Sir, – Your editorial welcomes the Government’s new EV scrappage scheme as a contribution towards Ireland’s climate goals (“A jumpstart for EVs”, June 5th).
But what exactly is environmentally beneficial about destroying a functioning car and replacing it with a newly manufactured one?
A typical new electric vehicle arrives with a substantial carbon footprint already attached. Depending on battery size and manufacturing methods, producing a new EV can generate 10-15 tonnes of CO2 before it has left the factory.
The emissions generated in manufacturing the older vehicle have already occurred. They have already entered the atmosphere and remain part of the climate problem.
RM Block
Scrapping the vehicle does not erase them; it merely means that the environmental cost of producing that car is spread over fewer years of useful life than might have been otherwise. An older petrol car driven average annual distances may emit around 2 tonnes of CO2 each year.
On that basis, it could take many years before the lower operating emissions of a replacement EV offset the emissions generated in manufacturing it. Such inevitable delays in the effectiveness of the scheme do not sit comfortably with the concept of dealing with a climate emergency.
The scheme risks producing the curious spectacle of taxpayers subsidising the destruction of perfectly usable vehicles in the name of environmental protection.
At a time when citizens are urged to reduce, reuse and recycle, it seems odd that the opposite principle should apply to cars.
There may be good arguments for encouraging electric vehicles but subsidising the premature scrapping of functioning cars would seem to directly reward people for failing to reduce, reuse or recycle. – Yours, etc,
PAUL O’SHEA,
Planet Before Profit CLG,
Dublin 18.
