Mayor of London backs diesel car scrappage scheme; London ranked 9th best world city in new air quality study
10 September 2014
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has renewed calls for scrapping the most polluting diesel cars and giving drivers cash incentives to switch to cleaner vehicles as part of the evidence he gave to the Environmental Audit Committee today.
The Mayor is supporting proposals for the UK Government to help motorists by offering between a £1,000 and £2,000 (US$1,614 to US$3,228) grant per vehicle for the most polluting diesels which are more than 12 months old. The Mayor called this a brilliant opportunity to support the British car industry and promote the early uptake of ultra low emission vehicles.
As reported in The Guardian, the Mayor told the Committee that:
You could do a diesel scrappage scheme that would stimulate the market for cleaner vehicles. I think we’re saying it should be £1-2,000 for people who have been seduced into buying a diesel vehicle and I feel very sorry for them. Everyone should be very clear this has been a massive failure of policy, millions were told they were doing the right thing, the environmentally-friendly thing, by buying a diesel. They now feel very hacked off now they’re told they are more polluting.
Johnson said the scheme would cost around £300 million (US$484 million) in total.
Charging more-polluting diesel cars is a key part of the Mayor’s proposals for an Ultra Low Emission Zone, which will be introduced in central London from 2020 (subject to consultation).
However, the Mayor believes that it is only fair that Government provides support to people who have bought these vehicles in good faith to switch to cleaner alternatives.
The Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) is set to take London two-thirds of the way to compliance with EU limit values for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and will encourage all vehicles in central London to be ultra low or zero emission from 2020. It is key part of his newly published Transport Emission Road Map which sets out how London could meet EU legal limits by 2020—more than ten years ahead of the current Government projections for compliance—as long as the European Commission and Government commit to match the Mayor’s policies.
The Transport Emission Road Map calls on Government to amend fiscal incentives, launch a national vehicle scrappage scheme and support more sustainable modes of travel. It also sets out proposals for Low Emission Neighborhoods where new technology will be used to switch zero-emission capable buses and taxis into their zero-emission electric mode, reducing emissions in some of the most polluted parts of London where there are large numbers of people exposed. There are also proposals to tighten the standards for the London-wide Low Emission Zone from 2025.
The Mayor also welcomed a new comprehensive study comparing air quality in 36 world and European cities based on pollutants such as particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). The study commissioned by the Mayor, undertaken by leading consultancy AMEC and peer-reviewed by prominent air quality experts and academics, developed three indices which ranked cities based on citywide emissions, transport-focused emissions and using a special health-weighted index.
London ranked 9th on the health impacts index, 15th on the citywide index and 17th on the traffic focused index.
Vancouver is rated the city with the best air quality and Cairo or Mumbai is rated the worst. The EU cities with the best air quality using all three indices is Stockholm.
LOL, there is a couple of bloggers in autobloggreen.com that said to me last month that diesel is cleaner than gasoline, LOL. Some car manufacturers do some pr for diesel by calling them clean diesel, this is brainwasching. In paris nearly all new cars are diesel, that's dirty and carcionegic.
Posted by: gorr | 10 September 2014 at 02:34 PM
Diesel has lower CO2/km than petrol, hence it is promoted as "clean" and tends to generate lower CO2 taxes (on purchase, annual "road" tax, and fuel taxes) in Europe, hence its popularity.
+ it generally gets 30% better mileage / gallon.
Thus, it has been a great sales success in Europe, but a bit of a disaster in cities where cars are crowded in, resulting in poor air quality.
However, encouraging people to scrap 1 year old cars is plain madness - scrap 8 year or more if you must, but not new cars.
The trick to cleaning up city air is to do a pareto of offending vehicles and get rid of the worst ones.
These will be older diesels, many of them commercial, bin trucks, buses, etc.
There is no point in taking 2 year old diesels off the road when you should be taking 12 year old buses off.
Ideally, you could replace the buses with electric or partially electric ones such that they run on electrons in the centre of the cities, but this will take a while as e-buses are very expensive.
Posted by: mahonj | 11 September 2014 at 01:02 AM
New diesels have DPFs and likely NOx catalysts as well. It's insane to even think of retiring them. This has to be a sop to the auto industry, to try to move inventory ("cash for clunkers", anyone?). Let's hope nobody falls for the scam.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 11 September 2014 at 12:09 PM
The US Tier 4 Final and the Euro 6 compliant engines are quite clean. In some places, the exhaust make actually be cleaner than the intake air. The real problem is the older engines especially the engines that predate common rail electronic injection. Also, until recently, the EU standards were more lax than the US standards.
Posted by: sd | 11 September 2014 at 01:03 PM
You could have a scrappage scheme that paid you to sell your diesel car to someone > 100 miles from London and not in other large cities.
You would receive more for selling older cars, possibly different Euro levels.
Beyond (say) 10 years, you might be allowed to sell the car.
You might be able to get say 20% cash and 80% in public transport vouchers.
I am not sure of the details and the possible loopholes + you have to avoid making it too complex. Also, you do not want a guy in Bermingham selling his Ford Focus diesel to a guy in London in exchange for his own Focus diesel etc.
Anyway, the point is to get diesel cars out of London without scrapping perfectly good, quite new, cars.
Posted by: mahonj | 11 September 2014 at 02:19 PM
"be allowed to sell the car."
I meant "scrap the car"
Posted by: mahonj | 11 September 2014 at 02:20 PM