Revealed: Government’s electric car revolution could cost more than £200bn
By Paul Homewood
From the Telegraph:
Plans to end the sale of all diesel and petrol cars by 2040 started to unravel today as it emerged 10,000 wind turbines or 10 nuclear power stations would need to be built to power their electric replacements.
National Grid, which manages the UK’s power supply, said in a report that peak demand for electricity could increase by 50 per cent if and when the nation switches to electric vehicles.
Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary who formally announced his plan to ban the sale of cars with internal combustion engines, hinted that wind farms or nuclear power stations are the only clean energy sources that the Government will consider to bridge the looming energy gap.
Michael Gove hinted only nuclear or wind are acceptable ways of generating electricity Credit: EPA
But the 269-page air quality plan that his department published – which sets out how it will bring down emissions – contained no details of how the extra electricity needed to charge the national fleet of 26 million cars will be generated, or how much it will cost.
Richard Harrington, the energy minister, said he was “certainly planning for a significant increase in demand” but could not be more specific about how Britain will generate up to 30 gigawatts of extra power on top of the 61GW currently needed at peak periods.
The AA warned that National Grid would come under immense pressure if it had to cope with “a mass switch-on after the evening rush hour” while independent energy experts suggested the Government would struggle to build the infrastructure needed by the 2040 deadline.
Meanwhile diesel drivers must brace themselves for a potential tax hike in the autumn budget as the air quality plan said it “will continue to explore the appropriate tax treatment for diesel vehicles…ahead of making any tax changes at Autumn Budget 2017”.
Mr Gove told the BBC: “We can’t carry on with diesel and petrol cars, not just because of the health problems that they cause, but also because the emissions that they cause would mean that we would accelerate climate change, do damage to our planet and to the next generation.”
Asked if there was no alternative to more wind farms and nuclear power stations, Mr Gove replied: “There is no alternative to embracing new technology.”
When it was pointed out that the Conservatives promised in their 2015 manifesto to halt the spread of controversial onshore wind farms, Mr Gove replied: “The Conservatives had a manifesto promise to ensure by 2050 there would be no diesel or petrol vehicles on our roads.
“Today we’re confirming that should mean no new diesel or petrol vehicles by 2040, and critically President Macron in France has a similar aspiration… and Norway wants to reach that goal by 2025 so we are, quite rightly, in a position of global leadership in shaping the new technology.”
An artist’s impression of the new Hinkley Point C nuclear power station Credit: EDF
National Grid’s estimate of up to 30GW more power being needed to charge electric vehicles would mean that 10,000 wind turbines, which each generate 2-3 megawatts of electricity, would have to be erected. There are currently around 7,600 wind turbines in the UK.
Alternatively, the extra power could be generated by building 10 more nuclear power stations like the new generation reactor at Hinkley Point in Somerset, at a cost likely to exceed £200 billion.
Rob Doepel, energy partner at EY, said that 2040 “may seem a long way off”, but Britain has a “long history of investment in energy structure drifting beyond proposed timescales”.
He said the process of approving major new schemes, such as building nuclear power stations, would have to be speeded up if the goal was to be achieved using private investment.
The report published jointly by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Transport does not explain how the thousands of extra charging points needed for the electric car revolution would be funded or installed.
Nor does it contain any proposals for how the Government will eventually make up for the £30 billion in fuel duty it will lose when petrol and diesel become a thing of the past.
A Government spokesman said: “Further details on these matters will be published next year. Today’s announcement was about outlining the ambition.”
In fact, the Telegraph understates the extra numbers of wind turbines needed, as usual confusing capacity with output.
On average, if we need 30GW extra capacity, we would need 100GW of wind capacity. Currently, the onshore wind capacity is just 10.9GW.
And, in any event, we would still need 30GW of back up capacity, in whichever form.
Gove clearly does not understand the basics of energy generation if he believes we can simply build more wind farms to plug the gap.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Guido points out greenies rank hypocrisy of praising French & criticising Tories for implementing same policies:
The MSM seems unable to read, the DEFRA consultation document says that only conventional petrol/diesel cars will be banned. This is really a storm in a teacup, all new cars cars after 2040 will have some form of electric assistance, but most people will buy hybrids for their extra security and flexibility, in particular the ability to start them if no recharging point is available.
This is rather like Paris, eco-zealots are being shafted, but of course so too are consumers.
Sorry this is not correct re hybrids. The government plan is for all road vehicles to be ‘zero emissions’.
Quote: ‘a further strategy on the pathway to zero emission transport for all road vehicles
to be published by March 2018.’
Click to access air-quality-plan-overview.pdf
Paragraph 6 of that document:
“The shift to ultra-low and zero emission vehicles is well under way, and will continue to gather pace over the coming years as we move towards 2040, by which point the government will end the sale of all new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans”
The keyword is “conventional”, i.e. it does not appear to apply to hybrids, and it cannot because people who park cars in roads or communal car-parks, or garages without an electricity supply would be stuffed.
Yes, I spotted that.
The statement yesterday seemed a bit ambiguous re hybrids
(Hybrid) ICE may use artificial, manufactured ‘natural’ gas, or, H2 fuel-cell.
https://www.toyota.co.uk/new-cars/new-mirai/landing?dclid=CKuOwuDxqdUCFUfIUQodR2oGXw
The cut-off date may be fuzzy but ‘zero emission’ isn’t.
Shouldn’t you second paragraph read ‘On average, if we need 30GW extra output, we would need 100GW of wind capacity. Currently, the onshore wind capacity is just 10.9GW.’?
“To get the output that 30GW of nuclear would produce would need 100GW of wind” is probably the best way to express it.
In 2004 the Labour Government reversed its policy of opposing nuclear power stations. In 2008 the then Labour energy minister, Alastair Darling announce that they intended building 10 new nuclear power stations by 2020. That had nothing to do with electric cars. It was to replace coal and our existing nuclear power stations. Who would put money on even one by 2025.
We still need to replace our existing nuclear power stations AND build some ( 10?, 15? ) for electric cars.
We have a problem !!
Perhaps you should add in “and damming and flooding the Highlands using sea water to try to create enough pumped storage”.
About time someone pricked the bogus “Air Pollution Scam” balloon which is driving this nonsense.
Where are the bodies (other than in computer models designed to produce them)??
Little evidence of significant excess mortality even in Beijing, Mandalay, Karaichi etc. where they do have real problems.
It is the new Fear Campaign, saving us all from ourselves by those who know best.
NO2 is the new CO2
We need a few hard winters with cold summers else we’ll never end this nonsense!
£200 billion pounds here, £200 billion pounds there. Pretty soon, you’ll be talking serious money.
And for a country that is effectively bankrupt if all the debt was called in.
It is strange how some see Gove as an intelligent person. But during the referendum campaign when he was justice minister he actually said in a live TV interview that the UK should break international treaty law to leave the EU by just repealing the European Communities Act 1972. And as environment minister he knows equally little about what he is saying.
I think the point about Give is that he’s very good on subjects he’s personally investigated, but as subject to the advice of “his” civil servants as anyone else put into a ministry without the opportunity to prepare. An argument against reshuffles, they put the civil servants in charge.
It is of course perfectly legal for any nation to denounce a treaty, and it is frequently done. Generally not a good idea as it generates bad feeling, but possible.
Still, I’m very disappointed that he’s been captured by his department in record short time.
The Civil Servants are even more to blame than the Pollies.
If he is of a mind to repeal anything it should be the Climate Change Act (2008), which got us into this catalogue of problems in the first place! We need nuclear but we need fracking too, as soon as possible (and without French and Chinese ‘support’.
“Gove clearly does not understand the basics of energy generation if he believes we can simply build more wind farms to plug the gap.” Replace “Gove” with “Every member of the Government”.
Add “and the Civil Service”.
“In a position of global leadership”
To LaLa land and crass stupidity.
And Gove is supposed to be bright?
God help us!
Yet again it’s road traffic that gets all the blame for pollution. 40,000 premature deaths a year in Britain? The European Environment figures were 37,800 but didn’t I read a report recently that the largest cause of air pollution is wood burning? Never a word said about that. When are we going to ban this vile stuff.
These mortality rates are statistician-speak for worse, and we all know that pollution is bad. The issue ought to be how much to spend on abatement against the benefits, but that is too difficult for politicos. Basically the banning of I/c engines should be compared with a NHS spending cut: that would maybe focus the minds of the elite with their expensive wood burning stoves. Tax wood???
Genius Gove should read the recent paper by Onn et. al (2017) reported on “notrickszone” which shows just how little CO2 electric cars save with respect to diesel/petrol.
Also the major epidemiological study on the lack of effect of PM25s on mortality, over on “Junkscience”.
We are being royally screwed, again, by the congenital idiots in our “government”.
We are indeed being royally screwed again, this time by Gove’s new ‘Blob’ comprising semi-detached civil servants, the partisan and remarkably stupid Climate Change Committee and the raft of interested providers of renewable technologies.
Letter I have just sent to the Daily Telegraph:
Do I have this right? The Government would like me to scrap my 15 year old diesel car (that is worth so little that I have no concerns about depreciation; I can fill its tank almost anywhere in 5 minutes, drive 500 miles getting well over 40 miles per gallon, refill it and drive another 500 miles), and replace it with an electric car (based on rapidly-evolving technology that will be obsolete in under a year), costing many thousands of pounds, which we allow me to drive a maximum of 200 miles before requiring half a day to recharge, assuming I can find a charging point. And this in a country responsible for less then 1.5% of the world’s carbon dioxide production. A triumph of expensive and pointless virtue-signalling over common sense.
Well said.
But no chance of publication.
Because the truth hurts.
How many additional Power Stations / Wind Turbines will be required replace the Gas used for domestic heating and cooking?
How much will it cost to upgrade the National Grid?
How much will it cost install thousands of domestic EV charging points?
What does it matter when we are single handedly saving the world!
A back-of-a-fag-packet, super-duper-computer simulation indicates 6x as many as we presently have:
If 30 Gw = £200 Billion, 300 GW = £2000 Billion.
This is getting silly!
” “We can’t carry on with diesel and petrol cars,” Oh good, we can dispense with your ministerial limousine tomorrow then.?
Nah, though not!
Trouble is, it’s only a few hundred yards from Marsham Street to Parliament or Downing Street. Not much of a challenge for an electric car.
The imbecile Gove strikes again.
When will we be shot of this incompetent fool.
Your last line has echoes of “will no one rid me of this troublesome priest”.
Plus you lose your backup disaster system when they convert all heating/cooking to electricity. Now if power goes out, you still have the ability to somewhat heat your house and cook food. After conversion when a squirrel blows up a transformer or a car or truck hits power poles, you will be totally without energy. And what does this law do to your infrastructure of lorry/transportation industry. Will the big lorries have to convert to electricity and will electric lorries be capable of hauling tons of cargo?
And since Brexit still won’t have happened in 2040, what about all the East European, Turkish, and Indian lorries* thumping off the cross-channel ferries. Will the cross-channel ferries by all electric also?
*I am assuming a small expansion of the EU, which will be 70% Muslim, of course,and based in Kabul.
I live in an all electric flat so have a good camping stove and a gas heater which I use when the storage heaters run out of heat on a cold winters evening. Also I have a small battery which I can use to charge my Ipad etc. And can run the telephone. Plus plenty of candles. Had a good old old hurricane lamp; but the glass got broken.
The last time we lost power when our substation freaked out, a huge 40 ft diesel generator got parked in our carpark as we were all considered vulnerable adults, being in sheltered accommodation. Heaven help others if a whole area blows a fuse due to hungry EVs.
The intention of these policy advocates is to destroy the fossil fuel distribution system by eliminating the market. There won’t be a distribution system to deliver diesel for your or any other backup generators.
Building wind turbines until doomsday can’t solve anything. Ask any sailor what happens when the wind isn’t blowing.
Yes oldbrew. The maritime industry solved the problem of alternative energy many moons ago. That why our shops are full of all those goodies we never thought we needed.
Gove is either a staggeringly stupid or highly manipulative idiot, I lean towards the first alternative but either way he is an idiot.
Whilst acknowledging inhaling noxious exhaust fumes isn’t exactly pleasant the statistics for average life expectancy would suggest a prosperous country with millions of petrol and diesel cars is a much better place to live a long life than an impoverished one without, where typical lifespans are noticeably shorter. Therefore one could reasonably conclude that fossil fuelled powered cars increase life expectancy!
Central planning does not work and can not work. How would Britain fund the NHS without gas taxes?
National Grid’s estimate of up to 30GW more power being needed to charge electric vehicles would mean that 10,000 wind turbines, which each generate 2-3 megawatts of electricity, would have to be erected. There are currently around 7,600 wind turbines in the UK.
Two points that come to mind, They don’t generate 2-3 megawatts each and this is just an estimate for road vehicles, we haven’t started on heating yet. Oops.
Yes, according to govt stats, onshore wind capacity stands at 11.6GW, so 7600 would be about 1.5MW each of capacity
I was thinking more about actual output versus boilerplate capacity and wondering if 10,000 was a bit of an underestimate.
Has Gove et al. Thought of what happens when (not if) the GPS goes down due maybe to a solar magnetic event, or a nasty dictator zapping an odd satellite or two.?
Eggs in baskets comes to mind.
This policy has all the hallmarks of a U-turn waiting to happen. Not only do we not have the technology, generating capacity or infrastructure to support this move, we can’t even successfully finish electrification of the railways or build a third runway for the (battery powered?) aircraft we need. The people who govern us must either be incredibly naïve or stupid; your call….
Cretinistic virtue signaling usually does.
Except when it is Green.
We need Farage, or Trump, to close this idiocy down.
where can n I get a copy of this ridiculous report claiming that some 40,000 premature lives will be lost due to ICE cars. For that is the current Meme driving this agenda, politically driven to enable compliance with the disasterous Climate Change Act.
Indeed there is a problem with ICE vehicles; but reports of the this nature are little more than political PR. Difficult to counter but simple to believe.
Meanwhile the science I suspect, is suspect and depends largely on extrapolation of statistical evidence of the particular from this particular to the general, and is based on a raft of assumptions which need to be considered.
Start with Steve Milloy’s “Scare Pollution”
I think he occasionally slightly overstates his case. Which is better than the ludicrous exaggerations and barefaced lies from the shroudwavers.
But I am yet to see any evidence that there is today a serious problem anywhere in the UK.
Oh! Wait! That’s unless you live anywhere a “recycling” operation which, curiously, all burst into flames with huge black clouds of genuinely toxic smoke, every time the yard is full of recyclate that no-one wants.
Funny that. And curious that the Greenies and their official mouthpiece HMG, never express any concerns!
The best place to look is Euan Mearns’ evaluation of the claims:
http://euanmearns.com/mortality-from-diesel-car-pollution-in-the-uk/
It does a lot of the dissection work on the report.
My thanks “it doesn’t add up” . A must read for all, particularly Gove et al.
I was interested to see that Gove’s statement said that the sale of petrol and diesel cars would be banned from 2040. Of the three petrol engined cars that I have, one is fifty two years old and a second twenty two years old. The third is seven years old. By my reckoning, unless the sale of petrol and diesel is banned, petrol and diesel cars will still be on the road until 2060 at least,or even longer, unless their use is banned as well.
The effects of this legislation would be felt long before the deadline. Who would invest in major refit upkeep of refineries and pipelines, knowing that they will be useless long before any major capital investment is recovered. The whole point of the legislation is to starve the distribution system by eliminating the market. Once investors believe that said legislation is not likely to be reversed they will immediately stop investing the billions necessary to keep the system running.
Not only will you not be able to keep your petrol fueled car running long after the cutoff date, it will become increasingly difficult to operate it long before it becomes official. Prices will rise, availability will be limited and fueling stations gone.
As usual of course the Government has no idea of the implications of what it is talking about. If they are going to ban the internal combustion engine then that needs to include all commercial traffic, vans, trucks and buses, all diesel trains and all the back up diesel generators used by companies, hospitals and back up to the national grid. It would certainly take more than twenty years to electrify all the diesel lines, just look at how long they have pontificated over HS2, let alone the costs. Where is all the money going to come from?
Bearing in mind the Government does not have a good record of implementing technology, you can bet this will be a gigantic f*** up.
I am afraid Gove and May’s Tory Government have shown themselves up to be the incompetent idiots they are. And I am a Tory. God help us with all these twits running the Country.
Keith
How right you are. The Government does not have a clue about what it is proposing. The easy bit was choosing to get rid of fossil fuels in electricity generation first, and they have messed that up, at great cost.
They seem unable to grasp just what will be involved in implementing a policy of zero fossil fuels across the board, transport, heating etc. Yet they blunder on.
I was born before the war, and all I can say is. ” What a sad state this country is now in. And not just on energy policy. ”
Yes Sir, my thoughts exactly. We voted for a Conservative government, who normally would rescue us from the depredations of the previous labour shambles. This time we voted tory and got full on socialism. Like you, I was born before the War and we were free but now, I am fed up with the neo marxism we appear to have. Here comes the police state, red in tooth and claw.
“And, in any event, we would still need 30GW of back up capacity, in whichever form.”
No, you will need 30GW of back-up capacity in some form other than wind generation. If the wind is not blowing when everyone gets home from the rush hour drive and plugs their cars in to recharge, it won’t matter how many windmills you have dotting the landscape. And solar won’t work, as the sun is already down by the evening rush-hour, at least for half the year.
So, in essence you will need the 10 nuclear plants regardless of how many windmills you erect. Better get building!
Yes, I should have said “reliable” back up capacity!
One thought.
Hardly anyone not retired or dead has experienced an actual power cut. Hence most people don’t even consider the possibility.
I suspect we will experience them again long before 2040. If so it will concentrate minds.
You must be one of those posh denizens of the Great Wen.
Here in Yorkshire – near York, I experience an interuption of the supply probably monthly, on average. Enough so you have to reset clocks and hope it hasn’t upset the computer too much.
I guess we get a ‘proper’ power cut (1 -5 hours) two or three times a year.
Yes, I do have a woodburner. Yes I do have a good supply of torches and candles. No, I didn’t let them give me a smart meter.
I was here when the disastrous Ted Heath led us into the three day week and a shortage of coal and electricity. It was difficult, but then we had survived the war. Then of course we did not have all the electronic gadgets that are with us now, when almost everything depends on computers and a full blown energy system. Now we would be in a severe crisis, were this to happen! The politicians naturally did not suffer in the Heath blackouts and will expect the same this time. As Einstein said, “for someone to repeat the failures of the past whilst expecting a different outcome is a sign of insanity”.
The three day week had more to do with Scargill, NUM and attempted insurrection.
It took Thatcher to beat the Marxist Scargill
Electricity transmission, distribution and generation is a victim of its own success with high reliability and delivery.
That may not continue with the poor generation strategy. Also much of the transmission and distribution system is post war. There was a lot of money spent on distribution in the 1970’s when house building peaked
Consider how useful electric cars would have been in Montreal five years ago. Think on how useful they will be when the power lines come down in the coming cooling period.
Some other costs to factor in: I suspect we would need about £50bn of grid reinforcement, and another £50bn or more to reinforce the local distribution network – this could be even more expensive as it will entail extensive road digging, as well as installing new larger capacity local transformers etc. Then perhaps another £40bn on 2 million fast charging points at £20,000 a time. Not to mention the extra cost of the cars themselves, with lithium and nickel and cobalt prices likely to soar as demand rises. Even at just £5,000 per vehicle across 25 million vehicles, that’s another £125bn. That’s another £265bn in toto.
The basic problem is that 90% of the population can’t do arithmetic and are proud of it!
No one has mentioned the smart electricity meter. This device is being introduced on the premise that it will enable people to more accurately know how much electricity they are using the reason the electricity companies are keen to install them is that they will to know WHEN a person is using electricity, so if want to charge your electric car at 18.00 it will cost say £10.00 a unit whereas if you charge it at 02.00 it will cost £1 a unit.
At times of peak demand the price per unit will be increased to force people off, No need to build anymore power stations just force load shedding to match availability.
The real problem is that the local electricity networks in the streets will need to be upgraded.
No number of smart electric meters will be able to compensate for the huge demand of millions of electric cars all plugging into the grid at 6 PM to recharge for the next day. Unless they are able to cut off your AC, heat and lights, there’s not much other load to shed. Home based chargers will take hours to fully recharge an electric auto, as most home haves limited amperage available from the meter.
Retrofitting homes for 150 to 200 amp service so they can recharge a couple of cars in the garage and also run the lights and AC is going to be another huge cost.
The generation, transmission and distribution of electricity will not be solved in 23 years, or as really required, much earlier.
Are electric cars the best answer for future personal transport?
At this point in time it is unclear if hybrids will be banned in 2040.
As pointed out it is unlikely, as electric cars will take a lot of work to make them viable. It may be hydrogen powered cars go by them in popularity. The government is rubbish at picking winners and should let a free market decide.
Longer than 23 yrs will be needed.
This move has to do more with daft CO2 targets than pollution