(AU ABC) Victorian Government Plans To Dramatically Boost The Sale Of Electric Cars By 2030

ABC News - Richard Willingham

Wodonga retiree Rod Clutterbuck wanted to do his bit to save the planet by buying an electric car. (ABC News: Richard Willingham)

Key Points There will be 20,000 subsidies for new electric car purchases under $69,000  New charging stations will be built and the government will expand its fleet of electric vehicles The government has been criticised for inconsistent policies due to also introducing a new electric vehicle road tax

The state government wants half of all new cars sold in Victoria by 2030 to be zero-emission vehicles, and is offering subsidies of up to $3,000 to help kickstart ownership.

The Andrews government will provide 20,000 subsidies of up to $3,000 for new electric vehicle purchases under $69,000, as part of a $100-million plan to encourage electric vehicle use.

The first 4,000 subsidies will be available from Sunday.

"When people get an EV (electric vehicle) they are starting to save significant dollars off their bills," Climate Change Minister Lily D 'Ambrosio told the ABC.

"It's almost up to $1,600 that is saved off fuel and maintenance costs, each and every year, so we want to make it easier for Victorians.''

As part of the package, the state will also spend $19 million on new charging stations and $10 million to expand the government EV fleet by 400 cars over the next two years.

The government will establish an expert advisory panel to advise it on the policies and infrastructure needed to meet the 50 per cent target by 2030.

"This is very, very ambitious but [a plan] we are absolutely committed to achieving,'' Ms D'Ambrosio said.

This is the cheapest all-electric car in the Australian market which costs almost $44,000. (ABC News: Kristian Silva)

There are fewer than 7,000 electric vehicles registered in Victoria and only 20,000 on Australian roads.

 The 2030 target and subsidies are part of the Andrews government's strategy for Victoria to have net zero emissions by 2050, with interim targets for 2025 and 2030 to be announced on Sunday.

Subsidies make EV cars a 'viable alternative'

Last year, the government failed to meet its own deadlines to set the interim emission reduction targets for 2025 and 2030.

Part of the interim targets policy are "sector pledges": policies and payments to help industries — including agriculture and transport — move towards net zero emissions.

The new electric car subsidy is part of the transport sector pledge. Transport is the second-largest emitter behind energy.

The take-up of electric vehicles in Australia has been slow compared to other developed nations, according to the Electric Vehicle Council, which said Australia lacked the type of incentives, including subsidies, available around the world.

The cheapest electric vehicle on the market is still more than $44,000.

In some countries, subsidies of up to $15,000 are available. 

The Weekly electric cars

The council also said Australia was well behind other nations by not having tough fuel efficiency standards for cars.

Wodonga retiree Rod Clutterbuck has been looking to buy an electric vehicle for some time, to do his bit to "save the planet".

He said subsidies would help others view electric vehicles as a viable alternative.

"We've been wondering why we haven't had one [subsidy] in Australia. Now it sounds like we might be on the march to a better system,'' Mr Clutterbuck said.

Victoria slammed for new road tax

The announcement of the Victorian subsidy followed a coalition of car companies and environment groups slamming the Andrews government for having "the worst electric vehicle policy in the world" because of a new road tax on electric vehicles.

The new charge is 2.5 cent/km charge for electric and other zero-emission vehicles, including hydrogen vehicles, and a 2.0 cent/km for plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles.

The state argues the tax is an electric vehicle user's contribution to the road network, which is paid by other motorists through fuel excise.

Ben Warren, national manager of electrification and mobility for Nissan, said the subsidy and 2030 targets were a good "first step" to encouraging people to make the switch to electric vehicles.

The plan will include $19 million to build new charging stations across the state. (ABC: Ben Deacon)

"The challenge with a road user charge is, in isolation, it seems like a penalty to electric vehicle owners and drivers, " Mr Warren said.

"But when you offset that with incentives and different measures it will at least get back to a neutral starting point.'' 

Opposition MP Georgie Crozier accused the government of coming up with incosistent policies on the spot.

"They're taxing you on one hand and providing a rebate on the other," she said.

"It just demonstrates that the government has really misjudged this policy again. It's another demonstration of policy on the run."

Treasurer Tim Pallas has previously said the revenue raised from the new charge would be "more than offset" by measures to encourage electric car use, such as creating new charging stations.

The road users charge was expected to raise about $30 million per year, with $45 million set aside for electric vehicle incentives in the state budget.

Mr Pallas said the subsidy would "encourage more drivers to consider purchasing a zero-emissions vehicle – and ensure Victoria leads the nation in zero-emissions vehicle uptake."

Links

• 'Worst electric vehicle policy in the world': Industry slams Victoria's proposed tax
• Calls for Victorian Government to set interim emissions reduction targets ahead of 2050
• Australians want electric vehicles, but car makers won't ship them here. Here's why
• Australia Lagging Behind On Electric Vehicles And Climate Action
• (AU) 'Do-Nothing Document': Australian Electric Vehicle Strategy Lets Emissions Keep Rising
• (AU) ACT Budget: $300m Climate Change Initiatives Unveiled
• (AU) Australia’s Electricity Market Must Be 100% Renewables By 2035 To Achieve Net Zero By 2050 - Study
• ABC News: Your Questions About Electric Cars Answered, As Federal Election Campaign Ramps Up

(The Conversation) Inside The World Of Tiny Phytoplankton – Microscopic Algae That Provide Most Of Our Oxygen

The Conversation - Abigail McQuatters-Gollop

Shutterstock/Choksawatdikorn

Author Abigail McQuatters-Gollop is Associate Professor of Marine Conservation, University of Plymouth

Phytoplankton are microscopic algae living throughout the ocean’s surface waters. They can’t swim and are at the mercy of the currents and tides. Despite their small size, phytoplankton enable life in the oceans – and throughout the planet – to exist.

There are two types of plankton – zooplankton, which are animals, and phytoplankton, which are algae. Phytoplankton are filled with chlorophyll which gives them a green colour, just like land plants. And like land plants, phytoplankton play a critical role, converting carbon dioxide and energy from the sun into food through photosynthesis, producing oxygen.

These tiny organisms have been producing oxygen for the world for hundreds of millions of years. But most people know very little about them, what they do for the rest of the world and the threats they are facing.

Phytoplankton are thought to have made an appearance in the Bible’s Book of Revelation, which says: “A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed”.

Modern scientists think this must be a reference to a harmful algal bloom, or red tide, that can be cause by phytoplankton and can discolour that water. These can also produce toxins, causing illness and even death in animals – fish, whales, manatees, birds, and even elephants – and people. 

They’ve made their way into modern culture, too. Alfred Hitchock’s movie the Birds, where birds attack residents of a California town, was inspired by birds behaving erratically due to toxic phytoplankton.

Despite being a source of cultural inspiration, there are many things about phytoplankton most people don’t know – such as the fact they can be seen from space. Unlike land plants which can grow 100 metres in height, phytoplankton individuals consist of a single cell.

Individual phytoplankton can usually only be seen with a microscope, but when phytoplankton bloom, the aggregations are so large that they can be seen from satellites.

A phytoplankton bloom seen from space. NASA/Robert Simmon and Jesse Allen, CC BY

Although they’re microscopic, phytoplankton are wonderfully diverse, with thousands (or maybe even millions) of different species and hundreds of body shapes. Some have spines or form chains to help them maintain buoyancy, while others have flagella – tiny whip-like appendages – to enable them to orient themselves in the water.

Some phytoplankton are covered in CaCO₃ plates, called liths, giving them the appearance of tiny footballs, which play an important role in carbon sequestration.

The lungs of the sea

Rainforests get much of the credit for oxygen production, but phytoplankton produce at least 50% of the Earth’s oxygen. Phytoplankton are the lungs of the sea – the oxygen from one out of every two breaths we take comes from plankton.

Climate change would be much more extreme without phytoplankton. They use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to fuel photosynthesis. When they die, they sink to the sea floor, locking away that carbon. Phytoplankton absorb up to 50% of anthropogenic CO₂, which, without them, would cause higher atmospheric CO₂ levels.

Nevertheless, climate change is causing changes in phytoplankton communities. In some places, like the North Atlantic, oceans are experiencing tropicalisation – when warming waters enable warm water plankton species to move northwards while colder water species are squeezed towards the pole.

Under the microscope. Shutterstock/Choksawatdikorn

Some plankton in the North Atlantic have shifted northwards by over 1,000km (620 miles) in the past 50 years. Warming seas can cause some phytoplankton to change the timing of their blooms. These changes can affect food webs, as the phytoplankton may bloom too early or late to feed the zooplankton that depend on them.

This is why it’s important to monitor them. There are many ways to monitor plankton, including sampling with bottles or nets, or estimating phytoplankton biomass from space using satellites.

The Continuous Plankton Recorder survey has monitored plankton in the North Atlantic since 1931, using commercial vessels such as ferries and cargo ships on their normal routes to tow a one metre long recording device through the sea behind the boat.

The devices filter seawater through a moving band of silk, trapping the plankton. The silks are then sent to a laboratory in Plymouth, UK, to identify and count the plankton.

The survey has recorded almost 800 taxa of plankton, around 300 of which are phytoplankton. It’s created a 90-year-old record of North Atlantic plankton, allowing us to better understand the marine food web and detect changes in the marine environment caused by pollution, fishing and climate change.

Links

• Tiny plankton drive processes in the ocean that capture twice as much carbon as scientists thought
• How plankton help control clouds over the world’s most remote oceans
• Will Climate Change Threaten Earth’s Other ‘Lung’?
• Phytoplankton Dynamics Under Climate Change
• Tiny organisms, giant impact
• Climate-friendly farming strategies can improve the land and generate income for farmers
• Farming without disturbing soil could cut agriculture’s climate impact by 30% – new research
• Mammals face an uncertain future as global temperatures rise

(UK Independent) Global Electric Car Sales Surged By 40% In 2020 Despite Pandemic, Says IEA

Independent - Daisy Dunne

But even higher uptake of electric vehicles is needed if world is to meet climate goals, experts say

A record three million new electric cars were registered in 2020. (AP)

Global electric car sales surged by 40 per cent in 2020 despite the economic downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, a new analysis finds.

A record three million new electric cars were registered in 2020 – a 41 per cent increase on the number in 2019, according to a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The uptick in electric vehicles came even as total car sales plunged by 16 per cent from 2019 to 2020.

The boom in electric car sales continued into this year, said experts at the IEA. Sales of electric vehicles in the first quarter of 2021 were two and half times higher than in the same period a year before, according to their analysis.

However, even higher rates of electric car uptake will be needed if the world is to meet its climate goals, they warned.

Dr Faith Birol, executive director of the IEA, said: “While they can’t do the job alone, electric vehicles have an indispensable role to play in reaching net-zero emissions worldwide.

“Current sales trends are very encouraging, but our shared climate and energy goals call for even faster market uptake.

"Governments should now be doing the essential groundwork to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles by using economic recovery packages to invest in battery manufacturing and the development of widespread and reliable charging infrastructure.”

The IEA’s Global Electric Vehicle Outlook 2021 also found that Europe overtook China to become the largest market for electric cars for the first time in 2020.

At a press briefing, Timur Gul, head of the energy technology policy division at the IEA, said the growth of electric vehicles in Europe was linked to the introduction of subsidies and tighter fuel standards.

In the UK, around 175,000 electric vehicles were sold in 2020 – around 10 per cent of the total number of new cars, according to the report.

This level of sales puts the UK roughly on par with France but far below Germany and Scandinavian countries such as Norway, where electric cars accounted for around half of all new sales in 2020.

Transport is the UK’s most polluting sector, with petrol cars accounting for the bulk of emissions.

As part of his 10-point climate plan launched in November, Boris Johnson announced a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.

However, in February, a report from the National Audit Office warned that meeting this target would require a “major transition for consumers, car makers and those responsible for charging infrastructure”.

Links

• Ford Plans For All Cars Sold In Europe To Be Electric By 2030
• Australia Lagging Behind On Electric Vehicles And Climate Action
• (AU) Almost Alone: Australia Isolated On Climate Despite PM’s Ambitions
• (AU) 'Do-Nothing Document': Australian Electric Vehicle Strategy Lets Emissions Keep Rising
• G.M. Will Sell Only Zero-Emission Vehicles By 2035
• (AU) ACT Budget: $300m Climate Change Initiatives Unveiled
• The End Of The Internal Combustion Engine?
• (CAN) The Myth Of Electric Cars: Why We Also Need To Focus On Buses And Trains
• How to make sure your money is not funding the climate crisis
• World’s glaciers shrinking at ‘accelerating rate’, says largest-ever study