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Plans for a scheme encouraging islanders to dump polluting vehicles in exchange for a £500 voucher to be spent on 'green' items like electric bikes have been scrapped from the Government's "roadmap" towards net zero.
The scheme was one of the proposals in the Carbon Neutral Roadmap - to be voted on by States Members next month - covering its initial phase between now and 2026. It would be funded by £23m already set aside in a 'Climate Emergency Fund'.
However, it has been shelved after a consultation period, which took place earlier this year after the draft roadmap was published in December.
The Government said: "The concept around this policy was to provide an incentive to encourage the owners of the most polluting, old vehicles to switch to lower carbon forms of transport.
"The incentive was based on encouraging a move to active travel through the use of vouchers awarded when scrapping the old vehicle that could be redeemed against bus passes, bikes, e-bikes, car clubs etc.
"At the time that the policy was developed it was thought that the voucher concept could be utilised within other aspects of the Carbon Neutral Roadmap and the associated overheads of setting up the list of verified and eligible suppliers shared across policies.
CLICK TO ENLARGE: The timeline of the Carbon Neutral Roadmap between now and 2050.
"As these other initiatives were not taken forward, the full cost of the overheads would have been attributed to this one policy, making the overhead to incentive ratio very high.
"Although feedback from the survey indicative in-principle support for a financial incentive to get rid of the most polluting vehicles, detailed responses questioned whether the incentive would actively result in a reduction in the use of cars, or just encourage people to get rid of old cars they weren’t using, while continuing to do the same mileage on other vehicles.
"Questions were raised as to whether the policy delivered good value for money given the high overhead to grant ratio.
It added: "The policy will not be taken forward at the current time within the current budget. The policy will be removed from the Carbon Neutral Roadmap policy pack and the budget reallocated."
On 25 April, States Members will debate a series of policies that, if approved, will influence Assembly decisions for the next 28 years.
This is a ‘roadmap’ – a popular political synonym for a strategy – to achieve Carbon Neutrality, and how Jersey plays its part in tackling the greatest existential threat facing humanity, according to the vast majority of climate scientists and international bodies such as the UN.
The roadmap has gone through various iterations since the States joined many other parliaments in declaring a ‘Climate Emergency’ in 2019.
Pictured: The Carbon Neutral Roadmap proposes subsidies to encourage islanders to buy an electric vehicle.
Then, Members set a target for the island to be carbon neutral by 2030. That is still an aim but there is now recognition that Jersey would have to purchase carbon offsets – effectively buying someone else’s carbon surplus – to achieve that within eight years.
A lot has changed in both the science and international position on climate change since then, not least growing evidence that human-induced change is already have considerable adverse impacts, such of them irreversible.
The Government has also modified its position, which was set out in its ‘Carbon Neutral Preferred Strategy’ last year. That proposed Jersey aligning itself with Paris Agreement on Climate Change to limit global warming to well below 2°C, and preferably to 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels.
The Agreement also sets the practical target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, an aim which underpins the Carbon Neutral Roadmap
Between the draft Roadmap being published in December and its lodging for debate last month, there has been a period of public consultation.
The views of individuals, businesses and other interested parties were then reviewed, and some have been incorporated into the updated draft.
Pictured: Transitioning to biofuels is a key tenet of the Carbon Neutral Roadmap.
Aside from the removal of the scrappage scheme, another change is the addition of a new policy which charges the Government with investigating the potential for using ‘renewable content’ petrol and diesel in Jersey.
This policy recognises the changes in the EU and UK as they move towards adopting revised standard grades of petrol and diesel, such as E10 and B7, as part of their net zero strategies.
As an Island with much lower average mileage and limited capacity to store fuel, the Government says that extra work needs to be completed to understand the implications for Jersey, with a firm policy expected by the end of the year, which is likely to involve introducing a subsidy.
There have been some other tweaks, but the principal policies of the draft roadmap are retained.
These include:
as a minimum, Jersey should reduce emissions by 68% compared to the 1990 baseline by 2030; and reduce them to 78% from baseline by 2035;
delivering net-zero emissions by 2050, and maintaining reduction targets that are needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C;
allocating £23m which already sits in a ‘Climate Emergency Fund’ to support policies in the first stage of the roadmap, from 2022 to 2026. This money has already been raised by an initial £5m allocation topped up by revenues from extra fuel duty;
bringing forward in 2023, in time for potential inclusion in the Government Plan 2024, a long-term financing strategy that considers all available options to continue to fund the decarbonisation of the economy. It has been estimated that moving to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 will cost the Government around £250m over the next 28 years;
setting out the steps that government will take to ensure that Jersey can become carbon neutral and providing support for sequestration projects that use local carbon sinks on land or using the ocean’s ability to soak up carbon, which should come before taxpayers’ money is used to by off-island offsets.
Short-term policies to be introduced between now and 2026 include:
providing subsidies for islanders to buy electric vehicles;
providing subsidies for people to transfer their heating from oil or gas to electric;
banning the registration of new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030;
updating building by-laws to increase energy efficiency standards;
decarbonising the civil service;
trialling increased bus frequency and subsidised fares;
introducing ‘green’ number plates for electric vehicles;
supporting the uptake of transition fuels such as biodiesel.
Express previously spoke to Steve Skelton, the Government's Group Director, Strategy and Innovation, about the new Carbon Neutral Roadmap...
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