A new analysis shows that carbon dioxide emissions from delivery vans in the UK have increased by 63 percent since 1990 as cars become cleaner.
While more and more people are opting for electric cars or plug-in hybrid cars, van drivers still prefer diesel vehicles because electric vans are much more expensive and there is a limited choice of models.
Anyone who decides to buy an electric van will find that they cannot use some public charging stations for electric vehicles because they may be too small or the charging cables may be too short.
Activists are demanding that the next government offer companies financial incentives to choose zero-emission vans and improve charging infrastructure.
Research by Transport and Environment, a clean transport and energy advocacy group, found that there are a million more delivery vans on the roads since 2014, and almost all of them are diesel vehicles. Although the growth of online shopping has led to more delivery vans, most are still used by small businesses or sole traders.
This steady increase adds up to a 63 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions from vans since 1990. The rapid proliferation of electric cars and taxis over the past decade has seen emissions from cars fall by 19 percent over the same period, even though the total number of cars on the road has also increased.
Although there have been significant reductions in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, vans are bucking the trend. Since 1990, NOx emissions from cars have fallen by 88% and from trucks by 91%. However, vans have only fallen by 38% since 1990, are higher than in 2011 and have overtaken truck emissions in 2015. NOx has been linked to asthma attacks in children and roadside emissions remain at illegally high levels in some places.
Ralph Palmer of Transport and Environment described the rise in van emissions as “alarming”. “Despite efforts to get more electric vans on our roads, we are still seeing a rise in greenhouse gas emissions from vans as a result of continued sales of diesel vans, which runs counter to the trends we are seeing in the car market,” he said.
“Not enough progress is being made to help businesses and sole traders make the transition.”
Oliver Lord, head of the UK’s Clean Cities campaign, said Britain was lagging behind European neighbours such as the Netherlands, which were working to create zero-emission logistics zones.
Lord said: “This means that vans entering their cities and registered after next year will have to be electric. And by 2030 they will all have to be electric. The proportion of electric vans sold in the Netherlands is twice as high as in the UK. We will not clean our air and meet our climate targets if we do not do more to help companies move away from polluting diesel vans.”
Last September, the government introduced a zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) target that requires 10% of all new vans and cars sold to be electric by the end of this year, and 100% by 2035. In theory, manufacturers that fail to meet this target will have to pay £15,000 for every extra diesel or petrol vehicle sold. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, 341,455 new vans were registered last year, of which 20,253 were powered by electric batteries.
after newsletter campaign
Palmer said: “For the first two or three years of this programme, car manufacturers were given very, very generous leeway, which basically means we won’t hit the 10 per cent mark this year. But that should actually help to bring far more van models to market.”
Michael Salter-Church, sustainability director at BT subsidiary Openreach, said they were “frustrated” with the choice of vehicles on the market and the ZEV mandate was a “really important step”. “Our engineers really like them – the [lack of] noise, the ability to warm them up very quickly in winter weather,” he said.
Openreach has set a target of converting all of its 30,000 vans to battery electric by 2031. So far, the company has 4,100 battery electric vans, supported by government grants of up to £5,000 per van for a maximum of 1,500 vans per year per business. “It is right to put more pressure on manufacturers,” he said. “We were very concerned that no political party has committed to extending the electric van grants beyond 31 March 2025.”
Openreach has installed chargers at 2,000 of its engineers’ homes – most of whom park at home overnight – but Salter-Church said they sometimes had problems charging on the move. “Often charging stations are designed for cars, so we’ve found limited parking and short cables. Sometimes we’ve found they’re installed in car parks where delivery vans can’t get in because of the barrier height. The charging infrastructure needs to be improved.”