With a flurry of legislation heading to the executive in the past week around the need to expand Northern Irelands electrical car infrastructure, the news is no doubt welcoming for those wealthy enough, and urban enough, to effectively make use of them. However, with the latest bill to enter Stormont focusing on the need to match the pace of change with the availability of charging points, the Executive is heading in the right direction at last.
However, there remain concerns from rural communities, as to how the move to an all-electric sector will impact the farmers and rural workers of Northern Ireland.
Firstly, there has yet to be any clear cut process laid out for phasing out diesel and petrol cars in a safe way. We do not actually know how the Government intends to deal with the hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles currently in Northern Ireland in a safe manner. Ideally, a scrappage scheme needs to be provided, working in partnership with scrappage companies and car manufacturers to ensure that minimum waste in the disposal of cars.
Secondly, there has been little consideration thus far for placing charging ports in farm shops, or indeed, in accessible farm-yards with through roads in them. The lack of charging infrastructure is being looked at in this new bill, but it is not being done in partnership with the sector itself.
The NFU for example has a net-zero goal of 2040, by which time they would like to see farms carbon neutral.
This is a realistic goal, that has been ignored or overlooked by the Executive. However with an insufficient electrical grid, as well as the complete omission of E10 ethanol and B20 biodiesel (both popular alternatives to electric with farmers), little seems to have been done to factor in the real concerns of Northern Ireland's rural communities.
Comments