With respect to the Government’s response today to the Transport Select Committee’s recent report, “Fuelling the Future” (March 2023) which raised many concerns including specifically that the Government had decided that electricity as a fuel would be the only long-term option for UK cars and vans rather than also developing and allowing sustainable and synthetic fuels too, Karl McCartney MP (Lincoln) and a long-standing member of Transport Committee, said:
“By rejecting environmentally-friendly synthetic fuels and sustainable fuels as an alternative fuel option for cars and vans, the Government are burying their head in the sand and making a huge mistake. Their response is basically ‘fingers crossed’ we can create enough electric batteries and deliver electric charging points, everywhere in the UK, that can fuel a car in the same time it takes to fill your petrol/diesel/lpg tank. It is not realistic.
“It compounds their headlong herd-like, fashionable or EV evangelist belief, and naïve rush into stopping the manufacture of non-electric private cars from 2030 and requiring all private cars to be electric by 2050. It is far tougher than in the European Union. Their current, unchanged as yet by Germany or France, the ban only starts from 2035 yet even then cars can still be made using normal combustion engines so long as their fuel is synthetic and carbon-neutral. Why are our plans even tougher – placing us at a serious economic disadvantage? There is too much listening to the left-wing ‘green lobby’ from well-off metropolitan elite London backgrounds and not enough common sense nor understanding of the real world, and the rest of the UK.
“As I have said for a while, alongside the development of electric vehicles, we should be investing in synthetic fuels too. There is also no guarantee the number of batteries needed will be ready given worldwide demand, especially from China, nor any guarantee that enough affordable electric cars will be available nor will there be enough charging points that fuel such vehicles very quickly. It makes no common sense to place all our eggs into one basket and solely rely on electric-fuelled cars when there are alternatives, such as sustainable and synthetic fuels, that are already being used and developed which are also as environmentally friendly. We need to have a choice and not place our fuel future at risk which is what the Government is currently doing. Choice also should be offered because choice is a good thing in itself, which as a Conservative is central to what I believe.
“Sooner or later ‘The Emperor’s new clothes’ are going to be seen for what they are in relation to this ill-judged, headlong, EV worship by the metropolitan elite who can afford such expensive eco-virtue signalling. The rest of us will have to bide our time when real-world reason and economic reality bumps up against their eco evangelism before we calmly point out that we ‘told you so.’”
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