Low carbon car taxation and its potential to accelerate transitions to a low carbon transport sector in the UK

摘要

The transition to a low carbon transport world requires a hostof demand and supply policies to be developed and deployed.Pricing and taxation plays a major role, as it affects purchasingbehaviour, overall ownership and use of vehicles. This paperexplores the energy and environmental effects of a number ofkey car pricing and taxation instruments, including gradedpurchase taxes, vehicle excise duties and vehicle scrappageincentives. It employs the UK Transport Carbon Model todevelop long term scenarios of low carbon fiscal policies andtheir effects on transport demand, vehicle stock evolution, lifecycle energy use and carbon emissions in the UK. The analysisaddresses the central question: which type of taxation on lowcarbon cars accelerates fuel, technology and purchasing behaviouraltransitions the fastest with (ⅰ) most life cycle emissionssavings, (ⅱ) most revenue generation for the treasury and (ⅲ)suppressed car use.The results suggest that policy choice, design and timing canplay crucial roles in meeting multiple policy goals. Both CO_2grading and tightening of CO_2 limits over time are crucial inachieving the transition to low carbon mobility. The car purchase‘feebate’ policies are most effective in accelerating lowcarbon technology uptake and reducing cumulative life cycleGHG emissions by between 165 to 524 MtCO_2~(eq) by 2050.Designed carefully they can avoid overburdening consumerswith ever more taxation, which creates a political acceptanceproblem in the case of graduated VED. However, VED schemescan provide handy revenue streams to governments that couldbe recycled in accompanying low carbon measures. Scrappageschemes are found to save little carbon and may even increaseemissions on a life cycle basis. The main policy implication ofthis work is that in order to achieve a transition to low carbontransport system governments should focus on designing incentiveschemes with strong up-front price signals that reward‘low carbon’ and penalise ‘high carbon’.