Jon Stenning

Since the cost of a net zero energy system ought to be evaluated relative to a counterfactual of using more natural gas. Higher natural gas prices make net zero cheaper despite nothing changing about the out-of-pocket costs.

This is why people hate economists.

I'm not sure the "on this" is required...

Just to be clear - I don't have a strong view, but I think there's a decent and consistent narrative for this Government to applying it to the whole stock.

There must a way to comms this more effectively than "broadest shoulders" - something that appeals suitably to Rogers' 'early adopters'.

Doesn't it depend who you think these early adopters are? If they are the upper deciles of the income/wealth distribution, then this presumably just falls under the category of those with the "broadest shoulders"

I hope you are right!

Final point (sorry) - we've had years of fuel duty cuts. They've been frozen in nominal terms, meaning in real terms people are paying much less. But that hasn't created policy space to now increase tax on ICEs. Ultimately, the Government of the day will have to do something unpopular in this space.

It would be unpopular, sure, but this Government seems to have tried to avoid unpopular things so far and it's not exactly worked in terms of their popularity. To be succinct, I think the role of Government is to legislate for what they believe is "right", rather than what the public wants.

Without wanting to get *too* political, It's not clear to me what you mean by 'unachievable politically'. I can't believe anywhere near enough MPs would vote against the budget to stop this.

Then you're keeping EV incentives broadly the same, and ensuring that there's the start of a plan to tackle congestion going forwards, as fuel duty plays a declining role with the fleet switching increasingly towards electricity for energy.

It's clear that a 'pay per mile' system is the best way to tackle the remaining externalities from EVs (emissions, but notably congestion). But it should be applied to all cars, regardless of powertrain.

...at a time when the Government should be (and is, with other policies!) encouraging the take-up of EVs to be consistent with it's climate goals.

Reeves poised to unveil Budget plan for EV drivers to pay per mile charges Chancellor looks to offset a forecast sharp drop in government revenue from fuel duty

www.ft.com/content/9f90...
If this policy is as floated, it seems completely non-sensical from a transport or climate policy perspective. Increasing taxes on EVs (coming off the back of the introduction of standard rate VED for EVs from April 2025) further reduces the running cost benefits of EVs...

Completely agree. It feels like a policy that's been put together by accountants, rather than anyone with a considered view of transport policy.

By all means tax EVs more (there are still emissions, they cause congestion) - but not doing it alongside ICEs clearly just slows the transition.

I had the same thought. The dual carriageway is *lovely*, very picturesque, but those wind turbines, urgh

The policy response would look very different - either people will do this in whatever car, so education and enforcement feels like the only option, or you can push people into smaller cars and their behaviour will change.

I'd love to understand more about the causality here - do people that don't care about other road users deliberately buy these cars, or does buying one of these massive vehicles insulate you from the road to such an extent that you end up caring less about other users?

A couple of times I've genuinely gone back and checked that you haven't just reposted the same video, because there's *always* a Land Rover.

This has allowed similar infrastructure to meet the demand from more people/households. We're now talking about switching that up, with EVs and heat pumps increasing per capita electricity demand, and also building more homes. It's obvious then that new infrastructure will be required.

It's not that it *can't* be done, but it's a question of what investment is needed to do it. The trend in electricity use per capita has been steadily downwards for years, as a result of low-key energy efficiency improvements (e.g. more efficient white goods, lightbulbs).

My mind is still boggled writing it out now. Who signed off on that process without questioning why they were adopting *precisely* the process that a scammer would want a user to go through?

Sensing a scam, she sensibly said no and hung up. She let me know, I googled it, and amazingly enough it was genuinely how EE (or some agents acting on behalf of EE) actually expected people to view and accept the T&Cs of their new contracts.

A couple of years ago, my mother was called by EE and offered a new phone contract to replace her existing EE one. After jumping through a few hoops, they wanted her to download some software so that they could remotely access her phone(!)

The criticism of such an approach is that, without producing a single figure, policymakers are free to implement whatever policy they favour. My rebuttal of that would be that this happens anyway, it's just that currently we obscure the fact by pretending that we can quantify all relevant impacts.

Doesn't that just highlight the futility of the whole "let's reduce an IA/CBA to a single £ number" approach though? How would DEFRA ever get nature-focussed funded under your proposed approach? Much better to take a more holistic view of the costs and benefits of interventions.

It's the way that it's an absolute article of faith for so many that gets me, given how clear it is that in the real world there are under-utilised resources. It's perfectly possible to believe that at times crowding out might be an issue, without assuming that it must always be the case.

I'm looking to buy a second-hand EV in the UK, and while a few adverts say that they've done battery health checks, none that I've seen actually tell you anything about the findings! They presumably rely on you trekking to the dealership and plan to tell the buyer that the results are "fine"