Forget electric cars – convert to LPG instead

ENERGY Minister Eamon Ryan, in his bid to promote electric cars, says we’re “one of the first countries in the world with a national network, with a large amount of renewable power that we can use to power our cars… ”

This is untrue. Only a small proportion of energy is generated by renewables – all it does is displace fossil fuel consumption. Electric cars still use fossil fuels, mainly natural gas, but indirectly and less efficiently.

It would be better to convert normal cars to run directly on LPG than go to the complication and expense of replacing them with electric cars, along with batteries, chargers and the additional generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure that would be required and in which there would be additional power losses.

This would give breathing space to allow the adoption of a sustainable policy.

Oil production is close to peaking whereas gas supplies are still relatively plentiful and are not expected to peak for another 10 or 20 years, nor do they produce as much greenhouse gases.

Subsidies only make matters worse. According to RSA and NRA figures, the cost borne by the state of accidents, road construction and road maintenance alone amount to about €3,000 per vehicle – far more than motorists pay in taxes.

Electric cars still have to use the road system and will still have accidents, yet they yield no taxes and receive a €5,000 purchase grant.

The Government wants 10% of cars to be electric by 2020, but what use is this when traffic volumes are increasing at 7% a year, driven by the cheapness of motoring.

It is unlikely that renewables could ever generate enough electricity to displace fossil fuel generation at current rates of growth, but to imagine they could replace an ever increasing demand for petrol and diesel for transport is sheer fantasy: the cost would run into hundreds of billions of euro and the country is already crippled financially

The only way to avoid eventual collapse is a traffic reduction policy which would boost public transport, but this would require some sort of rationing, restrictions or higher costs, something no one is prepared to countenance.

Michael Job

Rossnagrena

Glengarriff

Co Cork