Netherlands: No New Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle Sales After 2025!
2GreenEnergy mega-supporter Gary Tulie writes: Hi Craig, The lower house of the Dutch parliament recently voted to end the sale of fossil fuel vehicles from 2025! How much longer before the rest of the EU follows?
I’ve always loved those people. When my marketing agency ran a huge campaign for Philips Electronics in Eindoven, I bought an enormous Dutch flag for one of our office walls.
More to the point, that’s fantastic news. It kind of gets to my “hockey-stick growth curve for EVs” that I wrote about just a few days ago.
You also mentioned China, a country that already has a mandated share of new energy vehicles purchased by public institutions of 30% now rising to 50%.
Wow, this is all great news.
The rest of the EU may wisely wait to see how the ban on IC vehicles works in the Netherlands before doing anything. If it works out well, selectively implementing it elsewhere would be a reasonable thing to do. It could work out far better than anyone could imagine, or it could be a disaster. More likely it will be somewhere between those extremes. Attempts to predict often fail.
Actually, the initial post here is slightly misleading. Not ALL sales of IC vehicles will be banned; only the sales of NEW IC vehicles will be banned. Depending on market considerations and how the public reacts, that could cause the resale value of IC vehicles to skyrocket and the price of new IC vehicles to increase greatly as the ban date approaches, but perhaps not. If the public really likes the EVs, the resale values of IC vehicles could drop. Who really knows?
In any case, it will be interesting to watch and see what happens.
Craig,
I agree it sounds like great news !
I hate to be a killjoy, but before we celebrate let’s be just a little circumspect. A majority vote in the Lower House although significant, is no guarantee that the proposal will survive the parliamentary process.
In addition the main coalition partner in the government, is so opposed to the bill that it threatened to withdraw prom the energy agreement of which this bill is a part.
Even if the bill survived, it has so many exceptions as to be meaningless as the Netherlands is a geographically tiny member of the EU. (about the size of Maryland). The Netherlands can’t prevent cars from other EU nations being used in the Netherlands, nor can they prevent citizens of the Netherlands owning cars registered in the EU.
Meanwhile this bill has been quite rightly called an exercise in hypocritical political posturing.
The reasoning behind such an accusation is quite simple. Focus focused on the emissions created by the Netherlands’s 400,000 new car sales each year, detracts from Netherlands owned shipping companies like NileDutch.
NileDutch is a Rotterdam-based shipping company specialising in cargo liner services from and to West Africa. This company just announced a naming ceremony for the second of four newbuild container ships, the 3,510 TEU MV NileDutch Dordrecht.
The four container ships will be registered in the Netherlands and fly the Dutch flag.
Each of these ships will emit more deadly, toxic pollution by burning bunker oil ( No, 5 &6 Marine grade HFO) than 50 million cars ! Since the Netherlands has less than 8 million motor vehicles in total, even if all new cars were converted to zero emissions by 2025, it would take several centuries to equal the emissions of just these four ships !
The Netherlands is one of the largest ship owning nations. The emissions from the Dutch navy alone is many times greater than all the cars in the Netherlands.
Nor is it a question of either/or. Both could be accomplished if the political will existed. It’s a question of priorities.
Excellent points. You are quite correct in what you say about priorities, insofar as your thesis about marine transportation is exactly correct. The world would love to see A major correction in the way this whole industry operates.
Marcopolo,
Thank you for the post.
There is no reason that ships have to be fueled with low grade bunker fuel; there are other options available. However, we should consider what would happen to the bunker fuel if it were not used for ships.
Moreover, there is too much shipping. Here in the U.S. we buy products from China which were previously manufactured here. The only reason is that China can make them more cheaply. One of the results is to export manufacturing pollution from the U.S. to China where manufacturing pollution is usually far greater. Another result is to create even more pollution resulting from the shipping.
I shall not attempt to propose solutions for exporting manufacturing to China, but surely it is, for a number of reasons, a significant problem which should be addressed.
Hi Frank,
You are absolutely correct, there’s no longer any reason for shipping to use marine grade No.5&6 fuels. Even the economics are no longer justifiable.
As for international trade, especially manufactured goods, I understand your concern. However, it has to be recognized the liberalization and globalization of trade has done more to lift hundreds of millions from poverty than any other event.
Modern communications have made “trade without borders” increasingly inevitable, and a means of global wealth redistribution through competition.
Of course there are casualties. Australia has lost it’s domestic car manufacture to Asia, the UK and USA have lost textile,clothing and footwear manufacturing, etc.
Hopefully, these losses are balanced by gains in new industries with new technologies.