30/05/2022
Why we should tax EVs
I have an EV and I love it, new tech always excites me and for the taxpayer to pay me to make the switch was unadulterated joy. My new car runs on coal rather than oil. Yes, I have moved to the worst polluting fossil fuel there is; shame about the planet.
NZ burns Indonesian coal to fire the Huntly power station. Thanks to climate change and the sorry state of our glaciers, our hydro network’s capacity to supply sustainable electricity to New Zealanders is falling away. To make up the difference we burn coal. The big push to EV’s represents a lift in NZ’s demand for electricity. We will burn coal to provide all of that. Care to join me and switch from one fossil fuel to the next – and one whose emissions are 30% worse?
Fossil fuels already provide 20% of our electricity (60% of all energy) and its share is rising. At the margin when we need more power where do we get it? Indonesia. Our underinvestment in sustainable generation portends that it will be a long time before NZ ceases to be a climate change pariah, despite all Jacinda’s pretty words and the fact these issues wouldn’t even be on Luxon’s radar.
How can NZ fix our stupidity? First step would be to halt all sales of EVs until we have built a sustainable way to generate the electricity they need, a corrective tax should do that. Then how do we get more sustainable electricity capacity? Getting rid of the smelter would buy some time at least. But the urgent investment should be building more sustainable generation.
What are the sustainable sources you ask? Wind, solar, hydro and nuclear. Hydro stuffs the landscape, the cost of building solar and wind towers is soaring thanks to the supply shortages of the relevant strategic metals – something unlikely to disappear anytime soon given how Russia and China have such a stranglehold on supply. Which leaves nuclear.
The climate crisis might be the nuclear-free moment for Jacinda’s generation, but the irony is that progress on NZ’s contribution to arresting climate change without reversing the nuclear-free stance of my generation, is impossible.
Until that day it would make more sense to change the Ute tax to a subsidy and find it from a tax on EVs.
