The overwhelming cause of air pollution in large cities is vehicle emissions (see DEFRA Website), and the answer is already here. Accelerate adoption of Electric Vehicles (EVs), including cars, buses and ancillary vehicles.
For any EV driver, you will already know that traffic jams are much less stressful than in a petrol or diesel car. Each time you stop, you just stop. You don’t produce any emissions or waste any further energy. This was a delightful and unexpected insight to me when I got my first EV; that part of the stress of a traffic jam for me was the sheer sense of waste – not only was I burning fuel but it was achieving nothing.
Car exhaust pollution (Image: Wikipedia)
A government genuinely committed to delivering clean air could achieve an enormous amount by designing fiscal “carrots” to allow serious growth of EVs to actively reduce air pollution. For example:
- Tax breaks for EV purchase
- Allow in bus lanes / free parking
- EV only zones
Come on Theresa. I know you are busy, but this is too important to leave to chance.
Source: LinkedIn