UW Manifesto: Mapping the route for EV rollout

Utility Week’s Election 2019 Manifesto urges the next government to commit to a framework for rolling out an Electric Vehicle charging infrastructure. David Blackman looks at the stances of the main parties and the challenges the winner of Thursday’s election will face to set out an EV road map.

Whoever wins this week’s general election, it looks likely that momentum on the transition to electrification of road transport will accelerate during the next parliament.

But bringing forward the infrastructure for facilitating this will require a robust framework for the EV market, one of the asks in Utility Week’s recently published Election 2019 Manifesto.

Labour currently has the most comprehensive plan for supporting the EV rollout.

The party’s manifesto states that it will aim to phase out the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030 – ten years ahead of the government’s existing target.

Labour has pledged to ensure that the UK is not left behind in the ultra-low emission vehicles race by investing in three new gigafactories for manufacturing batteries.

It promises to also put money into four plants for reprocessing the metals, involved in the battery manufacturing process, that will run out rapidly unless they can be recycled.

Chaitanya Kumar, senior policy adviser at Green Alliance, says that only Labour’s manifesto shows a real grasp of the scale of supply chain issues that the transition to an electrified road fleet will involve.

The manifesto has also pledged to accelerate the transition of the public sector car and bus fleets to zero-emissions vehicles.

On top of these pledges, Labour announced at its recent annual party conference promises to invest £3.6 billion in EV charging infrastructure as well as an offer to underwrite £60 billion’s worth of interest free loans to help 2.5 million low-income earners to switch to lower emission alternative vehicles.

Kumar says many of the parties’ manifesto promises on EVs beg questions.

The chief one relating to Labour’s plan is whether the party sees a continuing role for the private sector in the roll out of EV charging infrastructure, which is currently being led by motorway service station operators and supermarkets.

The Lib Dems have set an even stiffer target on EVs than Labour by stating that “every new car and small van sold” must be electric by 2030.

They have pledged to extend Ultra-Low Emission Zones beyond London to ten more English towns and cities and committed £2 billion to ensure that all taxis and new buses running in urban areas will be ultra-low or zero-emission vehicles by 2025.

These steps underpin a Liberal Democrat ambition for a new Clean Air Act that would enshrine the legal right to unpolluted air.

But perhaps most significantly, given their current poll lead, the Conservatives have shifted ground on the EV rollout.

The party’s manifesto states that a future Conservative government would review the 2040 cut-off date for phasing out sales of both non-hybrid and electric cars and vans.

In addition, they have specified that £600 million will be allocated to supporting the roll out of EV charging infrastructure with the aim of ensuring that no household will be located more than 30 miles from a charging point.

Simon Skillings, a senior associate at energy thinktank E3G, says EVs are just one of the issues that need to be considered as part of a cohesive review of the power and heat systems.

“We need a way of working out what the best whole system investments are going to be across the heat and power system. Instead of being looked at individually, they need to be co-ordinated.”

And while 30 miles is a nice round number, Kumar is yet to see an explanation for why this figure was chosen.

Given that battery life is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, there is a risk that much charging infrastructure will become “stranded assets”, he warns.

“We don’t want to create a massive network of EV chargers and then realise they are not being used.”