Diesel Taxes Could be Hiked to Cut Air Pollution

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MarkII

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Saw this mentioned on the TV news this morning - wondered how long it would take for it to rear its head again.

Patrick McLoughlin said hiking fuel duty or low-emission taxes “is something the Chancellor will need to look at” in order to reduce toxic levels of nitrogen oxide and prevent deaths in cities.

News of the proposals by the Think-tank, Policy Exchange was originally reported back in March.

Think-tank Policy Exchange has called for a rise in road tax for new diesel cars, to fund a scrappage scheme.

I'm all for cleaning up the planet and being able to breath fresh air but every government just makes 'knee-jerk' policy reactions to the problem (that seem to have more to do with filling the coffers at the public's expense) rather than devising genuine solutions to the problem.

Typical :doh:
 
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Not sure if this is correct but I was reading an article whilst on holiday that said VED was going to change dramatically for diesel vehicles, according to the "leaked" data for new performance diesels like BMW 640d or whatever series they were talking £850 - £1000 per year starting with new cars but the article never mentioned what the effect would be on all the diesels already out there.
 
Not sure if this is correct but I was reading an article whilst on holiday that said VED was going to change dramatically for diesel vehicles, according to the "leaked" data for new performance diesels like BMW 640d or whatever series they were talking £850 - £1000 per year starting with new cars but the article never mentioned what the effect would be on all the diesels already out there.

I don't think the plan was to "over tax" the older cars - more of getting them scrapped under a scheme. But you never know!
 
Not sure if this is correct but I was reading an article whilst on holiday that said VED was going to change dramatically for diesel vehicles, according to the "leaked" data for new performance diesels like BMW 640d or whatever series they were talking £850 - £1000 per year starting with new cars but the article never mentioned what the effect would be on all the diesels already out there.

It's interesting Ian, from what I've read things seem to have changed: The government appears to have ignored the Policy Exchange suggestion that the tax on new diesels should be increased to fund a scrappage scheme for older vehicles and instead seems keener on the the idea of applying a blanket increase to fuel duty for diesel - I wonder why :rolleyes:

The latter approach doesn't reflect whether you're driving a diesel made under EU6 regs or something much older - it also doesn't reflect the presence or lack of a DPF.

Dieselgate proved conclusively that lab testing & real-life emissions are a world apart but it's pretty obvious that the latest design of diesel engines are still going to produce lower emissions than older engines (or pre-dpf) will - so you really have to question the wisdom of a policy that simply charges ALL diesel drivers more :wallbash:

Makes you wonder what would happen if say 1/4 of the car-buying public suddenly converted to electric or hybrid vehicles - would we see the same taxation just redistributed to what are now considered 'green' alternatives and what would their justification be for that??
 
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Anybody know how much pollution an A380 or 747 produces per hour?

Or how much is produced per day by all the flights into & out of LHR, LGW & all the other 'London airports?
 
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...Makes you wonder what would happen if say 1/4 of the car-buying public suddenly converted to electric or hybrid vehicles - would we see the same taxation just redistributed to what are now considered 'green' alternatives and what would their justification be for that??

Yes. Any scheme intended to encourage certain type of behaviour by rewarding it in one way or another, will no longer be needed once the scheme has succeeded and public changed their habits. At that point it also become unaffordable.

Think of alcohol and tobacco consumption - the duty on these products is high because these are classified as 'undesirable behaviour' - but if we all stopped smoking and drinking the Chancellor would be seriously out of pocket and other taxes will have to rise. The whole principle of taxing alcohol and tobacco is based on the expectation that we WILL continue to consume both....

With EVs, you can only provide subsidies and tax exemptions whole they are NOT common. Once they become a common sight on out streets, the funding allocated to encouraging drivers to buy will have to be withdrawn.
 
Anybody know how much pollution an A380 or 747 produces per hour?

Or how much is produced per day by all the flights into & out of LHR, GWK & all the other 'London airports?

A380 is 75g of Co2 per passenger Kilometer, no idea on other gasses though. I remember it from all the advertising bumf
 
A380 is 75g of Co2 per passenger Kilometer, no idea on other gasses though. I remember it from all the advertising bumf

I've seen a number of comparisons over the years.

Basically IST a car with 3 or more occupants will probably do better than a densely occupied aircraft on a per passenger per km measure over an optimal journey for each type of vehicle.

The thing that sends aircraft off the scales in absolute totals is the distance of the journeys and the number of passnegers. Somebody doing a return journey from UK to Singapore is doing something like 12K miles there and back. So an A380 taking off and flying there and back with 470 passengers is the equivalent of perhaps 156 cars with 3 occupants setting out to do 12K miles simultansously.

My recollection is that doing the calculation a few years ago for diesel trains using total fuel purchased by one of the operators divided by the passenger / km and the numbers were not that different - the car occupancy equivalent was 2.3. So basically 3 people in a car may well be more ecofriendly than those 3 people travelling by train.

If anybody is thinking about this in terms of eco policy - I think the issue is that aircraft are actually not the problem - it's the rationale for the journey. My feeling is that a high proportion of journeys by air are discretionary and don't *need* to be undertaken. This applies to leisure and business.

At the same time I think if people are really concerned about emissions then quoting CO2 or other emissions per car is meaningless because vehicle occupancy can dramatically change the amount of emissions per person per mile (or km).

The public and politicians don't really get this.
 
Like on most occasions, government policy totally misses the point and seems, more often than not, to make matters worse!!

(MarkII: "if 1/4 of the car-buying public moved to EV/Hybrid")..... the Chancellor would be seriously out of pocket and other taxes will have to rise.

That's my point Mark - if the plan for a rise in fuel duty on diesel goes ahead, Joe Public will be 'sold' the idea that it's 'in the interests of public health' - yet in reality there are other ways of achieving such a goal (if that were the government's real intention) but considering the number of diesel vehicles on our roads (thanks to previous government policy), a hike in fuel duty is just a money-spinner.

If a significant proportion of the public moved to EV/Hybrid, then whatever they say now, they'd just find an excuse to tax those.


With EVs, you can only provide subsidies and tax exemptions while they are NOT common. Once they become a common sight on out streets, the funding allocated to encouraging drivers to buy will have to be withdrawn.

Government subsidies and tax exemptions are slightly different issues:

Subsidies for EVs have been pitched to encourage uptake of what is still a developing technology with only limited sales volume, which results in high unit costs - as soon as the volume increases, economies of scale will help to reduce unit costs, making subsidies unnecessary.

Tax exemptions relating to RFL/VED are also promoted to encourage uptake, this time with the accent being on low/no direct CO2 emissions (of course indirect emissions aren't taken into account) but as usual this is a false picture and has nothing to do with the tax reflecting actual use of our road system, distance travelled or the volume of emissions produced.

For instance, I could buy a C63 with the 4.0 V8, use it once a month for a 120 enjoyable miles and yet (according to the figures that the government use) produce less CO2 annually (444,672 grams) than my neighbour in his Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, who uses his car every day and does say 10,000 miles a year (675,906 grams) BUT I would pay more tax, both through VED & Fuel (notwithstanding the large amount of VAT I paid at purchase)!! :wallbash:

The vehicle taxation model, has been broken for years and it seems as far as the government (in fact any government) is concerned, there will always be an excuse for punitive taxation of the motoring public - it's just a case of which excuse to use.
 
I would support increases in fuel duty if it replaced the road fund tax. While it wouldn't discriminate perfectly between different vehicles in terms of emissions it would address the issue of low mileage users paying the same tax as high mileage. No taxation model is going to be perfect but one based on fuel usage would be an improvement on what we have.

Is there any other country that adopts this simple taxation model.
 
They have been talking about this for a while, but there are a hell of a lot of diesel drivers now after they made it cheaper to tax one because of lower CO2 so it wouldnt be popular.

Like Mark/190 and pretty much anyone with any sense says though, the whole fuel tax/pollution charging system is stupid. A pollution charge/road tax should be levied directly on the fuel - that way the more you burn, the more you pay. It would still encourage efficient engines but not penalise the person with the V8 who only drives it once a month.
 
According to AA figures from 2015, we already pay significantly more for diesel than other countries.

AA-Fuel_Prices_2015.png
 
I've seen a number of comparisons over the years.

Basically IST a car with 3 or more occupants will probably do better than a densely occupied aircraft on a per passenger per km measure over an optimal journey for each type of vehicle.

The thing that sends aircraft off the scales in absolute totals is the distance of the journeys and the number of passnegers. Somebody doing a return journey from UK to Singapore is doing something like 12K miles there and back. So an A380 taking off and flying there and back with 470 passengers is the equivalent of perhaps 156 cars with 3 occupants setting out to do 12K miles simultansously.

My recollection is that doing the calculation a few years ago for diesel trains using total fuel purchased by one of the operators divided by the passenger / km and the numbers were not that different - the car occupancy equivalent was 2.3. So basically 3 people in a car may well be more ecofriendly than those 3 people travelling by train.

If anybody is thinking about this in terms of eco policy - I think the issue is that aircraft are actually not the problem - it's the rationale for the journey. My feeling is that a high proportion of journeys by air are discretionary and don't *need* to be undertaken. This applies to leisure and business.

At the same time I think if people are really concerned about emissions then quoting CO2 or other emissions per car is meaningless because vehicle occupancy can dramatically change the amount of emissions per person per mile (or km).

The public and politicians don't really get this.

Dryce,

(Welcome back BTW)

Would it be OK to what you do for work, or even, what field you work in?

My curiosity is spiked by your last sentence.
 
If anybody is thinking about this in terms of eco policy - I think the issue is that aircraft are actually not the problem - it's the rationale for the journey. My feeling is that a high proportion of journeys by air are discretionary and don't *need* to be undertaken. This applies to leisure and business.
.

Nah, surely not....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Pi8yv7-18

Dryce,

(Welcome back BTW)

Would it be OK to what you do for work, or even, what field you work in?

My curiosity is spiked by your last sentence.

Whoah! You asked that?
 
Would it be OK to what you do for work, or even, what field you work in?

Generically - 'I work in IT'.

But that covers and has covered a huge varied multitude of sins over almost 4 decades. Not just the systems - which have varied from small 4 and 8 bit microcontrollers through to large mainframes - but the sectors which have varied from coal mining, oil and gas, manufacturing, food retail, sports media, banking, legal, police, healthcare, education, and military.
 
Generically - 'I work in IT'.

But that covers and has covered a huge varied multitude of sins over almost 4 decades. Not just the systems - which have varied from small 4 and 8 bit microcontrollers through to large mainframes - but the sectors which have varied from coal mining, oil and gas, manufacturing, food retail, sports media, banking, legal, police, healthcare, education, and military.

Thanks for clearing that up.

When you put yourself apart from 'the public and politicians' I was rather hoping that you were military, the church or some kind of alternative lifestyle follower.

IT is a little disappointing if I'm honest, at least some of your work has been military I suppose. :D

(Yes I know IT is essential these days and also that a knowledge of the industries above will give you a broad level understanding that many of us 'public' won't have)!
 
When you put yourself apart from 'the public and politicians' I was rather hoping that you were military, the church or some kind of alternative lifestyle follower.

With hindsight I'd hope for that sort of thing too .....

If I was to get my chance to play the game again I'd like to give the RN a go.

I have often thought about setting up an alternative religion based on fundamentalist aetheism.

And then having done that retire to travel the world with a camera and backpack to photograph sunrises and ordinary people.
 

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