CO2 emissions from vans in Britain have risen by 63% since 1990, a new analysis shows, as cars become cleaner.
While more and more people are choosing to drive electric or plug-in hybrid cars, van drivers still prefer diesel as electric vans are much more expensive and have little choice of models.
Those who do opt for an electric van may find that they cannot use some public electric vehicle charging stations, which may be too small or have too short charging cables.
Campaigners say the next government should provide financial incentives for companies to opt for zero-emission vans and improve charging infrastructure.
Research of Transport and Environment, an advocacy group for clean transportation and energy, found that there have been a million more vans on the road since 2014, and almost all of them run on diesel. Although the growth of online shopping has created more vans, most are still used by small businesses or sole proprietorships.
The steady increase has seen CO2 emissions from light vans increase by 63% since 1990, while the rapid rise of electric cars and taxis over the past decade has seen car emissions fall by 19% over the same period. even though the total number of cars on the road has also increased.
Although nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions have been significantly reduced, vans are bucking this trend. Since 1990, NOx emissions from cars have fallen by 88% and those from trucks by 91%. But the number of vans has only fallen 38% since 1990, is higher than in 2011 and has overtaken truck emissions in 2015. NOx has been linked to the onset of asthma in children, and roadside emissions have remained illegally high in some places.
Ralph Palmer of Transport and Environment said the rise in van emissions was “alarming”. “Despite the push for more electric vans on our roads, we are still witnessing a rise in greenhouse gas emissions from vans due to continued sales of diesel vans, which counters the trends we are seeing in the car market,” he said .
“Not enough progress is being made to support businesses and sole traders in making the transition.”
Oliver Lord, UK head of the Clean Cities campaign, said Britain is lagging behind European neighbors such as the Netherlands, which are working to create zero-emission logistics zones.
Lord said: “It means that if you drive a van to their cities, if it is registered after next year it will have to be electric. And by 2030 they must all be electric. The share of electric vans sold in the Netherlands is twice as large as in Great Britain. There is no way we can clean our air and achieve our climate goals unless we do more to help companies move away from polluting diesel vans.”
Last September, the government issued a zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, meaning that 10% of all sales of new vans and cars should be electric by the end of this year, rising to 100% by 2035. In theory, if If manufacturers don’t meet that target, they will have to pay £15,000 for each additional diesel or petrol car sold. The Association of car manufacturers and dealers said 341,455 new vans were registered last year, of which 20,253 were powered by electric batteries.
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Palmer said: “There have been very, very generous flexibilities offered to car manufacturers in the first two or three years of this plan, which essentially means we won’t hit the 10% mark this year. But that should ensure that many more van models come onto the market.”
Michael Salter-Church, sustainability director at BT subsidiary Openreach, said it was “frustrated” by the range of vehicles on the market and the ZEV mandate was a “really important step”. “Our engineers are very happy with them – the (lack of) noise and the ability to warm them up very quickly during winter weather,” he said.
Openreach aims to convert all 30,000 of its vans by 2031, and so far they have 4,100 battery electric vans, helped by government grants of up to £5,000 per van for a maximum of 1,500 vans per year per company. “It is right to put more pressure on the manufacturers,” he said. “We were very concerned that no political party has promised to extend subsidies for electric vans beyond March 31, 2025.”
Openreach has installed chargers at 2,000 of its engineers’ homes – most parking at home overnight – but Salter-Church said they sometimes experienced problems charging while on the road. “Charging points are often designed for cars, so we have found limited parking spaces, short cables and sometimes found that they are installed in car parks where the height of the barrier prevents vans from boarding. The charging infrastructure needs to be improved. ”