2030 and car prices

It is a grim prospect, but there are millions of petrol and diesel powered cars on the roads that will still need fuel. I also can't see the oil companies abandoning everything overnight. They have a huge investment in the distribution and sale of petrol and diesel.

I personally feel that this government policy is ill-advised and unconsidered. We simply don't have the electricity generation capacity to support a wholesale change to EVs and the raw material required for EV and battery technology invariably come from countries and regions that we wouldn't really consider as "friendly".

Paul

@paul-blore I agree - this is a political points-scoring policy from a government with a massively reduced manufacturing industry giving it less to lose.  It has very little indeed to do with emissions or being 'carbon neutral'.  I do find that term interesting, given that we are a carbon-based lifeform...

At some point the complete ecological folly of electric power will be revealed, but not before a lot of environmental damage is done.  I only hope the rest of the industry isn't destroyed too comprehensively before realization sets in.

My belief is that CO2 has been disproportionately demonised. Whilst there is no doubt that it is a "greenhouse" gas, the argument as to whether higher CO2 levels cause global warming or global warming causes increased levels of CO2 is far from certain.

There are also other gases, methane for example, that are massively bigger contributors, roughly 84x in the case of methane, to the greenhouse effect.

Beef production in North and South America produces colossal amounts of methane and is also a massively inefficient method of producing food.

The rate of increase of methane emissions has far outstripped that of CO2 over recent decades and, I suspect it continues to outweigh any savings made as a result of CO2 reductions.