Rachel Reeves is considering scrapping “unfair” tax breaks for workers who buy electric cars, amid claims they disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
The Chancellor is understood to be looking at plans to either scrap or modify workplace salary sacrifice schemes that is used by tens of thousands of drivers every year to lease electric vehicles (EVs)
Ahh, now, d’ye see, even politics is now admitting that “anything, at any cost” is not a good idea when trying to deal with climate change. Which does mean that it’s open season on what is.
To which the correct, economic, answer, is anything that curbs emissions at less than $80 per tonne CO2-e is worth doing, anything that costs more is not. That means that all of Ed’s plans are not worth doing.
Sure, sure, it’s possible to say that nothing is worth doing but the above is to restrict ourselves to what the IPCC and the generally accepted rules say. Even if we take all of that seriously uit’s still true that Ed’s plans are not worth doing.
But is $80/tonne the right figure? I know the sainted Stern wrote that on a tablet of stone, but I’ve seen estimates from $10 to hundreds of dollars depending on the politics of the estimators. We don’t even know whether CO2 is a positive or negative externality.
Indeed, big range. But as I say, sticking with what climate change activists agree is the general background science – IPCC, Stern etc – then we still end up with a tool to beat them over the head with.
Meanwhile, in other news, global warming is not surging:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01711-1
” sticking with what climate change activists agree is the general background science”.
Why should intelligent people listen to “activists”?
The nonsense from the IPCC that people treat as Gospel is from the ‘Summary For Policy Makers’, which is written by politicians, bureaucrats and activists, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual scientific evidence found in the writings of the various Working Groups (although each Working Group has its’ own little cliques and activists as well).
Theo, I love it. There HAS been a surge, it’s just immeasurable!
Yeah, right…
That EV taxation, or non-taxation, is regressive sticks out a mile. Ditto subsidies for solar panels (or former subsidies – I don’t know whether they are still paid). Ditto, presumably, any subsidies or tax advantages for heat pumps.
Ditto, in spades, for the nexus of policies that make electricity so expensive, and gas.
My pal the NHS consultant has a nice fancy electric Beamer on salary sacrifice. Is she a “working person”?
Oh, its all so complicated when trying to work out who to fleece purely for political reasons.
I’m surprised they haven’t started talking about switching to per mile road pricing. Its only a matter of time before the loss of revenue from fuel makes the move inevitable*.
*Whether is desirable or not is different, but at some point those revenues are going to fall of a cliff edge and there’s no way any government is going to make the necessary cuts to accommodate the loss of revenue.
They are already talking about it. In fact, it’s a locked in assumption that it will be done. It’s only when….
@Tractor Gent. Here is a recent review of academic estimates of the social cost of carbon:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01680-x. From a policy perspective, HM Treasury currently uses a number much higher than our host suggests, with a central values for 2020/21 of £241 tonne/CO2e (Table 3, Section 9.2 of the Green Book). The US Environmental Protection Agency is a bit lower than HM Treasury with a central value of $190 tonne/CO2e for 2020 (Table ES.1. at https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-12/epa_scghg_2023_report_final.pdf). Lots of uncertainty over all of this, but numbers have gone up since Stern’s day – rightly or wrongly.
It can only be a matter of time until “innit” is included in the Telegraph’s style guide.
The first large-scale per-mile road pricing will come in London, same as the first Congestion Charge zone was. Why else did Khan press on with installing all those cameras for the ULEZ extension? It certainly wasn’t because doing so was going to make road pollution any lower, despite his faked-up “science”.
The only question is when, and I would predict within the life of the current Parliament. I.e, soon.
‘Why should intelligent people listen to “activists”?’
The Government listens to activists. Tells you all you need to know about Government.
Road pricing is done currently by pricing the fuel. In principle this can be done with electricity too. We have meters with dual prices, time-based, but we could price based on circuit with the car charger on the expensive circuit. Scope for fraud but probably less than us all having weekly mileage reporting in the car. (It has to be a lot more often than annually to keep the revenue flowing smoothly).
Of course the govt will want to be silly buggers and make it super-hard by charging more for the M25 at rush hour than the B1089 at midnight.
@Addolff – October 19, 2024 at 8:38 am
The nonsense from the IPCC that people treat as Gospel is from the ‘Summary For Policy Makers’, which is written by politicians, bureaucrats and activists, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual scientific evidence found in the writings of the various Working Groups…
It’s worse than that… If you look at the guidelines for the report’s preparation you’ll se that it’s the only “scientific” report in history that demands that should the conclusions stated in the “Summary for Policy Makers” differ from those in the individual detailed sections of the report, it is the detailed sections that have to be altered to match those of the summary!
So, in essence, the summary is written first by the activists and the “science” is carefully arranged in order to support it.
The whole Net Zero nonsense – Carbon taxes, renewables, heat pumps, electric cars etc, – is a solution that doesn’t work for a problem that doesn’t exist.
We’ve already got per mile road pricing. It’s called fuel duty. The more miles you travel, the more fuel you use, the more fuel duty you pay.
CO2 is a positive externality.
Proof: the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, the Cretaceous, etc.
Also, generating and consuming more energy is synonymous with higher standards of living than were previously possible. Energy means warmth, food and hygiene. Anybody who wants to restrict your energy consumption is an enemy who plans to turn you into a pathetic serf.
Steve, on the button. The improvement in human material wellbeing of all kinds directly correlates with the increase in availability and consumption of cheap, convenient energy (and the energy-density of fuel). Take it away and we all (well, the few survivors) go back to the Middle Ages. In this case, correlation proves causation.
Norman – if you look at it from a longer term pov, it’s even worse.
Net Zero is a prescription for the extinction of mankind. We know there is a finite period in which Earth will be habitable for humans, and there’s nothing much we can do about the evolution of the Sun or doomsday asteroids or gamma ray bursts. So, either mankind colonises space, or eventually we all die off.
All that stuff Elon Musk is trying to do will be destroyed if we don’t get rid of Net Zero and the Net Zero fans, we will have cancelled our own future as a species and “voluntarily” (manufactured consent) agreed to revert to a neo feudalist society where 99% of the population are paying rents to the 1% in exchange for them producing nothing.
“You will own nothing and be happy”, said Prince Charles. Let’s try him first.
@Tractor Gent -“weekly mileage reporting in the car.”
There is absolutely no chance of that. Your car will be reporting as you drive. Eventually, it will add the fines for speeding etc to the price of your journey. If you’re really lucky, it won’t listen to your conversations with passengers to fine you for disagreeing with the government.
@jgh – “We’ve already got per mile road pricing. It’s called fuel duty.”
Not on electric vehicles. So if they are going to take over from petrol/diesel/lpg etc, then there will be a huge tax reduction unless there is a substitute tax on journeys in electric vehicles.
We (not you or I, the planet) are already doing Carbon Capture and Storage.At a cost far smaller than mad Milliband’s 22 billion sparrow fart.
It’s called marine snow.
This is the stuff (faeces, dead plankton, krill, fish bones etc.) that falls to the bottom of the ocean. About one millimetre a year accumulates. (see videos of the Titanic)
1mm doesn’t sound much, but over 193million square miles it starts to add up.
After a thousand years, you’ve got a metre. After a million years you’ve got a kilometre. After a billion years you’ve got 73% of all the surface rocks.
Unfortunately this CCS isn’t cost free. It decreases atmospheric CO2 and will eventually kill all life on earth apart from some fungi and extremophiles that can survive on less than 250 ppm.
Farmers buy CO2 (or just hook up the tractor) to raise Co2 levels in the polytunnels. That’s because plants we value prefer a level of 1.200 ppm to the fresh air of 400 ppm. Presumably because that was the level when they first evolved.
We need more CO2.
This is a public service announcement brought to you by hashtag Friends of Carbon
Drill baby drill!
Could chuck a few greenies on the bonfire while we’re at it…
Thanks for your praise of Elon Musk, Steve. Alas the earth’s oceans are supposed to start evaporating in a few hundred million or so years, thus we’ll need his rockets to let our emigrants plague Mars or Europa.
Of course being a selfish bloke with a short-term viewpoint, I’m naturally more concerned with having enough energy to keep me in the lap of luxury.
These cost of carbon/cost of “climate change” numbers. None of them are anything like real numbers. it’s simply not something that’s known. They are guesses piled on estimates piled on computer models. Most of the time it’s not even known if they’re positive or negative. Take the cost (in carbon) of burning fossil fuels for energy. For a real figure, you’d have to subtract the value of the energy produced by burning. One aspect of that. Fuel for road transport. At least that’s an easy one. You’d need a measure of the value of the transport achieved against the amount of fuel used. What’s the efficiency? It’s hard enough getting that for your own car. The MPG claim of the manufacturers is always wildly different from those you actually achieve. Do they have the numbers of miles travelled on roads, or is that another estimate? What’s the economic value of the journey? Do you know the economic value of the last journey you made? I should think the margin of error on all that could be north of 50%
You’d need a measure of the value of the transport achieved against the amount of fuel used.
If we ignore Sunday driving and look at any commercial journey, the transport must be more valuable than the fuel or the journey would be made at a loss and the transporter would go bust. That equation includes Mr. Pigou, because over the history of road transport, all nations using it have become wealthier.
Why ignore Sunday driving? It must have had value or it wouldn’t have been done. Rather the point of what I wrote. How is the value of the energy of burning fossil fuels calculated? It should be the value the person using the energy puts on it.
Which is the whole counter-argument to Net Zero, isn’t it? What it’s going to cost us.
That IS why I dislike Net Zero, BiS!!
Comments are closed.