While Denmark is leading many aspects of the energy transition, the move away from fossil fuels to electric vehicles is not one of them. Only 1.5% of new cars bought in Denmark in 2017 were electric or plugin hybrids compared to around 40% in Norway. The reason for this is simply politics, according to Jeppe Juul, senior transport policy officer at the Danish NGO the Ecological Council. Recently appointed president of the board of Transport & Environment (T&E), the Brussels-based organisation that helped break the dieselgate scandal, Juul is pushing for all EU countries to follow Norway’s example and decarbonise their cars and trucks. In conversation with FORESIGHT, he explains his hopes and frustrations.

Q: First, congratulations on your new appointment! Denmark is steaming ahead with the decarbonisation of its energy sector and so why are so few Danes buying electric cars?
A: Six years ago, Denmark was a frontrunner on electric vehicles (EVs), but due to bad judgement and bad will in the government we are now lagging behind. In 2015, the Danish government decided to phase out tax breaks for EVs, making them more expensive and dissuading people from buying them. This was a purely political decision and totally out of line with what other countries are doing. The high market penetration of EVs in Norway shows that with the right policies people will buy electric cars, even if the choice of models remains limited. In Norway, 13,000 people pre-ordered the new Nissan Leaf. This is because Norwegians know that the writing is on the wall for fossil fuel cars. The country plans to outlaw them by 2025 and is on track to achieve this target in practice.

The Danish government, though, is reluctant to follow its neighbour’s example and to encourage people to buy EVs by offering incentives such as free parking for them, allowing them to travel for free on ferries or be exempt from bridge tolls. Transport is a sensitive subject and national ministers in Denmark seem reluctant to tackle it, but this is short-sighted and hampering the efforts of local authorities in Copenhagen that want to do more. Danish companies, however, remain world leaders in terms of technology. Danfoss, for instance, is leading the development of equipment for EVs, while Clever and E.ON are working together to create, over the next few years, a network of fast charging stations for EVs across Europe.

Q: What now needs to happen to speed up transport behaviour change and the electrification of the transport fleet?
A: We need car producers to divert their investments from diesel to electrification. In the EU, countries need to agree strong targets for zero emissions vehicles in 2025 and more money needs to be directed towards infrastructure projects that facilitate the change. We need an EU ambition level for EVs of at least 20% by 2025 to ensure that the transport sector’s climate targets are met. The European car industry has been lagging behind competitors in other countries for many years by keeping their focus on diesel. Governments now need to help the European car industry by setting firm targets for electrification and setting a clear direction for investments and the future.

Cars have a relatively long lifespan and those sold today will still be on the roads in 2030, while some cars bought in 2030 will be running in 2050. We need this to be taken into consideration when agreeing policies that govern the cars sold in the EU in the coming years. We need regulations now that plan for the end of the internal combustion engine (ICE) in cars. Biofuels are not the answer and so electrification is the only way forward. By 2035, 100% of cars in the EU need to be zero emissions vehicles.

Q: Do you think this will happen?
A: Yes. I believe that this change will happen even sooner as the technology is already there and so things can move quite quickly. New electric cars have a range above 300 km and soon it will be possible to charge around 80% of their battery within a few minutes. For most people there are therefore no practical issues stopping them having an electric car. In Denmark, for instance, 95% of all car journeys are less than 50 km. This week’s judgement in Germany [whereby the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig ruled that cities can impose diesel driving bans to combat air pollution] shows that we are reaching a tipping point. And lots of companies have already said they will stop producing cars that run on diesel — Fiat Chrysler was the latest company to announce at the end of February that it will end the production of diesel cars.

Q: The shift to electric mobility risks bankrupting one of the biggest global industries and putting millions of people out of work. True or false?
A: False. Electric cars are simpler to produce and have half the running costs of a fossil fuel powered car. For consumers, therefore, the EV industry is closing in on having the same overall cost (TCO) as a traditional car. For industry, it means that you need fewer people to assemble a car and of course this causes fears about job losses. But studies show that shifting to EVs will create new jobs. Recent research by Cambridge Econometrics for the European Climate Foundation reveals that moving away from oil-powered vehicles to ones driven by renewable energy will create over 200,000 net additional jobs by 2030. It also forecasts an increase in GDP of 0.2% a year as European oil imports are slashed by €49 billion in 2030.

Q: Some experts have suggested that electric cars should only be considered as low emissions vehicles if they are powered by renewable sources of energy, meaning that hybrid cars are cleaner in most countries. True or False?
False. When calculating emissions, the main aspects to take into consideration are the amount of renewable energy in the grid, where the battery is produced and where it is charged. You can therefore suggest that in certain areas of the world, electric vehicles don’t deliver much given current grid-mixes. But we need to take into account that the grid will transition everywhere in the coming years away from fossil fuels. Already today you save CO2 by going electric in a country like Poland, which still relies heavily on coal. It is clearly not good if the electricity to power cars is being produced, for example, by burning coal in the US, but all countries are moving away from fossil fuels, and things will not be perfect from the start. It took more energy to build the first wind turbines used in Denmark than the amount of energy they produced in a life-time. But people didn’t just give up. In certain very special circumstances cars may produce more CO2 today, but this will not be the case forever.

Q: Copenhagen will host the ninth Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM9) this spring. What should policymakers be discussing in terms of transport and mobility?
A: Cars last for a long time. Each new ICE car sold locks us into future CO2 emissions. We know that if we are to meet international commitments to tackle climate change, we need to be close to zero emissions in 2050. This means that we need now to advance the debate on when to ban sales of ICE cars. This ban has to be in effect by 2035 at the latest. We will need strong political will to guide industry and consumers.

Q: Do you have drive an electric car?
A: I have a drivers licence but I don’t have a car. Instead, I sometimes use car share schemes like Letsgo.

Text: Philippa Nuttall Jones

This article is part of the Nordic Clean Energy Series
, published by FORESIGHT Climate & Energy to support Nordic Clean Energy Week. A week where energy leaders from around the globe gather in Copenhagen and Malmö to discuss the policies, business and technological solutions and challenges involved in tackling climate change.

Learn more about the week - Nordic Clean Energy Week

Take a look at FORESIGHT’s Nordic Clean Energy Special Edition
published in May 2018.

Nuts and bolts:

• EVs account for just 1.7% of new vehicles sold in Europe.
• At present, the European Union imports 89% of its crude oil, the vast majority of which is used for transport fuel.
• Moving away from vehicles powered by oil to ones driven by renewable energy will create 206,000 net additional jobs by 2030. (Source: T&E)
• In autumn 2015, the Danish government announced the progressive phasing out of tax breaks on electric cars. Sales in Denmark of Electrically Chargeable Vehicles (ECV) subsequently plunged 60.5% in the first quarter of last year, compared with the first three months of 2016. (Source: European Automobile Manufacturers Association/Bloomberg)
• Copenhagen Mayor Frank Jensen said last October that he plans to propose legislation to ban new diesel cars from the city by the beginning of 2019, but cars bought and registered by the end of 2018 and diesel vans and trucks would be exempt.
• In 2017 there were more electric car charging docks across Denmark than petrol stations with 2,030 electric charging stations compared to 2,028 petrol stations (Source: Dansk Energi).
• Norway said in 2017 that it would prohibit domestic sales of new diesel and gasoline-powered cars as of 2025 — the earliest date for any such ban in the world.