Life on the West Island - Towards greater efficiency

What does the West Island have in common with Russia? You may be surprised to learn that we are one of the last two developed economies to have no vehicle emission standards. In fact, we are many years behind most of the nations with which we usually align, including the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Japan, China, India and the European Union, among many others. This means that vehicles on our roads are emitting at least 40% more dangerous greenhouse gases, and consuming about 50% more petrol or diesel per kilometre than those in comparable countries. It also means that the West Island has become the dumping ground for large Western automobile manufacturers to offload their outdated inefficient vehicles which are banned in many countries.

In hysteria comparable with the disgraceful and discredited “end of the weekend” campaign, the federal coalition has launched a vicious and misleading attack, falsely claiming (again!) that vehicle emission standards would make cars much more expensive, labelling them as a “ute tax.”

Fortunately, saner informed sources are exposing the truth of the situation. For instance, Professor Robin Smit of the University of Technology Sydney reported:

Australian passenger vehicles are emitting 50% more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than the average of the world’s major markets. And the real-world situation is even worse than official figures show. That’s the finding of a new study comparing the CO₂ emissions performance of cars, SUVs and light commercial vehicles in Australia and overseas. The comparison suggests Australia will probably fall well short of the economy-wide 2050 net-zero emission target for road transport. To hit the target, policies to cut vehicle emissions have to be intensified and supported by a range of other policies.

This month, the Australian government announced options for a New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) – not to be confused with the National Electric Vehicle Strategy (NEVS). Each option would set a national limit on grams of CO₂ that can be emitted for each kilometre driven, averaged across all new cars sold.

Mandatory CO₂ emission or fuel-efficiency standards are internationally recognised as a fundamental building block to cut transport emissions. To provide further context and input to the development of an Australian standard, Australia-based Transport Energy/Emission Research (TER) and the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) collaborated on a newly published briefing paper. The independent analysis shows the urgent need for Australia to adopt a stringent, well-designed and mandatory fuel-efficiency standard. This standard and additional policies are essential to keep up with technological advances and decarbonisation in other developed countries.

Both fuel efficiency and emission standards aim for roughly the same thing: cutting fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. In doing so, they also cut fuel costs for consumers and improve energy security.

The problems were further highlighted by economist Matthew Elmas:

Australians are paying up to twice as much more for petrol than motorists in Europe, according to fresh analysis calling for the government to introduce tough fuel efficiency standards. Figures recently published by the Climate Council show Australians pay $1460 a year for petrol on average, while those in Europe are paying just $738 for the same distance. The reason is that European cars are subject to stringent fuel efficiency rules that mean cars travel further for less, explained Climate councillor and economist Nicki Hutley.

“Our long-time lack of fuel efficiency standards makes us a dumping ground for older, less-efficient cars,” Hutley said. “Australians are paying far more for fuel because we are driving inefficient petrol-guzzling cars the rest of the world has rejected.”

The claim that emissions standards would greatly increase the cost of new vehicles has also been shown to be false. The Guardian reports an independent United States study from 2023, which found that new vehicle prices barely rose in real terms in the previous 20 years, during which emissions standards were introduced.

Nicki Huntley predicted that introducing emissions on the West Island was unlikely to raise new vehicle prices. There is no evidence to suggest that that is the case, she said. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite will happen – that there will be no price impact across the market.

On the other hand, numerous studies have found that efficient vehicles consume much less fuel, with a predicted saving of thousands of dollars a year for West Island households and huge reductions in dangerous greenhouse emissions. Professor Smit concludes:

The [new] standards should include on-board monitoring of fuel consumption – as the EU is now doing. It’s vital to measure real-world fuel efficiency and emissions of new vehicles and to make this information public to ensure standards are achieving their goals.

A mandatory fuel-efficiency standard is long overdue in Australia. It can help close the performance gap between Australia and the rest of the world. So we’d better make sure it works.

All of this seems like a no-brainer, yet the opposition is persisting in a fact-free scare campaign, much as it has done on taxation, negative gearing and investment housing tax concessions. It proudly wears the tag of being a “noalition,” simply rejecting any semblance of developing its own policies and contenting itself with using negative slogans and aligning with some of the most unsavoury conspiracy theories on social media.

But the federal government has sufficient support in parliament to ensure passage of the necessary legislation so that the West Island can responsibly move toward having more fuel-efficient and lower-polluting vehicles on our roads.