Alternative Fuelled Vehicles: Energy Provision

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on not only securing the debate, but proceeding in such a thoughtful way that has allowed us to hold a genuine, wide-ranging debate, rather than just scoring a few points. That was an excellent approach, because when we debate this issue, we have to proceed without scoring points.

We are moving together on what we need to do about vehicles for drivers and passengers in the future: phase out the internal combustion engine by 2030 or 2035—the date does not actually stand in the way of the key points that need to be made about how we get to that point. At the moment, we have 170,000 or 180,000 EVs and 30 million petrol and diesel vehicles; by the early 2030s, that will be reversed. An enormous change will therefore have to take place in our vehicle fleets, and we not only have to make that change, but need to ensure that the infrastructure that goes with it is there before that change takes place, not after, because if we leave it that long, we will not actually get change in the first place.

Hon. Members have been pretty united in talking about the need for turbocharging, or hypercharging, the roll-out of infrastructure for electric vehicles. The grid reckons that it can cope with the changes, but of course the national grid is a national grid. It is not a grid that extends down, through the distributed networks, into localities, and there are serious difficulties in various parts of the country with not only the roll-out of charging points, but the structure of distributed grid systems and how they will deal with those issues.

The need for an overall strategy, which my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington mentioned in his opening remarks, is therefore tremendously important. It needs to be not only a strategy with the right numbers nationally, but one that actually percolates down to ensure that everywhere in the country is properly served by charging points for electric vehicles. We are currently very far from that.

Various statistics can be cited regarding what percentage of the overall charging points we need are already in place. Some commentators say that we have only about 5% of what we will need by the early 2030s. And that percentage is not properly distributed across the country, as I know to my cost. I tried to drive from Southampton to Penzance this summer, in an area of fast-charging deserts, and ended up parking my car overnight in a Tesco’s car park—hoping that it would not be clamped—so that it could be properly charged.

On fast charging, we need to get our skates on urgently, and I do not think the market is going to come to the rescue by getting fast chargers in. There needs to be a plan—Government backed, and based on Government funding—that is rolled out nationally, with an absolute assurance that we will get those charging points out in the right place, with the right levels of charge, for the motorists whom we know are going to come forward.

Hon. Members quite rightly mentioned the fact that we also need to look at other renewable, low-carbon fuels. I particularly agree that electric is not likely to be the fuel of the heavy transport and logistics of the future; that will probably be hydrogen and biomethane. We need to take steps to get hydrogen charging points in as early as possible for that sector of our transport fleet.

My ask of the Minister this afternoon—not in any partisan way—is a forward plan to get fast chargers in place as quickly as possible, well in advance of the changeover, so that we can make that change in the secure knowledge that we can get where we want to go, and how we want to go there, in the best and most environmentally sustainable way possible.