Blog: By Keith Budden, Head of Business Development, Cenex

It has been over 20 years since I worked on Birmingham’s first climate change strategy and developed a suite of programs to reduce carbon emissions at a local level. The first electric smart cars were trialled by Cenex and Birmingham City Council sixteen years ago. During my time at Cenex over the last ten years, we have witnessed rapid growth in electric vehicles (EVs) and charging technologies. There are now over a million EVs on UK roads and at least 65,000 public chargers and hundreds of thousands of home chargers. So what’s next with the change in administration?

I’m looking forward to the new Labour Government reinstating the 2030 mandate by 2035 and prohibiting the sale of 100% fossil fuel cars and vans. Hopefully, this ban will be extended to exclude hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles, making only zero emission vehicles eligible. However, I anticipate that plug-in hybrids may still be permitted due to lobbying by the UK car industry.

Labour is expected to focus on public transport, with a significant investment, re-regulation, and prioritisation of buses, particularly electric buses. Currently, over 50% of new bus sales are electric buses, and it is hoped that this will soon increase to 100% for urban routes. The funding for bus electrification may also be decentralised to transport authorities and mayors, along with carbon and bus usage targets.

The electrification of bus depots presents an opportunity for commercial vehicles to utilise the bus charging infrastructure during the day. Strategic planning and collaboration between bus companies and commercial vehicle operators could be facilitated by local transport authorities. I also anticipate a greater emphasis on making EV ownership more affordable. This could involve VAT reduction on public charging, lower rates for residents, increased shared home charging, national regulations allowing for on-street charging for terraced homes, and a legal right to have a charger installed in rented properties.

The proposed changes to the planning system, along with the creation of GB Energy, should create an opportunity for integrating sustainable travel as part of the development of new communities. This would involve local smart grids, renewable energy, electric buses, shared electric mobility, and private electric vehicles. Zero-carbon new communities are a real possibility.

I would love to see the new Government focus on public sector fleets which are ripe for electrification. Support from Cenex to help develop the business and operational case for local government, emergency services, NHS fleets along with access to finance from GB Energy could be transformational. This would also provide customers for UK-based commercial vehicle manufacturers such as Vauxhall, Ford, Leyland DAF and Dennis Eagle.

I still believe that the key new technology will be vehicle-2-grid (V2G) which will enable the integration of transport and the energy system and provide a huge decentralised battery asset with numerous economic and environmental benefits.  The rolling out of private AC home V2G chargers and commercial high power DC V2G will be pivotal here.  Within the next two years, I expect to see car Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) providing V2G energy services earning income from their parked vehicles.  This will be one of the most groundbreaking technologies of our generation.  In the longer term, the bi-directional charging system will be integrated within the vehicle and won’t require a special charger.

We can’t ignore the elephant in the room: road pricing. It’s time to trial this technology and gain insights into driver behaviour, in order to implement dynamic road pricing. This will help alleviate traffic congestion and make up for the revenue shortfall from fuel taxes. I believe that all new cars, regardless of whether they run on electricity or fossil fuel, should be equipped with a road pricing unit. This unit would charge based on the distance driven, with different rates for peak times and congested areas. It’s important to ensure that electric vehicles still have cost advantages, as fossil fuel vehicles will still be paying fuel taxes. Of course, implementing this for the existing vehicle fleet won’t be easy and will present significant political challenges. But let’s start by conducting a pilot in a city that already has a clean air zone.