Centrica: Banning diesel and petrol cars from 2030 would ‘send a signal’

Centrica has thrown its weight behind bringing forward the planned ban on sales of new internal combustion engine cars and vans to 2030.

The government is currently consulting on phasing out the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles from at the latest 2035, five years earlier than the original target proposed in its Road to Zero consultation paper in 2018.

But giving evidence to the Net Zero All Party Parliamentary Group this week, Centrica senior public affairs manager Natasha Mahmoudian said the supplier wanted the ban to come into force more rapidly.

“We believe it should be 2030. This will send a signal to manufacturers that the UK is a relevant marketplace,” she said, explaining that early adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) could help to spark automotive manufacturers’ interest in the UK’s relatively small right hand drive market.

“Accelerating the transition to EVs is the cornerstone to meeting net zero.”

Mahmoudian said that a 2030 phase-out date, which SSE also called for last week, would give consumers confidence about switching over to EVs.

She said that the government should be using the delayed energy white paper and upcoming decarbonising transport plan to put in place a more flexible electricity market by 2023 but that in the meantime it should maintain support for charging infrastructure and EV purchases.

Alan Whitehead, Labour’s shadow energy minister, told the meeting that he was not “desperately worried” about the grid becoming overloaded due to the increased demand from EVs.

He estimated that an additional 10-12 per cent more generation capacity would be required to cater for widespread deployment of EVs, provided that local grids could be managed smartly.

Whitehead said a bigger cause for concern was the extra demand for electricity that could be created by decarbonisation of heat.

Graeme Cooper, director for EVs at National Grid, said synergies between the location of the trunk road and grid networks could help to facilitate the roll out of rapid charging points at motorway service areas.

He said that 61 per cent of the UK’s motorway network ran side by side with pylons, increasing the scope for rapid charging facilities to piggy-back onto the core grid.

But Cooper said that 80 to 90 per cent of EV charging would be likely to happen at home or in the workplace.

In a separate meeting on decarbonised transport, held yesterday (3 June) by the Energy and Climate Information Unit, West Midlands elected mayor Andy Street urged the government to push ahead with its plans to subsidise the construction of the UK’s first EV battery so called “giga-factory”.

Noting that batteries will make up about 40 per cent of the car industry value chain in the future, the Conservative mayor said “We have to ‘own’ that if we are to have a successful auto industry in the future.

“Britain has to be in the leading position in this, which is going to be one of the big technology areas.”