Electric cars should dominate Icelandic roads within 13 years, the Minister of the Environment Björt Ólafsdóttir has announced. Switching to electric cars is the most effective step Iceland can take to lower the emission of greenhouse gases and battle climate change she explained.
While the number of electric cars has grown rapidly in the past years they only make up 1.5% of the total number of vehicles in Iceland. A total of 1,400 electric cars and 1,700 hybrid vehicles are currently on Icelandic roads.
Read more: Share of new electric and hybrid cars in Iceland second highest in Europe
The Minister of the Environment told the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service that increasing these numbers was a priority and the most effective way to fight climate change. We have all this green energy, and our plan for tackling global climate change we aim at switching the entire fleet of vehicles to electricity and hydrogen.
Read more: Iceland meets only 0.01% of it's electricity needs with fossil fuels, 99.99% from renewables
More charging stations
Experts have pointed out that while Iceland has cheap and abundant electricity produced from renewables, the network of charging stations for electric cars has been woefully inadequate. Building a better system of charging stations has therefore been a top priority.
Among the steps which the government has taken is to require all new multi-home apartment buildings to include charging stations for electric vehicles and to encourage and subsidize the building of charging stations along the Ring-Road. Local municipalities, like Reykjavík, have also stepped in to offer free charging stations to motorists.
The government climate change plan, which was recently approved by parliament, calls for 40% of all energy used in transportation on land, up from 6% today, while the share of renewable energy used by the fishing fleet, one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases in Iceland, should rise from 0.1% today to 10% by 2030.
Impossiblly ambitious?
Sigurbjörn Ingi Friðleifsson, an expert on renewable energy in transportation told the local news site Vísir that the goal was commendable, but that the timeframe was too narrow. In order to achieve the goal of replacing oil with electricity as the source of energy for passenger vehicles every single new car sold in the next decade and a half would have to be electric.
Yes, technically it is doable. We could take an Kim Il-sung approach and ban cars that burn fossil fuels tomorrow. But the vehicle fleet is exactly 10 to 15 years old now, and based on the current rate of renewal 90% of the fleet will be renewed within the next 13 years.
Sigurbörn told Vísir that to achieve the ambitious goal petroleum and diesel cars would have to be outlawed today. He said that this was obviously unreasonable, but that it was reasonable to announce that new petroleum and diesel cars would be banned in 2025. He added that electricity was quickly gaining in transportation and that he was optimistic Iceland would make a fast transition to electricity, especially if the state took aggressive action to facilitate the transition, but that it was unlikely that the 2030 goal would be met.
We will not meet our commitments under the Paris agreement without drastic action and a massive push to move to electricity in transportation.
Electric cars should dominate Icelandic roads within 13 years, the Minister of the Environment Björt Ólafsdóttir has announced. Switching to electric cars is the most effective step Iceland can take to lower the emission of greenhouse gases and battle climate change she explained.
While the number of electric cars has grown rapidly in the past years they only make up 1.5% of the total number of vehicles in Iceland. A total of 1,400 electric cars and 1,700 hybrid vehicles are currently on Icelandic roads.
Read more: Share of new electric and hybrid cars in Iceland second highest in Europe
The Minister of the Environment told the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service that increasing these numbers was a priority and the most effective way to fight climate change. We have all this green energy, and our plan for tackling global climate change we aim at switching the entire fleet of vehicles to electricity and hydrogen.
Read more: Iceland meets only 0.01% of it's electricity needs with fossil fuels, 99.99% from renewables
More charging stations
Experts have pointed out that while Iceland has cheap and abundant electricity produced from renewables, the network of charging stations for electric cars has been woefully inadequate. Building a better system of charging stations has therefore been a top priority.
Among the steps which the government has taken is to require all new multi-home apartment buildings to include charging stations for electric vehicles and to encourage and subsidize the building of charging stations along the Ring-Road. Local municipalities, like Reykjavík, have also stepped in to offer free charging stations to motorists.
The government climate change plan, which was recently approved by parliament, calls for 40% of all energy used in transportation on land, up from 6% today, while the share of renewable energy used by the fishing fleet, one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases in Iceland, should rise from 0.1% today to 10% by 2030.
Impossiblly ambitious?
Sigurbjörn Ingi Friðleifsson, an expert on renewable energy in transportation told the local news site Vísir that the goal was commendable, but that the timeframe was too narrow. In order to achieve the goal of replacing oil with electricity as the source of energy for passenger vehicles every single new car sold in the next decade and a half would have to be electric.
Yes, technically it is doable. We could take an Kim Il-sung approach and ban cars that burn fossil fuels tomorrow. But the vehicle fleet is exactly 10 to 15 years old now, and based on the current rate of renewal 90% of the fleet will be renewed within the next 13 years.
Sigurbörn told Vísir that to achieve the ambitious goal petroleum and diesel cars would have to be outlawed today. He said that this was obviously unreasonable, but that it was reasonable to announce that new petroleum and diesel cars would be banned in 2025. He added that electricity was quickly gaining in transportation and that he was optimistic Iceland would make a fast transition to electricity, especially if the state took aggressive action to facilitate the transition, but that it was unlikely that the 2030 goal would be met.
We will not meet our commitments under the Paris agreement without drastic action and a massive push to move to electricity in transportation.
