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THE HUMBLE PETROL and diesel car will have seen its last days in Ireland if the Project Ireland 2040 plan comes true.
The plan, announced today, commits a total of €22 billion to climate action, with the bulk of that – €13.7 billion – being spent on energy investment.
A further €3 billion will go towards retrofitting homes to make them energy efficient, but €200 million has also been set aside for the provision of infrastructure for electric vehicles.
This would include new charging points.
The plan says that by 2030 the government aims to have the number of electric vehicles on the roads at half a million – around a quarter of all cars on our roads.
However, the plan goes one step beyond that and proposes that no non-zero emission vehicles will be sold in Ireland after 2030.
After that, no NCT certs will be issued for non-zero emission vehicles after 2045. 52% of Ireland’s overall transport emissions come from private cars.
A number of car manufacturers have already begun moving to no- or low-emission vehicles. Volkswagen says it will invest €34 billion in new technologies by 2022. Like other traditional carmakers, Volkswagen is stepping up its focus on the cleaner, smarter vehicles of the future, racing to catch up with US tech giant Tesla which has a head-start in the area.
The plan is similar to one announced in January by California Governor Jerry Brown. The US state aims to “dramatically reduce carbon emissions from transportation”.
France has said it will end sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040 and Volvo Cars plans to start phasing out production of conventional petrol-only cars from 2019, with all new models to be electric or hybrid from that date.
Norway has set an ambitious target of ending the sale of new cars with combustion engines as early as 2025.
Norway, a large oil and gas producer, has introduced numerous incentives to encourage the purchase of electric cars. Buyers pay almost no tax, making the sale price very competitive. This has led to zero-emission cars making up 20% of new car sales.
There is no mention in the Irish plan of a rebate or tax scheme to incentivise early purchasers, but car buyers can get a grant of up to €5,000 on an electric car currently.
With AFP reporting
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Sicily must rescue these poor people, feed them clothe them and send the bill to Obama, Cameron, Hollande and Merkel who have caused the strife in Syria.
How?
A better destination for the bill would be Saudi Arabia,the origin of the toxic Wahabbi version of Islam that the Jihadists who are causing mayhem in Syria subscribe to.
I have an inkling that most of these refugees are Sunni Muslims.The Sunni Muslim mega-rich Gulf States should be taking the vast majority of these people,with whom they share cultural,religious and linguistic ties.
European liberal culture is alien to these people and as we have seen already, they refuse to drop the primitive practices that made their countries hell holes in the first place.
Well said al shamen, Saudi Arabia deported tens of thousands of African immigrants recently
but they expect Europe to take in Arab Muslims all the time
Any idiot who hasn’t been brainwashed by RTE will see this so called “Araboo Spring” is a western concoction to destabilize the Middle-East for their resources. Syria is a sovereign nation ,but that won’t stop the West turning it into a $h!+hole so that Obama’s friends in the oil business can profit from it
I agree the west should stay out of Syria the Islamist that want to topple assad are just as bad and in some cases worse, but this has nothing to do with oil, the US has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia and Iran, the true protesters behind the Arab spring at first were the more liberal arab’s but the Muslim brotherhood and other Islamist groups hijacked it from them
It’s already a sh!thole
Exactly how did the west manage to ‘concoct’ the arab spring? Lets talk practicalities here.
Tristan, have you not heard about the boom in oil production in the USA?
Btw, where do you get your oil from when you fill up your car?
Or do you ride a bike?
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