Net zero: burying the news
By Richard North - December 26, 2024
Sneaked out on Christmas Eve, in a way that could only ensure minimum publicity, was a government press release heralding a consultation document headed: “Phasing out sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 and supporting the ZEV transition”.
Nevertheless, some newspapers managed to cover it, the Telegraph headlining one aspect of the document, telling us that: “Best-selling hybrids to be banned from 2030 under net zero crackdown”, with the sub-head adding: “Strict limit on CO2 emissions would mean popular models can no longer be sold”.
The BBC also managed some coverage, under the fairly neutral headline: “Car industry consulted over 2030 petrol and diesel ban”, the piece authors telling us that the UK motor industry is being consulted over how the phasing-out of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 will work.
We are reminded that the ban on sales of these vehicles had been extended to 2035 under the previous Conservative government, but the Labour government has committed to restoring the original 2030 deadline in its election manifesto. This leaves transport secretary Heidi Alexander seeking views from automotive and charging experts which she hopes will “restore clarity” on implementing the ban.
With what appears to be such a relatively anodyne document (the switch to 2030 was hardly unexpected), one wonders what the government is so keen to hide that it feels the need to slip the document out just prior to the prolonged Christmas break which will not have some people back until 6 January.
Looking through the 49-page document – which is not something I would recommend for anyone keen to retain their sanity – there is no obvious sign of any great secret that the government wishes to bury, although tighter emission rules on hybrids – excluding many so-called “mild” hybrids from the new car market after 2030 will come as a surprise to some car-builders.
I can only imagine that the government is keen to avoid another raft of adverse publicity on its failing electric car programme, vehicles which it now insists on calling “zero emission vehicles” (ZEV), despite the fact that “whole life” emissions – which include manufacture – can be greater than conventional ICE vehicles for a considerable number of years, especially if they are powered by electricity generated from fossil fuels as opposed to renewables – themselves not exactly emission-free.
With that, where I could see a reluctance to allow detailed scrutiny is in the ministerial foreword to the document, signed jointly by Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, Ed Miliband, energy and net-zero secretary, and Jonathan Reynolds, business and trade secretary.
In particular, one passage leaps from the page which seems to transcend the normal, jargon-ridden hyperbole that one normally finds in official documents to a level of propaganda that would have had Goebbels blushing, had he been on the team. It reads:
British consumers are already revealing their preferences: in 2024 roughly one in every five new cars purchased in the UK will be electric. Five years ago the equivalent figure was less than one in every fifty. The British people are embracing electric vehicles because they are cheaper (consumers can save hundreds of pounds a year and they have the potential to be run from as little as 2 pence a mile), they are great to drive, and simpler to maintain.
The distortions here are, to put it bluntly, are staggering. If this passage represents the settled belief of the ministerial trio that put their names to it, then they are separated from reality by a dangerously wide gulf. If it does not represent their belief, then they are lying on an epic scale.
In true Goebbels style, however, the lies are subtle, pinned on a veneer of fact. It is true to state, for instance, that in 2024 roughly one in every five new cars purchased in the UK will be electric. According to SMMT estimates, the expected number of new car sales in the UK for the year is between 1.968 million and 1.97 million, of which 22 percent were expected to be ZEVs.
That estimate, it seems, stems from figures produced around last August and September, with the August period producing a report from Reuters headed: “UK car industry body cuts 2024 sales forecast on weak EV demand”.
This had the year-end figure revised downwards from 1.98 million units, to 1.97, the drop attributed entirely to “weak demand” for ZEVs, the market share dropping to 18.5 percent from the 19.8 forecast earlier in the year.
This evidently has the car industry pushing the panic buttons, the result of which was recorded by the SMMT in October, which has headlining its monthly report: “Unprecedented EV discounting shores up September new car market”.
Driven by what were termed “massive manufacturer discounting”, ZEV registrations were driven to a record 56,387 in September, increasing the market share to 17.8 percent, although the 18.5 percent forecast by year end was considered firm. But that was still below the 22 percent ZEV mandate for the year.
Tucked into the SMMT release, though, was an ominous note: the SMMT and major vehicle manufacturers had written to the chancellor calling for urgent consumer support as growth in private buyer demand for diesel had outstripped ZEV sales, even in this record month.
This then was perpetuating the pattern established earlier in the year where the sales growth in ZEVs was confined to fleet buyers, and business users who benefitted from tax concessions. Private sales were actually declining.
Although we’re coming up to the year end, it is still too soon for the annual figures but in early December, miraculously, up popped a release from a climate think-tank, the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), that asserted that the UK car industry was on course to hit the ZEV mandate’s sales targets of 22 percent target for 2024.
Strangely, that release is now offline (I had to go to Wayback Machine to see it), but it seems that that source, and that source alone, is supporting the ministerial claim that one-in-five new cars is a ZEV.
However, nothing is ever quite what it seems. Some of that mandate target is achieved not by selling ZEVs, but from credits earned from selling low-CO2 emissions petrol and diesel vehicles. This, we are told, is likely to be over 3 percent of the total.
Then there are other tricks which can be used to avoid the swingeing fines imposed for not meeting mandate target, of £15,000 per car short of the threshold. Some of the ZEV “sales”, are in fact, not sales as such, but pre-registrations, with car dealers registering cars in anticipation of future sales, which will not be completed until next year.
On the other hand, we are also seeing car makers withholding deliveries of new petrol and diesel models until January, in order to massage the ZEV market share.
Yet, to remind ourselves, we have the ministerial trio telling us that “British consumers are already revealing their preferences: in 2024 roughly one in every five new cars purchased in the UK will be electric”. I suppose, at a pinch, that could be true. British consumers are revealing their preferences, but it isn’t for ZEVs.
Furthermore, the market is being shaped in other ways. While the number of registered vehicles on the road has
increased slightly to 41.7 million (up one percent on the previous year), in 2014, 2,476,435 new cars were sold.
Yet, of the current fleet, only a million are ZEVs. Currently, the new total car sales figure is expected to be 1.97 million – with more new ICE vehicles being bought than there are ZEVs in total.
As I reported in November, private owners are buying fewer new cars and holding onto their cars longer, with the average age of the national fleet having increased by 42 percent in 20 years, to just over 10 years.
Some suspect that we will end up like Cuba or Malta, endlessly repairing and refurbishing vintage cars, keeping them on the road rather than buying expensive and unreliable ZEVs.
Small wonder, therefore, that the government was keen to sneak out its propaganda, minimising the opportunities for challenge. When the mandate increases to 28 percent next year, we will probably see their fantasy edifice start to crumble. This way, they buy a little time before they become totally discredited by events.
