Last week, Mrs May made a much-publicised speech in opening the Zero Emissions Summit in Brimingham. She pledged to cement the UK's position as a "world leader" in low emission technologies and work w2ith other countries to accelerate the global roll out of green transport systems.
However, as Lib Dems transport speaker (and former AM) Baroness Randerson has pointed out, other countries have already promised to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles much sooner than us. She called for restoration of the link between emissions and Vehicle Excise Duty. I would go further. Jenny is probably too young to recall the days before the Thatcher/Major administrations when electric vehicles, such as the familiar milk float or, in London, Harrods' delivery vans, paid no excise duty at all. Restoration of that concession would do wonders for electric vehicle development in the UK.
The government will also need to guarantee a network of charging points, and those points will need to cater for the differing needs of the competing electric vehicle producers. Then there is the problem of guaranteeing that the power stays on post-Brexit, when the cost of importing fuel, including nuclear fuel, will inevitably rise. There will be days when all our electricity needs will be met by renewables, but we are a long way from that glorious time when that is the case for all 24 hours of all the days of the year.
Talk of renewables brings me to another of my gripes about the Conservatives' publicity machine. It proclaims that the UK is at the forefront of wind power developments, when in fact our largest wind-farms are populated by machines from Sweden and Denmark (using imported steel) and run by foreign-owned companies.
(I make no apologies for the puns in the heading.)
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