A PAY-PER-MILE TAX JUST FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES. SURELY NOT?

 One of the ideas being floated for the budget is the imposition of a pay-per-mile tax for driving on UK roads. The immediate motive for this is the growing realisation that revenues to HM Treasury from fuel tax will shrink rapidly as electric cars replace the internal combustion engine.

 

However current proposals, including those from the Resolution Foundation, suggest that the charge, of perhaps 3p per mile, should apply only to electric vehicles and not to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.  I cannot think of anything that would be better calculated to destroy Labour's credentials as a party committed to environmental protection and public health. The international reputation of the UK on climate matters would similarly be demolished, if it were to sabotage what has hitherto been one of the more promising and successful planks in its raft of low carbon policies (after decarbonisation of the power sector).

 

It's worth starting with a simple observation on the current level of fuel duty, frozen since 2011. There is a general principle of sensible taxation for products or activities that cause widespread damage to society. Where the damage is general and a realistic measures and estimates can be made, so-called Pigovian taxes, sometimes described as “sin” taxes, should at least equal the estimated cost to society of the damage done. Otherwise, consumers are not covering the costs of the damage they inflict. If they were obliged to do so, they would tend to consume less of the product, and we would be collectively better off; in this case they would be more likely to switch to low carbon alternatives, hydrogen or electric vehicles.

 

Surprisingly, for ICE fuels, we do have a number that we can use.  Treasury Guidance, which supposedly provides a basis for UK public policy and project appraisal, sets a cost/value to be placed on CO2 emissions/savings. It was set at £265 per tonne of CO2e for 2022. The implication of this is that fuel duty should be set at somewhere around 60p per litre or higher, simply to compensate for the emissions for which it is responsible. For ICE fuels, the current level of fuel duty is 52.95p per litre; in other words ICE vehicles are not paying the true societal costs of the fuel they use.

 

Incidentally this analysis excludes the health costs of urban pollution from ICE vehicles. This is a similar order of magnitude, and is already recognised in London with ULEZ. There are plenty of studies that do cost the health effects, and the numbers are large. So the growing use of electric vehicles is overwhelmingly in the public interest, whether from a national or a global perspective.

 

There are a few rather specious excuses for the proposal to levy pay-per-mile charges on EVs. The main one is that they tend to be heavier, like for like, and may therefore incur higher road maintenance costs. Apart from the fact that the UK sensibly and rarely hypothecates taxes in this way (duties on wines and spirits are not used to subsidise pubs or off-licences), there are two responses that demolish this argument. One is that the relative impact of EVs, compared to large commercial vehicles, or to other factors like weather, that impact on roads is firly insignificant. The other is that if this really were a serious issue we should already be imposing differential weight-based charges on ICE vehicles as well

 

Purely from a climate or public finance perspective, there should not necessarily be any objections in principle to the introduction of pay-per-mile. Road use charging is potentially just one more method of revenue raising, with the advantage that it is to some degree related to an infrastructure cost, with the disadvantage of being quite hard to implement effectively. Like any tax it will also be examined for its wider impacts. But if introduced these taxes should apply to all vehicles, in order to retain the incentive for cleaner vehicles, whether hydrogen or EVs.

 

But if we do introduce charges per mile, we should go all the way to a proper system of road pricing, charging only for the most heavily used and congested routes. This would alleviate city congestion, save time and money, and, while we still have mostly ICE vehicles, would also reduce pollution and improve health outcomes.

 

Perhaps most importantly, imposing a tax specifically targeted at EVs, after a long period when governments have been actively encouraging their purchase, would destroy the credibility of future incentives that governments may wish to use in pursuit of their policies. Such a loss of trust in the consistency and stability of future economic incentives would not be confined to the energy sector or to zero carbon issues.

 

WHAT ARE THE REAL ISSUES WITH LIFESTYLE AND CLIMATE POLICY?

 

Arguments about the supposed war on motorists operated by a Labour London mayor, with ULEZ, the Welsh government with its 20 mph speed limits , and, allegedly, its  planned extension to England becomes ever more bizarre, as do the allegations of a prospective tax on meat, the likely household cost of replacing gas boilers, and anything that the culture warriors of the Tory party think can be turned into a populist rallying cry. So perhaps it’s time to reflect on what are the elements of truth about lifestyle and climate, and what are simply creative approaches to reality, or lies and falsehoods as they might be called by the less charitable.

 

Let’s deal with some of these in turn.

 

ULEZ

 

Actually this has little or nothing to do with climate policy. It was first mooted as a sensible proposal by Tory London Mayor Boris Johnson. It’s primary purpose is to improve air quality and public health. It may have increased CO2 emissions slightly in the short run, by driving out diesel cars faster than petrol cars, but this will have been offset by encouraging a faster take-up of electric vehicles.

 

Congestion charging

 

Again the primary benefit for this has usually been argued as the reduction in congestion and the substantial saving in the time drivers have to spend at the wheel. There is an important secondary benefit in reduced particulate emissions and in reduced CO2 emissions, because the stop-start involved in congestion reduces overall fuel efficiency.

 

Some of this benefit was negated by the rather illogical exemption of electric vehicles from the London congestion charge. At a time when most vehicles are still petrol or diesel, EV vehicles will still have increased congestion, and hence emissions from all the other non-EV vehicles on the road. When all vehicles are EV, there will still often be a strong case for congestion charging, or road pricing, even though the incremental health and CO₂ benefits have become minimal. 

 

The reality therefore is that there is a climate policy case for congestion charging, but it is not a case that has been promoted particularly vigorously.

 

Speed limits

 

Reduced speeds will generally tend to reduce fuel and energy use. This is a matter of simple physics. But the effect in residential areas where the limit is already 30 mph is likely to be relatively trivial. Much more significant would be a reduction from 70 mph to 60 mph on motorways and dual carriageways. In the 1970s US governments imposed 55 mph limits in the face of the OPEC cartel and global oil price hikes, primarily in order to reduce fuel consumption.

 

There are therefore strong arguments to be made, on climate policy grounds, for reduced speed, at least while the majority of vehicles are petrol or diesel. But, at least for the UK, climate has never been the most significant consideration. The drivers for speed limits have always been road safety, and, more recently, air quality.

 

Once again truth is the first casualty of today’s politics, so we might note, inter alia, that:

 

·      Most Tory members of the Welsh Senedd supported the 20 mph default limit.

·      It is subject to local decision making and is not a “blanket” limit.

·      Minimal analysis shows it has almost negligible effects on most journey times.

·      There is no evidence that it has caused congestion or traffic problems.

·      There is evidence that lower speed limits reduce injuries and fatalities.

 

Significant emissions reductions could, fairly obviously, result from limiting higher speeds, for example on motorways, or from enforcement of existing limits, but this is not currently a plank of policy in the major parties. Meanwhile the 20 mph limit has already been widely extended to English cities, with little comment.

This issue, bizarrely given its relative insignificance in relation to either economic activity or climate, is the one that has produced the most insane claims of economic damage, with Welsh Tories claiming it could have economic impacts on the Welsh economy of between two and nine billion pounds. We await any form of explanation for this number.

 

Heat pumps and the end of gas boilers

 

This is perhaps one of the hardest energy sector transitions for the UK, and heat pump issues are hard to cover adequately in a short post. But there are a few important points to note. The first is that major infrastructure transformations are possible in the UK, for instance in the rapid conversion from town gas to natural gas. A second is that we should expect further efficiency improvements and cost reductions for heat pump technology, and a third is that the era of cheap gas (from the 90’s onwards) is coming to an end, reducing the cost barriers for consumers wanting to switch to heat pumps.

 

Of equal importance is the need for tariff reform so that the price per additional kwh of electricity use more closely reflects the actual incremental cost of supply. This would have a dramatic effect on the competitiveness of heat pumps against gas. It implies a radical restructuring of electricity tariffs to change the way that fixed and legacy costs are recovered, but this simultaneously provides an opportunity to deal with some of the other issues on the distributional impact of current tariff structures. 

 

 

Less meat and dairy consumption

 

This really is a major lifestyle choice that would have a major impact on emissions, given the amount of land used for raising crops that are then used as animal feed. It’s potentially much larger in scale than what we have discussed above and will persist as a significant question even after transport has been fully decarbonised.

 

It is also, undeniably, a social trend that many more people are choosing to eat less red meat, in particular, on health grounds, and that vegetarian food has become more popular.

This is certainly an important area of debate for the future, although even the greenest of climate campaigners tend to focus on reducing meat consumption rather than eliminating it. We also know that some meats are intrinsically less carbon intensive than others. And it’s quite clear that none of the major parties in the UK are currently in a hurry to demand meat bans or meat taxes.

 

Looking ahead we might expect that the pressure on food resources, especially if accentuated by a changing climate, will increase the price of many important commodities, including both grains for human consumption and animal feed, and this will affect the price of meat and hence consumption. In terms of lifestyle changes, this really is a huge question, affecting as it does national and global agricultural systems as well as personal diets and elements of social life. Agriculture and land use is also a hugely complex subject.

 

Time for an intelligent conversation

 

It is time to step back from the more hysterical arguments that attempts to limit environmental damage somehow threaten important personal freedoms of all kinds, or the fundamentals of modern life. There are undoubtedly potential conflicts, although, as shown above, few if any lifestyle initiatives have so far been driven primarily or at all by climate objectives. Health and safety have been far more salient factors. 

 

But this may need to change, and it would be good to see more serious discussion of the choices that we may in future have to make as the existential threats of climate change become increasingly apparent, and alarming.

THE CASE FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES IS STRONG ENOUGH TO SURVIVE ATTACKS FROM THE ICE LOBBYISTS

ICE: The acronym for Internal Combustion Engine

 

A new report appeared earlier this month, commissioned by the APPG “Fair Fuel” lobby group. I dissected the group’s previous 2021 report in a previous blog[1], focusing particularly on the group’s demonstrably absurd claims that the cost of the additional power generation infrastructure for EVs “would bankrupt UK plc”.

 

The new report, commissioned from the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR), is superficially a more professional analysis, but similarly lacks balance and objectivity. It makes a series of claims regarding the costs and benefits associated with following current UK government policy, to phase out purchase of internal combustion (ICE) vehicles, and allow only battery only electric cars (BEV) by 2030/2035[2], which it describes as the “alternative case”. This is compared in a cost benefit analysis (CBA) with a “base case”, which corresponds to a much slower movement to full electrification, and achieving quite limited electrification by 2050.

 

CBA techniques are, in practice, much better suited to looking at comparatively marginal or incremental choices within a relatively self-contained and well-defined context, where most of the parameters are well established or easily estimated. For big policy choices that play out over long periods, and where few of the relevant parameters can be easily estimated with confidence, there is a risk of extreme dependence on unverifiable guesswork, at best, or simply deliberate insertion of numbers that fit the prejudices of what the sponsors want to hear, at worst.

 

The CEBR report illustrates these problems well. Specifically, the very large numbers assumed on costs do not align with the findings of the highly respected and authoritative Committee on Climate Change.[3] At best they often seem to represent assumptions rather than careful analysis.

 

The key CBA estimates in the CEBR report, comparing the government’s 2030 policy with the APPG base case, for the full period 2023 to 2050, are (in £ billion):

……………………………………………..

 

Benefits:                                                                                                        

 

Reduced CO₂ emissions in driving                                    64.7                                                               

Health benefits of reduced emissions                               11.2                

 

Costs

 

Extra costs of purchasing BEVs                                        187.8              

Extra fuel costs of EVs                                                        34.9                                                                          

Cost of extra CO₂ emissions in manufacture                      32.5                                           

Waiting time costs                                                               46.5                

Extra infrastructure costs                                                    98.5                

 

……………………………………………

 

These assumptions all deserve a few brief comments.

 

Extra costs of purchasing BEVs. New vehicle prices are set at 2022 levels. The extra cost, and hence the EV price premium for car owners, is therefore assumed to remain unchanged to 2050. This is an outstanding example of the twin intellectual fallacies of assuming no technical progress, and ignoring other factors, notably economies of scale in BEV production, and market or economic pressures and trends. 

 

In contrast a 2021 study by BloombergNEF[4] predicts inter alia that new battery prices will fall by 58% between 2020 and 2030, and that for light vehicles, electric will be cheaper than ICE vehicles by 2027. They add that the growth in EV sales is no longer being driven primarily by policy, but by organic factors, ie consumer preferences. Other analysts have predicted earlier parity with ICE vehicles. Arbitrary assertion of a nearly 200 billion cost penalty is simply perverse, and casts doubt on the quality of the CEBR analysis as a whole. This line item might more realistically appear as a further benefit to current policy rather than a massive cost.

 

Cost of extra CO₂ emissions in manufacture. A recent review[5] of studies on this subject, by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), provides an excellent summary. It reveals a wide, factor-of-five, range of estimates for emissions in manufacture, reflecting different battery chemistries and other factors. A major factor in this type of lifecycle analysis is the extent to which the power sector has been decarbonised. The ICCT review indicates that emissions in production, as with direct production costs, are expected to fall dramatically, not just with power sector decarbonisation, but with improved battery development and recycling techniques. The CEBR report does not appear to take account of these factors.

 

Infrastructure costs. This covers additional generation, network infrastructure, and EV charging points, not broken down in the CEBR report, which can challenged on several points. First, National Grid has elsewhere suggested 6 GW additional capacity (with smart charging), not the 19-26 GW (without smart charging) indicated in the CEBR report[6]. This cost will in any case be financed through what drivers pay through their electricity tariff, already implicitly covered in the calculation of running cost saving. Second much of the distribution network infrastructure is already overdue for replacement or upgrading; this is required inter alia to accommodate heat pumps. A typical view of most distribution engineers is that, at the installation stage, the incremental cost of additional network capacity, the number relevant to a CBA, is very small in relation to the total. 

 

That leaves charging infrastructure per se. Another ICCT report[7], based on projections for the 100 most populous metropolitan areas in the USA, suggests infrastructure costs of less than $1000 per new EV, falling as the number rises. While the UK might have higher installation costs, the US figure is dominated by home charging, suggesting lower average costs likely in the UK.

 

Taken together these arguments suggest the CEBR estimate of additional infrastructure costs is hugely overstated.

 

Health benefits.  A recent Oxford University report[8] estimated current (2018) annual health costs of £ 6 bn per annum, attributable to vehicle emissions (not just CO₂). Prima facie this suggests a much higher health benefit than the CEBR estimate of £ 11 billlion for the period to 2050.

 

Extra fuel costs (excluding CO2 externalities). This appears to have been calculated by looking at cost savings to the motorist and, quite correctly, subtracting the tax element to reflect the fact that this is a transfer payment not a resource cost or societal benefit. However overall the Committee on Climate Change takes a different view[9] on future fuel costs and estimates a real resource saving for the UK[10]. Moreover oil prices have recently risen substantially and may remain high.[11] 

An important technical point in a CBA is that the tariff price EV drivers pay per kWh considerably exceeds the true incremental cost of generation, as it includes a very high proportion of shared and fixed network costs. So this too is merely a transfer payment which serves to understate the resource or societal benefit of switching to EVs. Again the implication is that the report is seriously overstating costs.

 

Waiting time costs. It seems unlikely that waiting times on this scale will persist with improved infrastructure, or as drivers adjust to EV ownership. I am not aware of any other analysis which has considered this to be a major issue. Again this figure seems to be based on hypothesis rather than evidence or analysis.

 

Using a 2050 cut-off point

 

A major conceptual flaw in the analysis is the 2050 cut-off point.  The base case and the alternative emphatically do not lead to the same state of the world (or UK) in 2050.  In the base case the UK continues to have 50 million tonnes per annum of CO₂ emissions, shown in the report as reducing very slowly. In the alternative case UK has an (almost) fit for purpose vehicle fleet in 2050, (almost) compatible with net zero objectives. In effect this implies the creation of a valuable capital asset, worth about £ 10 billion per annum for some years after 2050 (using the CEBR’s own estimates). This should be included in any CBA analysis.

 

The alternative case would also mean the UK was at least making the necessary contribution to the minimum reductions required for global climate objectives. If all countries fell short in this and other sectors to a similar degree, then the prospects for safeguarding future climate health and prosperity would disappear. 

---

[1] http://co2economics.blogspot.com/2021/08/costing-electric-vehicle-future-ignore.html

[2] 2035 relates to the end date for plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV)

[3] https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-Sixth-Carbon-Budget-The-UKs-path-to-Net-Zero.pdf

[4] https://about.bnef.com/electric-vehicle-outlook/

 

[5] https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life-cycle-GHG_ICCT-Briefing_09022018_vF.pdf

[6] However the report does not repeat the gross errors other 2021 report which estimated generation infrstrucure at £ 1.5 trillion

[7] https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_EV_Charging_Cost_20190813.pdf. 

 

[8] https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-06-pollution-cars-and-vans-costs-£6billion-year-health-damages

[9] I have not yet been able to check this claim.

[10] Although we should of course note that the real resource cost in Russia or the Middle East may be much lower than that

[11] It’s worth noting that the prices importers pay may be considerably in excess of the real resource costs of extraction in the Middle East or elsewhere.  So in a global CBA context, some different conclusions might be drawn.

COSTING AN ELECTRIC VEHICLE FUTURE. IGNORE THE ALARMISTS.

 

Contrary to recent claims from a group of our MPs, EV demands on our power system infrastructure do not lead to national bankruptcy.

The All Party Parliamentary Group opposing government policy on electric vehicles claim in a new report that the required investment in electricity generation will “bankrupt UK plc”. Unfortunately for this claim, it is based on some major errors of fact and understanding. These exaggerate investment costs by a factor of 25 or more, even on the basis of a rather pessimistic cost assumption that is the authors’ starting point.

Thirteen MPs and Lord Lilley have endorsed a new report[1] from the All Party Parliamentary Group[2] for Fair Fuel for UK motorists and UK hauliers. The press release describes it as ground-breaking. However the report consists largely of a stitching together of questionable “facts”, opinions and arguments from multiple sources and special interest groups, and contains major and consequential errors, of both fact and understanding, for electricity in particular.

Inevitably a central focus of the analysis, and for press headlines, is the additional investment cost required to service the additional electric vehicles implied by government targets. It is this estimate of required investment cost that has provoked the “bankruptcy” claim and headline, so it is worth examining its credibility. The  calculations are set out quite unambiguously in the report.

“FairFuel UK and the ABD have also analysed the economic consequences of dumping ICEs and concur with ... [the] prodigious cost conclusions shown here, to all our lives. The Government’s unilateral decision to commit UK to 75% reduction in carbon by 2030-2035 will increase our national debt by £2.17 trillion.[3]

2020 Consumption of petrol, diesel, bio diesel, bioethanol was 30 million metric tonnes per year. … A 75% reduction target by 2030 -2035 or whatever target date is chosen, means finding enough energy to replace 22.5 million tonnes of fuel per year.

The average energy density of the fuels: petrol, diesel, bio diesel, bioethanol is 12.5 kWh per kilo. That [equates to] 281.25 TWh pa.

Considering one nuclear power station generates about 4 TWh/year, [this] means 70 nuclear power stations are required to offset the 75% reduction in petrol and diesel.

A nuclear power station costs £22 billion, so 70 nuclear power stations =  £1.54 trillion.”

Order of Magnitude Error 1. The calculation ignores efficiency in use.

What matters to the consumer, and hence for aggregate energy consumption, is the efficiency with which different fuels can provide useful energy to deliver the service required.  Internal combustion engines (ICE) have very low efficiencies in the delivery of useful energy compared to electric vehicles (EVs), but the report assumes they are the same.

A typical claim made for EVs by charging networks is that EVs are 85-90% efficient while internal combustion engine cars 17-21%. If accurate, this implies we should divide the APPG estimate of 281.25 TWh by a factor of 4 or 5.

Calculating an equivalent electricity requirement is not just a matter of comparing technical parameters. The reality will depend on many factors including speed, driver behaviour and driving conditions, so there is no single universal answer. Hence it is worth comparing alternative sources and informed assessments. The following quote is from the Australian Energy Council[4]. 

“EVs convert over 77 per cent of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 12 per cent – 30 per cent of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels,” according to the US Department of Energy. …. Particularly in city driving, IC engines waste fuel while idling or operating at very low outputs compared to their design capacity, and engines at low output achieve very low efficiencies. … And, unlike EVs, most conventional vehicles do not recover the energy wasted to heat by braking for traffic lights.

The well-researched Committee on Climate Change (in its Sixth Carbon Budget[5]) uses an efficiency multiple of about 3, less than the above, but recognises that the nature of EV load also implies a less than proportionate requirement for additional capacity, a view shared by the National Grid.

Carbon Commentary also provide a first approximation estimate[6] of total requirements, for cars, based on an intuitively reasonable calculation from official transport statistics.

A 2017 electric car will typically get 4 miles from a kilowatt hour of energy.[NB 40 mpg for a typical petrol driven car would be equivalent to about one mile per kWh] The average car in the UK travels about 8,000 miles a year. That means that a typical electric car will use about 2,000 kWh a year.  In 2016 there were 36.7 million cars on the road in the UK. The total amount of energy required to power these cars if they were all electric would be about 75 TWh a year.  The total consumption of electricity in the UK last year was about 300 TWh. So if all car and taxi transport was by electric vehicles, the total amount of electricity needed would rise by approximately 20%.

This of course is an estimate that covers only cars and taxis, but assumes 100% rather than 75% replacement. The National Grid[7] likewise does not seem to be unduly concerned with the issue and suggests that “even if the impossible happened and we all switched to EVs overnight”, peak demand[8] (measured in GW not TWh) would only increase by around 10 per cent, or about 6 GW. One reason for this rather low number for peak capacity requirement is that vehicle charging load can be managed so that incremental TWh can potentially be met by much less incremental capacity than would be required for other consumer loads.

Order of Magnitude Error 2.

The report is also at odds with reality in its depiction of the scale of output expected from a 3.2 GW nuclear plant. It takes as its cost benchmark the reported numbers projected for the construction cost of EdF’s 3.2 GW Hinkly Point C nuclear plant (over £ 20 billion), but assumes an electrical output of 4 TWh for that plant. Hence it deduces the need for 70 Hinkly Point C equivalents, or 224 GW of additional capacity. However EdF have quoted an annual output (assuming 90% load factor) of 25 TWh, a scale confirmed by the government in its evidence to the Public Accounts Committee.[9] A more accurate statement of the expected output from this benchmark 3.2 GW plant therefore reduces the scale of investment by a factor of 6.

The error factors are multiplicative, and the result is that the implied 224 GW of capacity calculated in the report, for a 75% switch to EVs, exceeds the more realistic 6 GW suggested by National Grid, for a 100% changeover, by a factor of 37.

Is the Hinkly Point nuclear plant a reliable cost benchmark anyway?

There are several reasons to suppose it is not. The Public Accounts Committee was critical of government procurement performance, and clearly feels the cost of this contract was excessive. It is also generally assumed that subsequent nuclear power plant of similar design would be cheaper. Not least, not everyone will agree with the assumption that all-nuclear is the least cost route to expanding power generation, the implicit assumption that underpins the report’s cost estimates.

Dieter Helm[10] and others have also argued that about 50% of the estimated very high cost of Hinkly C is entirely attributable to the very high return to be earned by EdF over the life of the project. If this were indeed to be financed through addition to the national debt, one might surely expect to apply a much lower rate of return, closer to government borrowing rates. Helm argues for rates as low as 2 or 3%, halving the cost of a station such as Hinkly C. By implication Helm’s arguments alone would imply a further cost reduction by a factor of 2.

………………….

The misunderstandings in the report, at least on relative efficiency and likely cost, and an overall error factor of perhaps between 25 and 50, even on the basis of its own assumptions and methodology, are all the more surprising given that the House of Commons Library has just published (June 2021) an analysis, Electric Vehicles and Infrastructure[11], on the same subject. This is a brief but well-researched source of basic information on the subject under discussion. One might assume it was available to MPs.

In reality, if we do proceed successfully with low carbon generation, electric vehicles have a major positive role to play in helping to balance power systems associated with less flexible generation from nuclear or renewable plant. This makes them an economically net positive option in any low carbon future. But that is a bigger subject to which we can return, and which I have addressed elsewhere[12].

………………

Updated on 3 September 2021 to include additional sources and references

[1] APPG 2030 Ban (fairfueluk.com)

[2] Readers should note that these informal groups of MPs do not have the official standing of parliamentary Select Committees.

[3] This number seems to be the national debt in April 2021, as referenced later. It is intended, one assumes, to be the £1.54 trillion calculated by the APPG researcher.

[4]  EVs: Are they really more efficient? (energycouncil.com.au)

 [5] Sixth Carbon Budget - Climate Change Committee (theccc.org.uk). Sector summary, surface transport.

[6] 100% EVs can be easily accommodated on the UK grid. | Carbon Commentary

[7] 6 myths about electric vehicles busted | National Grid Group

[8] In large power systems, it is important to distinguish between the additional energy requirement, kWh or TWh, and the amount of additional generation capacity required. The relationship between the two, for different types of consumption, is a crucial element of system economics.

[9] Hinkley Point C - Committee of Public Accounts - House of Commons (parliament.uk). The Department (BEIS) is recorded as stating that Hinkly Point C is expected to supply about 7% of UK requirements, ie about 20-25 TWh.

[10] Energy Policy: What happens next? - Dieter Helm

[11] CBP-7480.pdf (parliament.uk). Electric vehicles and infrastructure June 2021

 [12] Enabling Efficient Networks For Low Carbon Futures | The ETI

......................

ADDENDUM. 19 October 2021

This APPG report has been modified since the above was posted, but the fundamental errors remain.

The relevant paragraphs have been revised to suggest that the output of a nuclear plant of the same scale as Hinkly C could be between 8 (not 4) and 25 TWh, and therefore that the EV requirement is for “between 12 and 35 new nuclear power stations” (not the more realistic 3 that use of more conventional arithmetic would imply).

CHANGES	previous	current
Estimated energy requirement (c 4x factor error)	281 TWh	281 TWh
Output of “a Hinkly C” – a 3.2 GW station	4TWh	8 -25 TWh
Number of such stations required	70	12-35
Cost of a station (presumably a 3.2 GW station)	£ 22 bn	£ 10-50 bn

  

So what has happened.

·       The author has continued to ignore the ICE/EV efficiency issue, which creates an error factor of about 4,

·       and has also taken the point that EdF are claiming an expected 25 TWh for Hinkly C, but simply made this one end of a wide range. As far as I can judge from correspondence, the 8 TWh figure seems to have been constructed in rather an odd way, by looking at the maximum output of any current UK nuclear power station, ie about 1.0 GW, and multiplying by 8000 as the approximate number of hours in a year. But of course Hinkly C is a planned 3.2 GW, and Sizewell B, which is the most recent of existing nuclear plant has a nameplate of 1.2 GW, ie about a third of the size. This has all the hallmarks of someone who does’nt understand the basic units of measurement, or indeed what they are doing at all.

·       The author has also invented a new figure of £ 50 billion as the upper end of the cost range for “a nuclear plant” – implicitly another Hinkly C. This implicitly acknowledges my comment that a £ 22 bn cost of Hinkly might be over the top anyway (and not just because of cost of capital issues), but only by putting in a lower end of £10 bn. The £ 50 bn is sufficiently large, when combined with top end of the range on stations required, to give a high final number that even exceeds the previous estimate of total cost. But both bits are absurd numbers which remain unexplained.

John Rhys.