Rishi Sunak is considering weakening some of the government’s key green commitments in a major policy shift.
It could include delaying a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars and phasing out gas boilers, multiple sources have told the BBC.
The PM is preparing to set out the changes in a speech in the coming days.
There is no suggestion that Mr Sunak is considering abandoning the legal commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
But he is expected to declare that other countries need to bear more of the burden of dealing with climate change.
The conservative party do a bloody awful job of conserving things don’t they.
I’m actually quite pleased with this because it seemed like Starmer was weakening on environmental issues, especially after the whole Ulez business. Hopefully if the PM is getting flak for diluting his policies on it Starmer will stick to his guns for once
You know the media and therefore the general public will conviniently ignore that though and continue with this narrative that starmer makes labour a worse choice than the tories
Labour could come out with a policy where they eat babies and they would still be a better choice than the Tories.
Seeing another BBC article on it, the following caught my eye.
But a drivers campaign group said it was “delighted” by a potential delay.
Fair Fuel UK said the costs of policy would outweigh the benefits and it was “always doomed to be dropped”.
I wonder who Fair Fuel UK are? Sounds like a good honest grassroots drivers group worried about what’s going to happen to petrol!
Oh, it’s run by somebody called Howard Cox. I wonder who he is…
Oh, he’s a Reform UK swivel eyed loon.
What is it with the BBC and going to mentalist Kipper types for their opinions?
I mean…with an opinion as fucking stupid as that, it’s no wonder he’s the only one the Beeb could find to support it.
I hope anyway…
What an absolute twunt.
This makes me unreasonably annoyed. If Labour follows anywhere near this path I’m voting Green
Keep in mind that every tonne of carbon not emitted is better than one emitted, and even Labour’s less than desirable policies are better than the Tories. While right now it will still be too much to stay under 1.5, we will emit less with a Labour government. That is why priority 1 has to be to get the Tories out.
If you can vote green and the tory won’t win the seat, absolutely go for it, the stronger the message that is sent the better. But if you can’t, vote for whoever is best placed to get/keep the tory out.
Don’t think EV bit changes much, the market is going to kill ICE anyway.
The transition won’t happen quickly enough without it, and there still needs to be some hard incentives to get infrastructure like charging networks up.
Delaying or stopping the ban will cost more time we can ill afford.
I don’t think the future ICE ban is what is driving EV sales. It’s that they are cheap to run and have good performance. And that green feeling. The upfront cost is going down and the range is going up.
The infrastructure is going up fairly fast. Not sure it can go up much faster because of the grid having to change to. Ideally though, you charge at home anyway. I charge away from home only like 5% of the time.
At the moment it is people with their own home and a driveway. The terrace street/on street parking and the renter’s will struggle to charge at home overnight and charging centers lack both capacity and cheapness and also reliability.
In a recent drive from Cambridge to Reading (so major south east, not even remote in any way. Nearly ran out of charge as two supermarkets were broken and another two service stations were full with people queuing with estimate of 40-60min to start charging plus the 20min charge on that.
Yer, the public changing network is always great. It is best if you can avoid it.
I can only speak for myself but the upcoming ICE ban was a factor in my recent EV purchase. I intend to keep my car for a long time so as we move closer to the ban more and more cars will be EVs so I didn’t want to be left behind.
The other aspects you mentioned were also factors. Particularly after a test drive and feeling the acceleration and quietness of the car.
If the EV sales keep increasing as they have been, the ICE infrastructure will start to shrink and that will increase ICE costs further. There will be economic feedback loops at tipping points.
I think one tipping point may be mechanics. We need to start trainimg mechanics on ev more and then ice will be more. Even things like oil changing facility will become expensive
Then is a general question of vendor lockin with maintenance. This was an issue before EVs. We need more right to repair laws to prevent this shit.
Training for EVs will come with the market, if we can avoid this vendor lockin rubbish.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It could include delaying a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars and phasing out gas boilers, multiple sources have told the BBC.
According to multiple sources briefed on Downing Street’s thinking, Mr Sunak would use the speech to hail the UK as a world leader on net zero.
Some specifics of the speech are still thought to be under discussion, but as it stands it could include as many as seven core policy changes or commitments, documents seen by the BBC suggest.
First, the government would push the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars - currently set to come into force in 2030 - back to 2035.
In addition, Britons will be told that there will be no new taxes to discourage flying; no government policies to change people’s diets; and no measures to encourage carpooling.
The event convenes specialists in climate finance, and aims to help developing economies make adjustments to cut emissions.
The original article contains 476 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
To TL;DR the TL;DR: we did the bare minimum, so now it’s not our problem!
