The Net Zero Hypocrisy: Motorists.

In Great Britain, you can own a perfectly useable ten-year-old car, maintain it meticulously, drive it modestly and keep it away from your local scrappys’: and still be treated as an environmental criminal. Meanwhile, any Tom, Dick or Harry, can purchase a brand new two-tonne electric SUV, filled with lithium, nickel, steel, aluminium, plastic, half of which being mined potentially by a ten-year-old, and be congratulated for saving the planet.

This is indeed the strange logic of net zero.

To make matters clear, there is no doubt that transport emissions matter. Domestic transport accounted for 29% of the United Kingdom’s greenhouse gas emissions: making it the largest emitting sector. Although it being apparent that cleaner transport is necessary, the debate suffers from one enormous blind spot:

Government legislation only refers to what comes out of the exhaust, and nothing about what it takes to manufacture a vehicle in the first place.

Electric vehicles are often described as “zero emission”, that could not be further from the truth. Electric vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions which is evidently very different from the vehicle not emitting any emission from its direct manufacture and the sourcing of the many resources that is involved in the production of the car.

An electric vehicle has to be mined, manufactured, shipped, charged, repaired and eventually recycled.

The International Labour Organization has documented child-labour risks in cobalt and coltan materials used in rechargeable battery supply chains, including those connected to electric vehicles. 

Artisanal cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photograph: International Institute for Environment and Development, licensed under CC BY 2.5. Image cropped from the original.

It could be wise for one to question whether the greenest car is the newest car, or whether it could be one that already exists.

Especially unfair for the population who rely on their older second-hand motors, it should be common sense to lawmakers that these households do not drive a ten year old diesel because they hate the planet, but because it is paid for and reliable. The government should be aware that a builder, hotel worker, student, delivery driver or a parent may be on a tight budget and cannot magic £35,000 for an electric vehicle, install a home charger and start lecturing everyone else about sustainability.

British consumers were in fact fooled into buying diesel and then penalised later. This was due to the government implementing a tax system rewarding lower CO₂ figures and also cars registered between March 2001 and March 2017 had vehicle tax based on fuel type and CO₂ emissions. In addition, in 2001 a diesel fuel duty cut encouraged motorists to move from petrol to diesel. British households, in the millions, bought diesel hatchbacks, saloons and family cars. HMRC statistics show diesel cars made up 80% of company cars up to 2017, before falling sharply afterwards.

Suddenly, diesel was not the sensible low CO₂ option; it was dirty toxic and shameful. From April 2018, new diesel cars that failed to meet the RDE2 emissions standard faced a higher first year vehicle excise duty band. Not to mention the introduction of Sadiq Khan's ULEZ, further penalising owners of older diesels, by charging those who failed to meet the Euro 6 emissions standard. HMRC statistics show diesel cars made up 80% of company cars up to 2017, before falling sharply afterwards.

It is difficult to grasp that a government, who is meant to serve the interests of the people, encouraged ordinary drivers to purchase diesel vehicles by one version of environmental policy, then punished when the policy fashion changed.

Suddenly, diesel was not the sensible low CO₂ option; it was dirty toxic and shameful. From April 2018, new diesel cars that failed to meet the RDE2 emissions standard faced a higher first year vehicle excise duty band. Not to mention the introduction of Sadiq Khan's ULEZ, further penalising owners of older diesels, by charging those who failed to meet the Euro 6 emissions standard. HMRC statistics show diesel cars made up 80% of company cars up to 2017, before falling sharply afterwards.

It is difficult to grasp that a government, who is meant to serve the interests of the people, encouraged ordinary drivers to purchase diesel vehicles by one version of environmental policy, then punished when the policy fashion changed. HMRC statistics show diesel cars made up 80% of company cars up to 2017, before falling sharply afterwards.

The same risk now exists with electric cars; the UK government has proposed an electric vehicle mileage duty from April 2028. Potentially presented as fairness, because Electric vehicle drivers do not pay fuel duty the same way as petrol and diesel drivers do, fully electric vehicles will be charged 3p per mile and plug-in hybrids 1.5p per mile.

Sustainabuy was founded on the mission to innovate products that have a measurable environmental benefit and not to reduce sustainability into slogans or expensive products to advertise our so called ‘virtue’. A product, or vehicle for this instance, is only genuinely sustainable when it produces a measurable environmental benefit and does not of course create more waste than it prevents. Sustainabuy supports genuine reductions in waste, water use, energy consumption and household costs through proven data driven research.

Moving on, the diesel lesson should have taught us something. Yesterdays “green choice” could quite easily become tomorrow’s villain when a politician decides to change the rules. Pay-per-mile schemes may begin as innocent environmental policy, but once we allow every journey to be tracked and taxed, they create the framework for permanent control over how the ordinary travel. Partner this with the recently proposed Digital ID framework, motorists could be considered stupid not to question where it ends.