APPG 2030 Ban

Fair Fuel APPG for UK Motorists and UK Hauliers August 2021 Page | 20 Can our national grid cope with the EV Charging demand in 2030 and beyond? To generate the electricity to power our vehicles and also to heat our homes by 2040 we will need to double, NO! triple our generating capacity in the UK. By 2050 it is estimated that the UK will only have 60% of the electricity supply necessary to keep the current number of cars on the road. Even if they were all electrified, a huge reduction in private vehicle ownership will have to take place. Is that the ultimate aim, to curtail freedom of transport choice? Is that dictatorial direction really a Conservative Government’s political goal, under the guise of improving our health, and by affecting UK drivers’ rights to decide on their own modes of transport? Currently, on average, less than 25% of our electricity is generated by renewables. We are decommissioning fossil fuel stations [42%] and no one is investing in Nuclear [14%]. It has taken us 20 years to generate only 25% of our current needs from wind and solar, despite the Chancellor pledging £20m to offshore wind. How are we going to generate 175% or more of our needs from renewables in the next 20 years, assuming Fossil fuels and Nuclear are zero? Wind industry would need to be prepared for such a significant growth in the wind market over the next three decades. Annual capacity additions for onshore wind would increase more than four- fold, to more than 200GW per year in the next 20 years, compared to 45GW added in 2018. Even higher growth would be required in annual offshore wind capacity additions – around a ten-fold increase, to 45GWper year by 2050 from 4.5 GW added in 2018. 4 To manufacture the world’s demand for wind turbines, up to 2050, will require 3200m tonnes of steel [70% of the current world steel production] plus 310m tonnes aluminium and 40m tonnes copper. In addition, erecting them takes 15X the concrete, 90X the aluminium and 50X the copper that would be used in the equivalent fossil or nuclear plants. Either there will not be enough steel (we will be importing more too, due to the production demand that can’t be met here in the UK) to make high rise buildings, or bridges or cars or ships. The lights will go out, our electric car batteries will be flat, or our home heating will not come on. Manufacturing, installation, and maintaining offshore windfarms creates a lot of CO 2, which being additional to the existing baseload power stations, may well result in more CO 2 being created than they save over their lifetime. Early offshore windfarms are already indicating lifespans significantly less than anticipated. Solar panels use toxic materials. Is the manufacturing process being properly scrutinised? What assurances can the manufacturers give that those environmentally damaging emissions are contained? How durable are they in service to ensure no toxic leakage into the ground beneath them? Once they have expired, are the remains going to be recycled? While mandating responsible environmental standards would be prohibitively expensive. Can the thrust into renewable based energy sources cope with the impossible political push for us all to drive electric in 2030? You cannot build an entire reliable power grid around wind and solar power to fuel the replacement energy source of fossil fuelled vehicles.