Twenty-seven different member organisations were present at the association’s decarbonisation policy workshop yesterday, which was attended by senior officials from the Department’s for Transport, Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, HM Treasury and OLEV.
Members from a variety of different rental, leasing and commercial vehicle companies took part in the online session. Phil Killingley, Deputy Director at OLEV, deputised for Transport Minister Rachel Maclean who was also due to attend.
The focus of the workshop was to discuss the feasibility of achieving a 2035 target for the phasing out of the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles.
The official target for achieving this is currently 2040, but the Government is keen to explore bringing this date forward to 2035 and wants to understand industry’s views on what potential obstacles would be to preventing an earlier date from being met.
BVRLA members made clear that the next five years are critical for policymakers to pave the way to meeting their ambitious decarbonisation targets, highlighting charging infrastructure and van supply as two challenges.
The BVRLA flagged that policymakers should not try and adopt a ‘one size fits all’ approach to fleet decarbonisation and should instead recognise that different fleet segments have different trajectories. The corporate car leasing sector was optimistic about hitting a 2030 target for banning new petrol and diesel car sales, while commercial vehicle fleet operators were much less optimistic about even meeting a 2035 deadline.
Decarbonisation remains high on the Government’s agenda and the workshop was the second to be held, following an initial members-only workshop on 6 May. The BVRLA plans to organise a range of workshops on the transport decarbonisation theme as looks to take a proactive approach in advising the Government on its strategy.
Any questions or input relating to transport decarbonisation should be emailed to BVRLA Senior Policy Advisor, Catherine Bowen at [email protected].
