All British cars may go electric by 2025
02 December 2008
Britain's roads would become green, clean and silent if the plans to be set out by the government's committee on climate change are realised. It will warn that motorists must get rid of their dependence on the internal combustion engine and switch in large numbers to vehicles powered by electricity, hydrogen and other low or zero-emission fuels.
The recommendation will be contained in ''Building a Low Carbon Economy - the UK's Contribution to Tackling Climate Change'', the inaugural report of the committee, chaired by Lord Adair Turner. The 500-page report will set out what Britain needs to do if it is to achieve the 80 per cent target for cutting emissions it has set itself
The report is expected to say that Britain currently generates the equivalent of 10-12 tons of carbon dioxide annually per person - about 700 million tons in total. This must be cut to two tons per person annually by 2050 - about 12 pounds per person each day. However, a typical family car uses the total daily allowance driving just 25 miles. Therefore, it is not seen as feasible to meet the new targets without largely abandoning the internal combustion engine.
Turner will also publish Britain's first ''carbon budgets", one for each of the three five-year periods between 2008 and 2022. These will set out the amounts by which Britain must cut its emissions in each of these time frames. These will be legally binding on the government and the report will set out a range of technological methods to achieve this.
For the power industry, which generates a third of Britain's greenhouse gases, it will recommend big investment in research into carbon sequestration, in which CO2 from burning coal and gas is captured and stored permanently, most likely underground.
Gordon Brown is a major advocate of electric cars and is likely to welcome the recommendation. He has already called for a million "green collar" jobs to be created in new environmentally friendly industries. At the G8 summit in Japan last summer, Brown's wife was photographed test-driving green vehicles.
