Climate Crisis: Are we doing enough?

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Archie_tect

Active Member
Independent paper reports:

"New homes, supermarkets and workplaces will be required to install electric vehicle charging points as standard from 2022, under new regulations to be announced. Ahead of the ban on the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles in 2030, the prime minister will say the move will result in an extra 145,000 charging points each year before the end of the decade. According to the latest available figures from the Department for Transport (DfT), the UK has 26,000 public electric vehicle charging devices available, including 4,900 rapid chargers. The action forms part of the government’s attempts to reach the legally binding net zero target by 2050 and comes after a report earlier this year by the Competition and Markets Authority suggesting at least 280-480,000 public charging points will be needed by 2030."

The current £350 grant towards each charging point will soon be cancelled... if you have a workplace that would benefit from a charge point you can apply for a grant whether or not your business runs an EV. You have to either have ordered, lease or own an EV to be able to get a home-charging point grant.
 

mudsticks

Squire
Independent paper reports:

"New homes, supermarkets and workplaces will be required to install electric vehicle charging points as standard from 2022, under new regulations to be announced. Ahead of the ban on the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles in 2030, the prime minister will say the move will result in an extra 145,000 charging points each year before the end of the decade. According to the latest available figures from the Department for Transport (DfT), the UK has 26,000 public electric vehicle charging devices available, including 4,900 rapid chargers. The action forms part of the government’s attempts to reach the legally binding net zero target by 2050 and comes after a report earlier this year by the Competition and Markets Authority suggesting at least 280-480,000 public charging points will be needed by 2030."

The current £350 grant towards each charging point will soon be cancelled... if you have a workplace that would benefit from a charge point you can apply for a grant whether or not your business runs an EV. You have to either have ordered, lease or own an EV to be able to get a home-charging point grant.

Thanks for the heads up.
Will look into that :okay:
 

mudsticks

Squire
Talk about a completely wrong focus!
UK governments are elected to keep traffic moving on the roads, and to defend the rights of private car owners.
The focus hasn't shifted much, sadly.

I imagine (and hope) that we're going to have to get used to having far fewer private cars.

Car clubs, will become the norm.

But tradespeople, delivery people, people with disabilities, and some others will still need access to some sort of vehicle, the majority of the time.

Having charging points for them will still be necessary .
 

matticus

Guru
I imagine (and hope) that we're going to have to get used to having far fewer private cars.

Car clubs, will become the norm.

But tradespeople, delivery people, people with disabilities, and some others will still need access to some sort of vehicle, the majority of the time.

Having charging points for them will still be necessary .
I suppose the latters makes sense, and they form the positive from all this. But ...
... how/when are we ever going to move towards fewer private cars? Gov keeps building new roads, but negligible walking/cycling infrastructure, etc etc ... :-/
 

mudsticks

Squire
I suppose the latters makes sense, and they form the positive from all this. But ...
... how/when are we ever going to move towards fewer private cars? Gov keeps building new roads, but negligible walking/cycling infrastructure, etc etc ... :-/

Oh I couldn't agree more,

But it's what 'people'

For which read , vested interest, business as usual.

want
apparently.

I was one of those 'nutters' living in the trees, at the anti road camps, back in the '90's when we were already saying that more roads means more cars, more cars means more pollution etc etc, and of course being branded loony* halfwits for our troubles, even back then..

I posted this earlier on the brexit thread , but it applies just as much..
If not even more so here .

240
 

mudsticks

Squire
Talk about a completely wrong focus!

But quite handy for charging up a leccy delivery vehicle right.?

For when the trusty old Berlingo gets decomissioned ..

Of course I still have fantasies about doing all the deliveries by horse and cart.

Or having them done by a phalanx of muscular young buffs :whistle: on cargo bikes..

But meanwhile..

Back in the dull old real world..:sad:
 
I imagine (and hope) that we're going to have to get used to having far fewer private cars.

Car clubs, will become the norm.

But tradespeople, delivery people, people with disabilities, and some others will still need access to some sort of vehicle, the majority of the time.

Having charging points for them will still be necessary .
BUT! Why no incentive to add Solar power to each house/building to help with the increased energy demand?
 

mjr

Active Member
Iirc there was for a while a few years back.
Lots of companies got tooled up to do it.

Then they took away the grant or extra feed in tariff or whichever it was.
:sad:
From memory of looking at this over a decade ago and again this September, the estimated payback time in the midlands with those incentives was 7-11 years both times. The solar panels have become cheaper and the higher electricity price for at least the next year or so has increased the savings, but the incentives are less (Smart Export Guarantee pays less than Feed-In Tariff export rates did, typically 3p/kWh rather than over 5) and installation costs have also increased.

One big problem is that few people are willing to bet on not moving for about a decade, so it's seen as not worth the disruption of installation, or the risk of not getting your money back when you sell. Compare that to heat pumps, where, as I understand it, you can transfer the government repayments when you sell (which does seem to increase sale price) or do some sort of new owner finance deal that I don't completely understand to get your outlay back. And with the new scheme from next March, it won't matter because you get the incentive paid in a lump sum near purchase time.

A small problem is that if your export energy company goes bust (like 20 or so recently), Ofgem doesn't transfer you to another export contract, but only a standard consumer one, so you then have to switch and lose a month or two of payments and they'll restart at a different rate that may well be lower. More hassle.

But if you do expect to stay put, one benefit of solar compared to heating is that heat pump lifetimes are still the subject of much debate, so you might not get much use beyond the current 7 year payback time, while solar panels seem to be expected to last 20+ years.

What could government do to encourage more small-scale solar? What should they do? Is it worth it, or should the focus keep being on big wind and solar?
 
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