Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 20th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Worthington (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am pleased to be taking part in today’s debate. I will begin by declaring my interests. I have taken a role in the international NGO Environmental Defense Fund, heading up its European affiliate. One of our aims is to help to speed the transition to a net zero greenhouse gas emissions economy. My other interest is that I drive a plug-in electric vehicle and know first-hand the joys and frustrations of this mode of transport. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I lease my vehicle, which is one way around the problem of fearing that the next generation will always be better than the one you have. In my comments today I shall focus on two main issues relating to the part of the Bill dealing with electric vehicles: the need to make smart-charging infrastructure mandatory now, and the need for firmer policy to drive investment throughout the charging and EV supply chain in Great Britain.

In my limited experience in the House I have often judged the importance of a Bill by the size of its impact assessment, and unfortunately this Bill gives itself away by the size and brevity of its impact assessment. Clearly more could be done using this parliamentary opportunity. As it stands, the Bill is something of a missed opportunity, and I hope that during our scrutiny we can work with the Government to turn it into a piece of legislation to truly put the UK at the forefront of the revolution in mobility that we are witnessing on a global scale.

The UK is both a large consumer and manufacturer of vehicles. In 2016, 3.3 million new cars were registered here, bringing the total number of registered vehicles in the UK to 37.3 million. The latest manufacturing figures in the UK show that 1.7 million cars rolled off the production line and 2.7 million engines were manufactured here. The vast majority of all cars made and sold are conventional cars powered by internal combustion engines. A recent study estimates that the total number of electric vehicles on the road today across the entire globe is a mere 3 million—fewer than all the new vehicles registered here in one year. As the noble Lord, Lord Birt, mentioned, the total number of EVs on the road today in the UK is around 130,000—just 0.3% of the total number of licensed vehicles.

It is clear that the demand for cleaner vehicles is increasing, thanks to heightened awareness about the impact of transport on the quality of our air and on climate change; the reducing costs of alternative designs; the increasing ranges; and the wider availability of charging infrastructure. However, there are still a number of frustrations that early adopters have to endure, and new legislation to address them is most welcome. Most users will find charging at home the most convenient option. However, the availability of public charging infrastructure is a key factor in allowing extended journeys and helping those in households without off-street parking to enjoy the benefits of electric vehicles.

There are just under 4,000 public charging points in the UK, but the network is poorly co-ordinated and access is very patchy. There is an urgent need for a standardisation of charging regimes. Vehicles are designed for mobility, yet in my experience it is common to travel to new parts of the country only to find that access to the charging infrastructure requires membership of a regional subscription-based club. There is currently no single national database of all publicly accessible charging points, and to access the widest range of points requires the installation of a number of different applications and the cross-checking of a variety of different data sources—a frustrating and time-consuming occupation. I hope that the Bill will address this.

Another aspect of EVs that must be addressed to facilitate their widespread uptake is the need for charging to be done in a smart way, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, mentioned. This means providing the right technology and incentives to enable vehicles to be charged at times of day when power is abundant, which usually correspond with when it is cleanest and cheapest. It must be made mandatory for all the charging infrastructure installed to be connected to the internet and capable of receiving and using a data signal about the state of the grid, both in real time and projected forward.

I am delighted that the Environmental Defense Fund has collaborated with the national grid and WWF and catalysed the publication of a live data feed that already provides this data for the UK via an open source API. I am even more delighted that information about the carbon intensity of power is increasingly available on a European and international scale, thanks to the incredible talent behind electricitymap.org. These data feeds clearly illustrate that all power is not created equally: there are times of the day and year when it is much cleaner, thanks to the mix of generating sources on the system. In order for electricity to be used sustainably for transport, it is imperative that we look at the issue holistically, ensuring that the extra load on the electricity grid is timed to take advantage of cleaner sources of power. That will help us avoid the need for costly and dirty back-up sources of power when demand is high. The technology to do all this already exists; the Bill does not need to rely on secondary legislation to make it the norm. We can and should do it now in the Bill.

There are many other issues which we will surely touch on in Committee, including enabling consumers to add the cost of charging their car to their utility bills regardless of where they consume the power, and the need to ensure that planning regulations and building codes properly integrate electricity charging infrastructure into all new developments of all types and scales—something to which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, alluded.

I turn to my second point about zero-emission vehicles: the need for firmer policy to guide investment in the necessary infrastructure and supply chains. In the industrial strategy, the Secretary of State, Greg Clarke, stated:

“Britain is extraordinarily well-placed to benefit from”,


a,

“new industrial revolution. We are an open, enterprising economy, built on invention, innovation and competition. Our universities and research institutions are among the best in the world. We have a deserved reputation for being a dependable and confident place to do business, with high standards, respected institutions, and the reliable rule of law”.

All that is true, in particular the last point about our use of the rule of law in driving change.

However, we are the home of the Industrial Revolution, and we still get about 70% to 80% of our primary energy from fossil fuels. We are making progress towards decarbonisation but there is still a long way to go. The Government’s clean growth strategy still projects that we are not on track to meet our fourth and fifth carbon budgets in the next decade, and the chief culprit for that is transport emissions. On air quality, too, we are failing to meet WHO and EU standards. Our cities are making us sick and we are failing to move sufficiently quickly to bring down emissions of pollutants. Clearly, more needs to be done and can be done. Today we start debating a potentially very important Bill, using scarce public resources and parliamentary time—but we are merely discussing enabling legislation. Nothing in the Bill gives the much-needed policy certainty that investors look to before committing their capital.

If we had tried to build a renewable power sector on the basis of providing some enabling powers about grid infrastructure standards, we would not now be home to a world-leading offshore wind industry and would certainly not be building new nuclear power stations. We do not have a CCS industry in the UK yet, precisely because of the absence of a policy framework. For too long we have relied on increases in renewable energy across electricity, heat and transport. This has failed, particularly in the transport sector, where emissions remain stubbornly high and rising.

Other countries and states have already learned this lesson and taken action. China most recently took action to boost the market for zero-emission vehicles by introducing a mandate that 10% of all vehicles sold in China must be electric or equivalent by 2019, rising to 12% in 2020. This mandate is based on a similar policy introduced many years ago in California and since adopted in nine other US states. More recently, Quebec has followed suit. In Europe, there were moves to introduce a similar policy as the reality of China’s enormous policy shift started to set in and the industry tried quickly to adapt, but the Commission’s proposals were watered down. In the UK we can take up the baton and move to match or even exceed the international leaders in policy-making. That is, after all, one of the things we are good at.

A market-based mandate for zero-emission vehicles would harness the efficiency of the private sector, ensure that support for electric vehicles and their equivalents did not rely on the public purse and kick-start investment that shows some signs of having stalled. The SMMT reports that last year UK car production volumes took a dip, and cited policy uncertainty as one of the reasons. Brexit surely plays a part in this, but so too must the announcement by the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, that we plan to ban the internal combustion engine in 2040. That is too far away to affect investment decisions in a positive way but is certainly close enough to be disconcerting to all those invested in the internal combustion engine supply chain today.

As we found in designing the Climate Change Act, long-term targets are useful only if they are coupled with clear, unambiguous policy frameworks in the near term. I look forward to the Government publishing the Road to Zero strategy, but I must ask the Minister whether she thinks it is credible or proper that we should be debating legislation ahead of its publication. Surely we should make a strategy and then legislate with a bold vision—the kind of bold vision that the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Birt, referred to our needing.

The Committee on Climate Change has made it clear that the Government need to do more to plug the gap in our carbon budgets. We have failed to adequately address air quality, which is a blight on our urban life. We have all the necessary reasons to act with more conviction than the Bill sets out. I very much look forward to hearing more from the Minister, who I am sure is, like the Government, committed to putting the UK at the forefront of the race towards the modern mobility that we all deserve. I hope that as the Bill passes through our Chamber we will succeed in making the case that it can and must be strengthened.