MPs warn that the uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles is too low to meet national climate change targets

The government is falling behind on its commitments to switch a proportion of Britain’s car fleet to electric vehicles, an influential committee of MPs said on Thursday.

Take-up of electric vehicles has been slower than hoped in the UK, but the technology is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport, and tackling the air pollution produced by the increased number of diesel cars on the road.

According to the guideline target recommended by the government’s climate advisors, ultra-low emission vehicles such as electric cars should make up 9% of the fleet by 2020, but current forecasts by the Department for Transport (DfT) show the figure by the end of the decade is likely to be about half that. Ministers have not said what should happen if the target is not met, nor produced a plan for beyond 2020.

Parliament’s environmental audit committee said ministers were failing to put forward the incentives and infrastructure needed to encourage drivers into electric cars, while air pollution was breaching regulations, with 38 of 43 clean air zones exceeding acceptable levels of nitrogen oxides.

In addition, the committee said the lessons of the Volkswagen emissions scandal, in which the manufacturer was found to have cheated on tests to make vehicles seem greener than they really were, had not been learned. Affected models were only starting to be withdrawn from the market, the MPs were told.

Mary Creagh, chairwoman of the committee, said:

“The uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles is too low to meet the UK’s climate change targets at the lowest cost to the public. Air quality targets that were supposed to be met in 2010 won’t be hit until 2020 at the earliest. And it’s been almost a year since we discovered VW had fitted cars with cheat devices, but the government has still to decide what action to take against the company.”

Read more: The Guardian