The ULEZ debate - green taxes?

The publicity around extending the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to outer London has raised the issue of how Green ‘taxes’ might impact individual citizens.

From a society point of view there are significant potential benefits from cleaner air. According to Public Health England air pollution is the single largest environmental risk to public health and linked to between 28 to 36,000 UK deaths a year. The total NHS costs linked to environmentally related asthma over the past decade are in the region of £1.5 billion.

On the other hand, if you need to travel for work in Greater London using an older car, it will cost an extra £12.50 a day or up to £4,500 a year. Most people would agree that ULEZ is a desirable change, but it disproportionately impacts some people. In the end, the scrappage scheme has been expanded to cover any household with a heavily polluting car or motorbike, at an additional cost of over £50m.

There are currently a number of big deadlines looming that could end up being problematic unless we take action in advance.

There is a proposed ban on installing new oil boilers from 2026 which could make life difficult for roughly 1.7 million people mainly in rural communities. There has been very little discussion about the cost implications for these citizens if their boilers need replacing.

Similarly, new gas boilers (the main heating source in the UK) are banned for new homes from 2025 and all properties by 2035. We urgently need to move away from using fossil fuels for heating our homes but it’s unlikely this transition can happen without significant financial assistance.

We currently have an intention to phase out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030 (hybrids by 2035). This seems a long way away, and most people don’t buy new cars, but it looks like we are going to reach the deadline with a pretty poor charging infrastructure, a relatively low level of electric car usage and continued limited investment in public transport. These are all recipes either for delay or significant problems.

There are also a lot of other initiatives that will have cost implications. For example there are recycling changes planned which would force companies to pay a fee if their products are difficult to recycle. The companies are in turn threatening to increase their prices. In a cost of living crisis this would add to existing pressures even though the overall cost to society will be reduced.

There is an obvious theme here. We need to make these environmental changes but if we don’t take measures to mitigate their impact we will most likely end up delaying the change (as we have just done recently with the recycling changes) or some people will be disproportionately impacted.

The UK government decided this was all too difficult and has delayed a number of key environmental deadlines for someone else to sort out.