210 - The Ministerial Episode

Gary C:

Hi, I'm Gary and this is EV musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today we'll be looking at the government side of electric vehicle decarbonisation.

This season the podcast is sponsored by Zapmap the free to download app and helps Evie drivers search plan and pay for their charging. Before we start, I wanted to ask whether you thought that the Q&A session from a week or two back worked for you. We did cover quite a few topics in quite a short period of time. But if you do like that sort of format, let me know. I'll get one scheduled into the next season.

Our main topic of discussion today is well, it's a conversation with the transport decarbonisation Minister Anthony Browne:. We're fortunate to have the minister on the podcast today and I wanted to take this opportunity to have a bit of a discussion about various aspects of the government's approach to decarbonisation, especially with the different policies and regulations that are currently in place out welcome shadow minister. For those that don't know you, could you introduce yourself and tell the listeners what your role is, please.

Anthony Browne:

So I'm Anthony Browen and I am Minister for Aviation. More importantly for decarbonisation of transport and the future of transport. So enters decarbonisation of transport also key part of that is the moving to zero emission vehicles. So I spent a lot of time on the promoting electric vehicles in particular, but with technology neutral electric charge points and rollout but also I deal with sustainable aviation. And also anything to do with airports and airlines comes up to me as well.

Gary C:

Okay now, before we go any further, can I just ask you Do you drive electric vehicles yourself or in family drive?

Anthony Browne:

So my last two cars have been a hybrid electric petrol vehicles and my ministerial car's an electric vehicle, but I want to buy I'm in the process of researching a full electric vehicle.

Gary C:

Fantastic. Now, obviously, we have a lot of overlap in your area of responsibility. And my listeners, so can I ask you a little bit about the Plan for Drivers? Talk to me about that and your department's role in it, please?

Anthony Browne:

Yeah, well, there's lots there's lots about and plan for drivers. This is really just looking at how we're helping motorists generally, and a lot of them fall outside my remit. Actually, just as there's another minister for roads Guy Opperman, who makes sure that all the roads are fit to drive on. And there's there's a whole range of different things in there, including like 20mph zones, and so on. In terms of the electric vehicles and decarbonisation of transport, there's various elements in there about connection to the grid, which is really important. One of the key barriers on the charge points is actually being able to connect them to the electricity grid. I meet a lot of charge with operators and we made various, quite some detailed proposals in there around speeding up the installation of charge points. So in terms of simplifying the licencing regime, so-called section 50 licences and turning them into permits. And basically, I've gone through with the charge point operators, all the barriers that they have, and trying to see what we can do to remove the barriers of access of that can talk in more detail about that if you want but a lot of it was put in the plan for drivers.

Gary C:

Now in particular in there, there's this section that says 'New measures to support electric vehicle drivers from the government's plans for drivers of law, including grants for schools, cash for councils in new proposals to boost ChargePoint numbers'. Can you talk to me a little bit about that expand on that, please?

Anthony Browne:

st month or two, I think it's: 2600

Gary C:

Yeah, there's some superb improvements being made from a charging point of view. And I think he's excellent to see that and the role that the government is playing in that. Can I just look back to the 150 individuals that are working with the local councils? Are they doing that on a specific Council basis? Or are they available for any council that needs that? That assistance?

Anthony Browne:

So we've offered the assistance to all councils and the individuals are working for individual councils if you sorta mean they're not they're not in a call centre somewhere like because they the Councils need the expertise in house and to liaise with they'll have for councils have their own roads teams, they'll have their own different commercial division so that the individuals need to know how to operate within the councils, and we're paying for the I mean help them identify and hire the individuals we're paying for the training to be able to build up the internal capacity. Some councils are in very good positions. Some have been doing this for a while and they've got great expertise. In fact, a lot of them are learning off each other and that's one things we're doing with with encouraging them all to talk to each other and learn how to do things, trying to standardise things a bit because one of the complaints we've had. The councils have very different legal frameworks from one, between one council and another council, and it's not for any particular rational reason. It's just they haven't tried to make it sort of have a sort of more systematic approach. So one of the things we're doing is issuing guidance and sort of a pro forma legal documents etc. Which obviously the counsellors can vary if they want to, but they don't have to come up from scratch with their lawyers to work out what they what they need to do.

Gary C:

fuel duty rate since January: 2011

Anthony Browne:

So the point about fuel duty is just that obviously there are a lot of people live in rural areas who don't have electric cars. And until recently, the ranges of electric cars may not have been good enough for them. And we don't want to penalise people living in rural areas. And that is a very, I have a rural constituency, and completely depend on their cars to go to work and to shop and so on, you know, understandably frustrated about duty going up and up inexorably. So that's that's helpful thing generally. The as I said earlier, that we have spent 2 billion pounds so far, which has been a large sum of money promoting the rollout of charge points and electric vehicles, generally, it's a grants to the people buying electric vehicles of different forms and, and subsidies for the the charge point installations where they're where they're not commercial. Could we do more? I mean, obviously, we can always do more, we're always reviewing different policies. So you mentioned the VAT on charge points. So this is a point that's raised to me very frequently. And it is obviously the Treasury policy. You're right, it's 5% on domestic electricity it's 20% on the non domestic electricity. And all I would say is that, you know, the Treasury keeps on tax policies under review. And there are many different considerations, not least not least treasures need to raise money to pay for public services, like hospitals and schools, but all all taxes are kept under review. And in fact, in fact, some of the others: What we do is we judge it were how close the market is to sort of take off as it were. So we had zero tax vehicle excise duty, while all electric cars were in a very, very small market share. They're now the the generosity on the vehicle excise duties, now, it's not for the first year on permanently. But we also have a huge massive discount on the tax if you're buying through a salary sacrifice scheme, or as a corporate company car scheme, which is incredibly advantageous. And that's part of the reason why many people are buying their electric vehicles through salary sacrifice schemes, because of the tax benefits of doing that. So the support for the government is in many, many different ways. And again, I should say just the figures and when actually last month, we sold 48,000 electric cars which as the biggest ever in any one month in the UK. And for the first three months this year, we've actually now now become the largest electric vehicle market in Europe. We've overtaken Germany. So we sold 84,314 electric cars in the first three months this year is up nearly 11% compared to last year. And as I say now bigger than Germany, France and Italy.

Gary C:

Fantastic, th ose figures that it's really good. I saw the chart that you were talking about where we would talk the European rankings and it's always great to to get figures like that, it really justify some of the work that we're doing here. Talk to me about your linkages with CHARGE UK. I know you spoke recently with former guests about Chris Pateman-Jones, their chair,

Anthony Browne:

Yeah, no, I've had a few bilateral meetings with them. I've done some roundtables with their members I've done, I've done, I've been doing a lot of roundtables with lots of different people in the area interested in electric vehicles, including sort of car manufacturers, the charge point operators, the the motorway service stations that I mentioned earlier, local authorities. I've been doing as much engagement as possible. Charge UK is a trade association. I meet many different trade associations, they serve a very useful function in terms of getting views from across the sector in the many different types of charge point operators. They've got different concerns. Sometimes they got the same concerns and Charge UK helpfully sort of helped distil it all down. They had a particular like manifesto, if you want to call it that - sort of barriers to rolling out charge points, which they published last year. And it's and it's helpful for government to see what the industry views are. And the you know what I said to Chargepoint operators is like what the barriers are, and sometimes barriers will be there for the actually and that it's right that they're there. But often the barriers are just for historic reasons that basically the whole regulatory and legal framework was not designed for rolling out charge point infrastructure across the country in actually incredibly rapid speed. It was it was there for when they were when we were rolling out electricity 100 years ago. So one example of that is, which ChargeUK has highlighted several times, is the licences to dig up the pavement. So you don't want any old company just to be able to pick up the pavements. And because the payments would be in a terrible state, and they wouldn't be put back properly. So we like we licence the companies that are allowed to do that. And basically, it's electricity companies and water companies, and gas companies and the, and then they can then have permission to dig up the payments, and we are changing the regime. So we'll include ChargePoint operators as well. So that they can they'll basically approve to take up payments. And that's just it reduces costs for them, it massively speeds up the process for them. And it's just one example of, basically, how the whole regulatory system was designed for the status quo before this new infrastructure that rolling out. So we have to basically reengineer large parts of our regulatory and legal framework, and we are we've done some of that we're still in the process of doing some of it. But it's it is a work in progress.

Gary C:

If I might play devil's advocate for a little while, what do you say to those who put forward the point that if EVs were good, you wouldn't need government incentives to make people buy them? Which obviously could also apply to things such as subsidies for charge points, what what do you say to that?

Anthony Browne:

% by: 2030

Gary C:

Minsiter you're responsible also, I believe, for aviation in the UK. So link the two areas for me transport and decarbonisation.

Anthony Browne:

And I understand you've got a private pilot's licence?

Gary C:

I Do, I Do I have a private pilot's licence that, unfortunately is kind of expired. Because I'm at that situation where when I've got the time to do it, I don't have the money. And when I've got the money to do it, I don't have the time.

Anthony Browne:

That's often the trouble in life

Gary C:

When we look at Aviation overall, there is really only one way to reduce the carbon footprint from flying, and that is to fly fewer planes and fewer flights. Do we really need for example 30+ return flights from London to New York every day.

Anthony Browne:

% SAF by: 2030

Gary C:

Do you think there's a case to say that Yeah, I mean, I don't want to stop people flying at all. You know, I know there are people who've got relatives abroad, and it's the best way to get there. But it's cheaper for somebody to fly from London to Prague the weekend than it is to take a train from London to Newcastle. That can't be right, there has to be something that needs to change about that. Now you can you can tell me that rail fares are overpriced, and , you know, yes I'll accept that. But you've got to say by the same token that air fares are underpriced. And a lot of that is because aviation fuel isn't taxed. What are your thoughts on that?

Anthony Browne:

I mean there are arguments about taxing aviation fuel and but actually, it's there's a global agreement at both on aviation fuel and on maritime fuel as well. And what all countries are signed up to. it's under some UN convention that means you shouldn't you're actually not allowed to tax aviation fuel. And I mean, it is, you know, compared to other forms of transport, you're actually right, that's aviation is comparatively under taxed. But that's we can't change that without changing global agreement. So that that is the policy we are with. ButI agree it is as to why not a mystery, but it is often perplexing that actually aviation is cheaper to fly somewhere then take the train, and we are the government does spend a huge, huge amounts of money on trains. We- both building railways and on the the daily operations of the trains in a way that we don't with with airlines. So there are subsidies there. And hopefully the trains had some problems recently with that reliability, but you're investing a lot in new railway lines, things like HS2 is the high profile one but there's lots of other train services that are being built out. So go like East West Rail, for example, which goes from Oxford to Cambridge through my constituency and the government's committed to that.

Gary C:

I want to look back to the hydrogen question. Now often in the context of aviation, which is fine, but study after study after study has shown that there's no viable path for hydrogen heating, and real world experiences indicated that hydrogen for road transport is pretty much a nonstarter. Why is the government still pushing hydrogen as a decarbonisation solution for these areas rather than focusing it on those areas where it will be, it will be most useful such as, for example, steelmaking?

Anthony Browne:

So, we generally try and stay technology neutral, because we don't know which technology is going to advance fastest or best. So if we'd had this conversation 10 years ago, then you're probably telling me that or other people'll be telling me that a hydrogen is the only proper solution for for vehicles becoming zero or close to zero emission. And indeed, I drove a hydrogen Ford car back 20 years ago -, broke down, unfortunately - but I remember at the time, people say, well, hydrogen is the future. But actually, battery technology has just developed so rapidly that it's clearly come out -certainly, for smaller vehicles - come out the winner, we now have commercial vehicles up to 26 tonnes, that hydrogen that are electric powered or battery powered, and they're on the market. We don't have them for the very heavy goods vehicles, or the 45 tonne trucks or maybe, but it's actually technology carries on progressing in the next 10 years as it has in the last 10 years. I think the very heavy trucks could end up being battery powered rather than hydrogen powered, but we can't, we don't want to rely on those technological improvements. And so we we've there are manufacturers out there who are very interested in exploring hydrogen for heavy goods vehicles. There's also lots of other categories of vehicle. So what are called non-road motorised machines, that bulldozers and cranes and combine harvesters and so on that - and diggers, they actually require huge amounts of power, because of what they do - think about digger, they're not very often operating in areas that are not close to electricity networks, they can't recharge very easily. And if you speak to people, JCB obviously which makes a lot of diggers and so on, they're investing heavily in hydrogen as the solution for that. And I had a roundtable with manufacturers of these some heavy equipment recently, and with the Department for Energy security and net zero, and they were they're very keen on hydrogen generally that does seem to be their preferred option as a as a solution for their, for their particular sector. But it is it's the solutions are going to be very different for different sectors. And technology will change over time. And some things that may not seem viable now become viable, or some things that seem good now become, you know, become less economically viable, becaue they're overtaken by something else. And we, as a government, we don't know which way it's going to go, and the other, and we can try and force and we can try and encourage change and developments in certain direction. We pay for a lot of research and developments in this department, we pay about £1/3 billion pounds a year on research projects. But also we've got the other point is we've got to be internationally coordinated, because a lot of these markets and industries are very, very international and we don't want to go down a route just the UK if the rest of the world goes off in a different direction we could end up that could be end up being very, very problematic. And I mean for manufacturers in the UK, but also just for people in the UK wanting to buy equipment. So an example is high powered motorbikes for example, whether it's at the moment there is no battery solution for them, they don't have the power to weight ratio. And question mark, what do you do with them? I'm fully in favour of people be able to drive most bikes if they want to. But the technology at the moment doesn't exist in other jurisdictions like Japan, and I think in America, they're looking at hydrogen powered motorbikes. I think you're understanding in Europe they're looking more towards synthetic fuel most bikes, but we don't give them that it is that is a very international industry. A lot of motorbikes you buy in the UK, made in Japan or the BMW's and so on. Then we don't want to go down a route where we're stipulating there's got to be one type of motorbike or actually, the rest of world has another direction. So we've got we've got to do it in tandem with with with everyone else.

Gary C:

We are approaching the end of our time, I realise that. So I've just got one final question for you a little bit out of left field. I know from your webpage that you're supporting your campaign to ban the congestion charge in Cambridge and at first glance, a decarbonisation Minister actively campaigning to allow more vehicles into a city centre would seem to be counterintuitive. Talk me through your logic on that.

Anthony Browne:

pounds a day ends up: 1300

Gary C:

Well, that's all the questions I've got for you today. So Minister, thank you very much for your time, much appreciated.

Anthony Browne:

Thank you.

Gary C:

A couple of takeaways from this discussion. It's clear that the government is focused on two key factors when it comes to the rollout of electric vehicles in the UK, firstly helping fund initiatives and schemes that will encourage decarbonisation in areas where private companies are not focusing, and secondly, ensuring that the money that taxpayers are putting into these schemes is not wasted, or duplicated. It's also obvious that a lot of focus has been put on what schemes will bring the best bang for the buck for the government, such as the LEVI Fund and the Rapid Charge Point scheme. And when schemes have run their course, they get removed, which is why the electric vehicle grant has now gone for most new vehicle purchases. But as I stated in the discussion, there are several areas where public perception is causing an issue and putting forward the best solution. VAT on public charging is one example, as is the frozen fuel duty, which costs way more than dropping the VAT on charging will ever do. Now I understand the minister's point about rural residents needing their cars. But the cost of running a car is increasing every year. So perhaps adding in the fuel duty and using this money to encourage these rural residents to move to an electric car where possible might be a better use of public money. I also want to clarify something he minister stated. What the minister says about sustainable aviation fuel is accurate. But as with a lot of things in this area, it can be misread or misinterpreted. SAF - sustainable aviation fuel - is seen by the airlines has been the big hope moving forward. But this is literally because it's the solution, which means they can continue business as normal. As the minister says it is literally a drop in fuel which requires nothing other than a reliable source for the SAF to be provided. That research has shown that if we were to run the whole of the airline industry on sustainable aviation fuel, we'd have to transfer half the UK's agricultural land to crops to make the sustainable aviation fuel. It's also substantially more expensive than regular fuel, despite what we discussed with the lack of tax on aviation fuel. So this will mean airlines either go under, reduce flights, or increase air fares. Furthermore, there isn't actually a global agreement to not provide or to not tax aviation fuel as a minister states. There is a Convention on International Civil Aviation, which exempts air fuels already loaded onto an aircraft on landing and which remain on the aircraft, from import taxes. And there are certain bilateral agreements governing the tax exemption of airline fuels. But the EU is in the process of modifying many of these agreements. So it will be possible to tax kerosene for aviation purposes. My thanks to the Minister for his time This interview was recorded literally a couple of hours after the late night vVote on the illegal immigration bill in Parliament. So I appreciate the minister making time for me. This season we're looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners. One way we're doing that is with a carbon factors read by carbon literacy trainer, Anne Snelson.

Anne Snelson

Every year, about 15 billion tonnes of fossil fuels are mined and extracted. That's 500 times more mining than a clean energy economy would require. So let's make the shift as quickly as we can. If you're swapping your car find out about an electric vehicle swapping your gas boiler, check out heat pumps or electric Combi boilers instead.

Gary C:

It's time for cool EV or renewable thing share with your listeners. An Australian dairy farm has installed solar panels and a battery bank at its dairy and it uses the energy from them to milk cows. M and J O'Connor farming has just switched on a 100 kilowatt solar system with six 13.8 kilowatt hour batteries. The power for the panels will be stored in the batteries and used in the early morning and evening to milk the cows at much reduced costs. Because the cows are usually milked before the sun rises and after it goes down the power they're using was peak pricing. An increase in bills meant something had to be done. It hoped the system will pay for itself in five to seven yea rs. To me this is a critical part of the future of electricity generation and usage. Being able to control when you pull power into your system. And when you use that power. Bringing the power in at a cheap rate and using it at an expensive time of day will both reduce costs and help balanced the grid overall. And that's the show for today. Hope you enjoyed listening to it. If you want to contact me I can be emailed at info at ev musings.com. I'm also on Twitter at MusingsEV. If you want to support the podcast and the newsletter, please consider contributing to becoming an EV Musings patron. The links in the show notes. Don't want to sign up for something on a monthly basis. Well if you've enjoyed this particular episode, why not buy me a coffee, go to coffee.com/evey musings and you can do just that. K Oh dash f phi.com/evey musings, it's Apple pay to have a couple of ebooks out there if you want something to read on your Kindle. So you've got an electric it's available on Amazon worldwide immediately some of 99 Pure equivalent and it's a great little introduction to living with an electric car. If you're looking for installing solar panels storage battery and heat pump try so you've gone renewable also available on Amazon for the same 99 p and if you've got Amazon Prime and you can use the Kindle lending library, you can read them for nothing. Why don't check them both If you want to support the podcast (and newsletter) please consider contributing to becoming an EV Musings Patron. The link is in the show notes. Don’t want to sign up for something on a monthly basis? If you enjoyed this episode why not buy me a coffee? Go to Ko-fi.com/evmusings and you can do just that. Takes Apple Pay, too! I have a couple of ebooks out there if you want something to read on your Kindle. 'So, you've gone electric?' is available on Amazon worldwide for the measly sum of 99p or equivalent and it's a great little introduction to living with an electric car. ‘So you’ve gone renewable’ is also available on Amazon for the same 99p and it covers installing Solar Panels, a storage battery and a heat pump Why not check them both out? . Links for everything we've talked about in the podcast today are in the description. If you enjoy this podcast please subscribe it's available on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave a review. It helps raise our visibility and extend our reach in search engines. If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening thank you. Why not? Let me know you've got to this point by tweetig me at MusingsEV with the words "Yes, Minister, #ifyouknowyouknow" nothing else. Thanks as always to my co founder Simon. You know he runs a Facebook group for his electric unicycle friends. He's quite strict about who he lets in and who he doesn't. You've got to ride a unicycle obviously. Nowhere in the rules does it state that it has to be electric. I bought a unicycle from a circus and tried to join. And when I was refused, I asked him why. And he told me-

Anthony Browne:

I mean, obviously we can always do more and we're always reviewing different policies.

Gary C:

Thanks for listening. Bye!