'Stronger incentives' needed in emissions plan - transport group

The Motor Trade Association is calling for a 'scrap and replace' car scheme to be extended to all New Zealanders.

As part of its plan to drive down emissions, the government has announced it will provide $569 million for a trial scheme for up to 2500 cars.

It will target lower to middle income families giving them a financial incentive to shift to a low emissions vehicle as long as they scrap their old belcher.

Motor Trade Association energy and environment spokesperson Ian Baggott said the scheme could go further.

"If the government's keen on getting 30 percent of the fleet as EVs by 2035, you know my maths say that's 900,000, so in a fleet population of 3 million it's still leaves about 2.1 million internal combustion engine vehicles, so they're just going to get older so we need to do something about those vehicles in the fleet."

Baggott said the problem was establishing the eligibility criteria for vehicles that should be scrapped.

Factors which could be considered were whether there was an age or mileage limit on vehicles or whether they needed to be unwarrantable.

A lot of those problems should be ironed out during the pilot scheme, he said.

Baggott said he would like to see the scheme open to all New Zealanders, not just those on low to middle incomes as proposed.

Some families would have multiple vehicles and the oldest car was likely to get passed down to the young driver, which was bad from a safety and environmental perspective, he said.

"From an environmental point of view there's very good reason why that vehicle should be scrapped."

Baggott said upper income families could probably afford to buy an EV and a subsidy might just push them over the line to scrapping their old vehicle.

Trying to get vehicles, be they combustion engines or EVs off the road altogether was unrealistic given there was not the public transport available outside the main centres, Baggott said.

Baggott said a significantly bigger investment in infrastructure such as chargers for EVs would be needed if the government wanted to achieve its goals.

Transport investment 'underwhelming'

Transport advocacy group Greater Auckland's director Matt Lowrie said he was underwhelmed.

"There's a lot of opportunity that the government has to have really driven change in our transport sector and particularly encouraging alternative modes of travel through things like e-bikes or further investing in walking and cycling and public transport initiatives."

He referred to the Climate Change Commission's findings that petrol vehicle travel would have to reduce by 20 percent by the year 2035 as part of the climate budget reduction requirements.

"That means that in our bigger cities we probably need to be reducing our travel that's occurring and the amount of people that are driving, way up to 40 to 60 percent ... so we need much stronger incentives for people to get out of their cars and onto alternative modes."

He said more could be done on improving the public transport services and continuing half-price fares; adding more cycleways and encouraging people to buy more bikes.

"The biggest thing for driving public transport use is improving the quality of the service, so that's better frequency, better reliability, faster speeds of buses and trains.

"There is a part of a $350m package, plans to improve bus priority and other initiatives as well as cycleways and what have you - that's good but that's a drop in the bucket of what's needed."

He would have preferred to see more action on congestion charging in the bigger cities too, especially considering it had broad support from the public and across all political parties.

"There's sort of a very lukewarm announcement on congestion charging and not as strong as we'd like, just kicking the can down the road a bit to like 'maybe we'll do it at some time'.

"A lot of their policies seem to be almost fearful of seeming anti-car or trying to make too much change."

Transport Minister Michael Wood said within the $350 million in the emissions reduction plan to improve access to low-impact transport were 80 to 100 school travel plans, upgrades to 500 bus stops around the country and 14 new bus priority lanes.

The 'scrap and replace' scheme would also have the flexibility for people to trade in their old car for other clean transport options such as public transport or an ebike.

Wood said New Zealand had to shift away from building large new roads as a solution to transport problems.

"In the past the answer to any transport problem that we've had has been to throw a big new road at it.

"We clearly have to shift beyond that.

"The threshold for building big new roads that incentivise lots more cars on roads and lots more carbon pollution is going to have to be a lot higher."

On calls for a ban on the import of petrol and diesel vehicles, Wood said that was a policy which required "a lot of consideration and analysis".

He said progress was being made already, with 20-25 percent of vehicle imports each month being zero - or low-emission, crediting the government's clean car discount scheme as a factor.

Victoria University Adjunct Professor Ralph Chapman said transport changes announced will take place too slowly.

In a statement to the Science Media Centre, he said it is disappointing the date for "phasing out imports of fossil cars" was not set earlier than 2035.

He said the "scrap-and-replace" vehicle scheme that was announced will have the undesirable effect of maintaining car dependence.

"It's disappointing that the date set for phasing out imports of fossil cars is 2035 and not earlier," Chapman said.

What the experts say

University of Canterbury Professor Bronwyn Hayward said - in comments provided by the Science Media Centre - that it was easy to be cynical, but she felt "quietly optimistic".

Optimisic that "finally this is an emissions plan that starts us as a nation on a new journey of clearly reporting and measuring the difference we are making for our climate and our community.

"Having the Climate Commission regularly assess our progress is a very real difference to anything we've had in the past... Transport also makes up a significant and rapidly growing proportion of our emissions - so today's announcement of a range of transport investments from significant spending on public transport to trialling a scheme for trading in old cars owned by middle and low income families is welcome."

Hayward said the government's plan was not a vote grabber, but the country had to take "long term practical steps to fundamentally change our economy, the way we live our lives, build our homes and protect our people".

"We can't afford political magical thinking any more. Today we finally started to take our first steps on a long delayed journey towards a fairer, low emission, and more secure future for everyone."

Massey University Distinguished Professor Robert McLachlan said in comments from the Science Media Centre "The freight emissions target has been strengthened (from 25 percent to 35 percent cuts by 2035) which is welcome. The biofuel target has been weakened (from 15 percent to 10 percent cuts by 2035) which probably reflects the high level of uncertainty and technical difficulty here. The reduction in driving is held at 20 percent by 2035 and it is good to see that targets for every city will be developed this year, with detailed plans to follow.

"A key step will be to develop the details on the proposal to 'incentivise local government to quickly deliver bike/scooter networks, dedicated bus lanes, and walking improvements by reallocating street space (including during street renewals)'.

"It's also very good to see the initiative to 'establish a high threshold for new investment to expand roads, including new highway projects, if the expansion is inconsistent with emissions-reduction objectives'. Just two new highways could easily cost as much as the entire ERP package and risk increasing car usage.

"Unfortunately there is no date yet for an end to the import of fossil-fuelled cars, and the big emissions reductions in transport are still pushed out to the 2030s."

University of Canterbury Professor Simon Kingham told the Science Media Centre the transport component of the emissions reduction plan included a significant focus on reducing reliance on private cars and encouraging walking, cycling and the use of public transport.

"This is because it has been calculated switching to electric vehicles alone won't deliver the required reductions in carbon emissions. New Zealanders have to change the way they travel and they need to transition to more carbon-friendly modes, specifically reducing light vehicle travel by 20 percent.

"This will be a challenge as travel behaviour has historically been focused towards private cars. But meeting these targets is not impossible if there is appropriate investment, political will and public buy in."