The UK Government has announced a ban on all new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040.
Yes our team from theDepartment for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, and the Department for Transport have jointly announced that from 2040 the UK will end the sale of all new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans. This is another component of the plan to tackle air pollution due to the environmental risk from rising levels of nitrogen dioxide.
This is one part of the programme to deliver clean air – next year the Government will publish a comprehensive Clean Air Strategy which will address other sources of air pollution.
Air quality in the UK has been improving significantly in recent decades, with reductions in emissions of all of the key pollutants, and NO2 levels down by half in the last 15 years.
Despite this, an analysis of over 1,800 of Britain’s major roads show that a small number of these – 81 or 4% – are due to breach legal pollution limits for NO2, with 33 of these outside of London.
To accelerate action local areas will be asked to produce initial plans within eight months and final plans by the end of next year.
The Government will help towns and cities by providing £255 million to implement their plans, in addition to the £2.7 billion we are already investing.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said:
We are taking bold action and want nearly every car and van on UK roads to be zero emission by 2050 which is why we’ve committed to investing more than £600m in the development, manufacture and use of ultra-low emission vehicles by 2020.
Read the full report at Gov.uk site.