August 31 of this year, a total of 193,218 new electric cars have been registered, which represents an increase of 40% compared to the same period of the previous year.
In Europe, new internal combustion cars are doomed to disappear from 2035, unless they run on emissions-neutral synthetic fuels. We are talking about a fuel that is not natural, that is, it is not extracted from the oil well, but is obtained from a chemical transformation process, which is done industrially with two raw materials: water and CO2. By transforming carbon dioxide into fuel, although it is later re-emitted into the atmosphere, the result will be a zero balance, because no more CO2 will be expelled than there was previously.
