Levelling up secretary calls for scrutiny of green policy but says ban on sale of new petrol and diesel cars is ‘immovable’
I actually thought he had done some reading to come back with this one, silly me. The only reason he is pushing this is because they narrowly won the Uxbridge by-election on the ULEZ campaign. This is not going to work in a general election, but whatever it is the Tories throwing grenades to hide from their other failings.
Just as a point of interest the ULEZ was introduced by Johnson when he was Mayor of London, and the main reason Khan pushed it through was because he would have been refused a grant without a promise of implementing it from government. The was the Tories being arseholes because it is Labour ran.
Aside from this I actually agree with the ULEZ as it takes a lot of the crap off the road. It would only affect a very few people. How often do you see a white van doing more than the speed limit with a cloud of black crap coming out of the back of it. There are quite a few where I live.
The restrictions are: Diesels registered after 2015. These are shockingly bad for kids with asthma. Petrol models that are registered after 2005. There will not be many of these on the road. Buses and larger vehicles have tighter restrictions.
People who drive diesels around town thinking they are saving money are the worst. All cars after 2015 come with a DPF which filters the soot from the combustion. Making short journeys in a diesel will drastically reduce the life of the DPF. Google price says £1000-£3000 just for the part. You should be using a preventative treatment at the least annually, it will save you money in the long run. Diesel cars without a DPF filter are a health hazard to kids. The Netherlands is looking for a total ban on any diesel with a DPF from 2025 onwards. I would love to see that here.
As for the heat pumps, my opinion is that money could be spent more effectively elsewhere. They work, but the return can be marginal, and the cost is £7,000-£13,000. Solar panels give a much better return per pound than the cost of installing a heat pump in the UK. More so the further north you go. Scandinavian countries use heat pumps a lot. They manage because they build their housing much better standard than we do through experience with the cold weather. In the winter when the pumps are the least efficient you have to switch to an emersion style water heater. Scandinavian countries have a much lower cost for electricity than the UK. This means we would incur a higher cost to run these than they do which again makes it less sense economically.
The only point I’d make on heat pumps is that they are a good way of heating a home using electricity. Without using heat pumps, even with solar panels most people will still have to use some form of boiler to heat their homes/water and I think heat pumps are a good step forward for us to actually move toward energy efficient heating specifically.
You’re right though that in the short term we can probably get better value from solar panels or investing more in wind
I worry how the Conservative Party will interpret the narrow victory.
Will it be seen as “if we embrace ulez, more people will come across”?
Or (sadly, more likely), “people vote for us because they don’t care about ulez, or have decided it’s their thing to hate. Demonise it.”
It’s pretty grim being on the pavement when a clapped out old vehicle guns it from the lights in a cloud of smoke.
The Tories have gone 100% on the side of populism. They seem to lack any judgement or morality about any subject matter that seems to throw up. This is not a normal Tory party. This is a group of idiots without any real direction to retain power. There will be a reckoning after the next election. It has to lead to an exodus from one of the factions within the party. What they have now is very unsustainable. Usually you would see an easement from government when they know an election is imminent. And yet this government is still fighting within itself to decide on which direction to run. I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime. Unless something really drastic comes along that threat of a Tory party with double digit number of MPs may become a reality.