Transport minister switching to electric

Backing away from biofuels

With a succession of high-profile media debates and reports about the whole-life sustainability of biofuels during the past months, the Government has shifted from its previous strongly supportive stance on biofuels and has been backing away from its own targets and previous commitments on the subject.

In fact, in her largely well-received speech, Ms. Kelly only mentioned the word "biofuel" twice, and both when stressing Government caution over the technology.

Electric potential

Instead, a significant part of her speech was devoted to the potential opportunities of electric vehicles. The car industry, said the minister, "is putting huge effort into producing vehicles powered largely or solely by electricity or by other fuels which practically eradicate CO2 emissions from cars."

She referred to the Project Better Place electric vehicle schemes in Israel and Denmark and highlighted the findings of the King Review of low carbon cars, published in March, which concluded that electricity could replace oil as the major energy source by 2050.

Current challenges

At the same time, she said that the Government recognised the considerable technical obstacles to achieving that goal, including the lack of a charging infrastructure and question marks over battery life.

Perhaps the most significant element of the speech, despite the lack of any policy statements or concrete commitments, was the sheer amount of time devoted to positive words about electric vehicles. Now the Government’s main task may be to figure out how to produce – sustainably – all the extra electricity that will be needed to power a nation of electric vehicle users.