In a big move towards climate action, the B.C. provincial government declared a mandate on November 20 to have all light-duty cars and trucks sold in B.C. be zero-emission vehicles by 2040. Sales targets to achieve this will start in 2025 and increase progressively until 2040. To meet these targets, Horgan says it will be critical that clean-energy vehicles become accessible and feasible for B.C. residents to own and operate.
Ambitious as this goal is, I’m confident B.C. can achieve it. In talking with The Tyee about this, SFU professor and climate policy expert Dr. Mark Jaccard calls it a ”fundamental shift” in moving away from oil dependence to a sustainable transportation system. Throughout this piece, Jaccard also addresses our provincial contribution to the Paris Agreement’s global climate change goal — keeping the world’s climate below two degrees Celsius.
What makes all this so important is the focus on making zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) more affordable, particularly for the middle class. While currently 5% of BC’s new car sales are for ZEVs, they are not reasonably priced for everyone. Until the middle and lower-middle class can afford ZEVs, B.C. cannot make a genuine and large-scale shift toward sustainability.
According to Jaccard, the best way to meet this target is “to bring the price of the electric cars down to what middle-class people will buy.” One strategy to achieve this is to subsidize the cost of electric car ownership. BC already discounts up to $5000 from the pre-tax sticker price for electric vehicle ownership, but this policy is not typically well understood or enough to offset the cost of buying an electric vehicle.
As another way to make electric vehicles more affordable, Jaccard also suggests policies such as increasing the price of expensive non-electric vehicles. This would discourage people from purchasing non-electric vehicles, while the surplus could be used to subsidize the cost of less expensive vehicles.
Another strategy is to establish more charging stations for electric cars, so that owning a single electric vehicle is feasible for middle-class families. If more charging stations are available throughout B.C, then electric cars can be charged more easily and families can use them for longer excursions. This might dissuade consumers from owning both gasoline and electric vehicles for different types of trips.
With a network of public charging stations across the province, electric cars could become viable for everyone as primary vehicles. The provincial government has recognized this, with plans to more than double the number of electric vehicle charging stations in the province from 71 to 151, according to a press release by the B.C. government.
There’s importance for this beyond just preventing climate change. The push to make ZEVs the norm can lead to some innovation in the technology in ways that benefit consumers. ZEVs don’t have to just be a speciality item for the wealthy, and can easily be something British Columbians can adopt as the norm over the coming decades.
