British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the United Kingdom will stop selling new gas-powered vehicles by 2030, part of a 10-point plan to realize the country’s target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Johnson said the U.K. will “invest more than £2.8bn in electric vehicles, lacing the land with charging points and creating long-lasting batteries in UK gigafactories” to “end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans in 2030.”
Johnson added in his op-ed for the Financial Times that new hybrid vehicles will still be sold until 2035.
In 2019, the U.K. Parliament passed legislation requiring that the government reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 levels by 2050, according to the Institute for Government. The feat will be accomplished through a combination of “reducing existing emissions and actively removing greenhouse gases.”
Since 1990, the U.K.’s most significant greenhouse gas emission reductions have come from the energy sector, which went from emitting more than 250 million tons of carbon dioxide a year to just more than 100 million tons. Such a dramatic drop has made energy production the second-largest producer of greenhouse gasses in the country. Transportation is the largest emitter, with emissions largely stagnating from 1990 levels.
Cutting emissions from transportation is more difficult than from sectors like energy. Energy-related emissions have been cut by phasing out coal-powered plants investing nearly 37 billion pounds in renewable energy since 2010, according to the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change. The bulk of transportation-related emissions come from the roughly 38.4 million licensed vehicles in the U.K., according to the RAC Foundation.
Other aspects of Johnson’s 10-point “Green Industrial Revolution” include making the U.K. “the Saudi Arabia of wind,” building nuclear reactors, planting 30,000 soccer fields’ worth of trees, and increasing investments in carbon-capture technology.
Previously, the U.K. planned to end the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2040, but even that target raised concerns from automakers, according to NBC Right Now.
