This just out from the Environmental Transport Association.
The government's decision today (28/09/09) to extend to 400,000 the number of £2,000 grants for people who trade in an old car and buy a new one is environmentally short sighted, according to the Environmental Transport Association (ETA).
The new vehicles bought under the initiative emit 25 per cent less carbon than those that are scrapped, but the ETA has calculated that the scheme will cost the government £370 per tonne of CO2 emissions avoided – the environmental cost of CO2 is widely accepted as being nearer £80 per tonne.
Director at the ETA, Andrew Davis, said: "This is little more than a panicked way of propping up the industry as, given time, those cashing in the grants would most likely have bought the new car anyway."
"Car scrapping initiatives are often mistakenly labelled as green because they subsidise the purchase of cars that are usually, more fuel-efficient than those they replace, but the schemes are by their nature wasteful and routinely fail to take into consideration the amount of energy required to build a vehicle in the first place."
