Hansard

I am grateful to Dave Thompson for securing this important debate. I was pleased to support the motion in his name.

There is no doubt that electric vehicles have an important role to play in a decarbonised transport sector, alongside demand management and greater levels of active travel. There is a continuing need to do more to secure greater numbers of EVs on Scotland’s roads.

With recent technological advances, electric vehicles are an efficient and realistic method of transport, which will not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but improve air quality and thereby improve the health and wellbeing of the people of Scotland. It is one thing to acknowledge that; it is quite another to implement such a policy. The Scottish Government has taken measures to increase the appeal of EVs, but a major hindrance to consumer appeal has been the availability of plug-in stations and the lack of rapid electric charge points, as Dave Thompson said. If we want to encourage the use of electric cars, we must ensure that they are a viable option for everyday use.

We can look to countries that have implemented measures with varying success, such as Norway and Germany, as case studies. Norway has had huge success in the EV market and has the world’s highest number of electric cars per capita, by a wide margin. Oslo has the highest density of EVs in the world. It has been suggested that there is an opportunity for Scotland to learn from the Norwegian experience—and not just on EVs, I hasten to add. Norway has adopted measures that give EVs priority, such as giving EVs access to bus lanes, so I would be interested to hear from the minister what role the forthcoming national framework for local incentives will give to priority measures for EVs.

Norway’s success is also due to incentives for zero-emissions vehicles, which include exemptions from road tolls, free parking in town centres, access to bus lanes and import tax that is calculated on the basis of a car’s carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions and weight.

Furthermore, the Norwegian Parliament voted, with cross-party consensus, to maintain those financial incentives until 2018 or until there are 50,000 zero-emissions vehicles on the road, thereby tuning the system so that cars with higher emissions are penalised and those with lower emissions are rewarded. The measures have been successful in nudging consumers to purchase more eco-friendly vehicles and in adjusting the Norwegian mindset to support the electric vehicle movement.

A huge part of Norway’s success in implementing viable EV market incentives is the availability of charging points, which has been made possible through a massive Government push for charging infrastructure, which resulted in an increase from fewer than 200 charging stations in 2009 to more than 7,000 publicly accessible plug-ins for EVs throughout the country. There is also an online, centralised database, Nobil, to maximise the benefits and the information that is available. Something similar might help Dave Thompson when he is searching for a rapid charging point in north Stirlingshire.

By contrast—and surprisingly—Germany has been slow to adopt similar measures, and its EV market is suffering for that. Germany has one of the leading sustainable energy markets in the world, but its EV movement has been rather stagnant, partly due to its lack of charging stations. At the end of 2014, Germany had only 100 fast-charging direct current stations and 4,800 level 2 charging stations. That makes for a relatively low density of charging infrastructure for more than 600,000 kilometres of roads, especially when we compare Germany’s position with Norway’s 7,000 plug-ins for only a sixth of the total road network.

Here in Scotland, during the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee’s visit to Orkney in June to take evidence on land reform, I learned that in the spring of 2014, the Rousay, Egilsay & Wyre Development Trust co-ordinated an electric car project, in which three areas of Orkney were awarded the cost of leasing four electric vehicles for one year.

At the beginning of the leases, there was a limited number of charging points, which was especially problematic in Orkney because of its landscape. However, more charging points were installed, the problem was largely resolved and the project was considered so successful that two of the islands renewed their leases on the electric cars. Even the trust that organised the project bought an electric car of its own. Before the project, there were only 10 EVs in Orkney; now, there are more than 70 electric vehicles in a population of 21,500.

Climate change is very much on the Scottish Government’s radar. The recent percentage reduction in emissions demonstrates that Scotland is more than three quarters of the way to achieving its climate change goal of meeting its emissions reduction targets by 2020. Encouraging the EV market will help us to attain that goal, taking advantage of Scotland’s abundant renewable energy resources to provide electricity to power those vehicles and create a cleaner, greener, more sustainable Scotland.