There is one popular model of car on Irish roads right now that might develop into a distant reminiscence amid climate motion, in keeping with a professor at UCC.
The Irish authorities is being put underneath vital strain to take motion after the Environmental Protection Agency warned that “all sectors need to do significantly more” to satisfy the 2030 climate targets.
While new car gross sales are on the rise post-Covid, UCC Engineering Professor Hannah Daly mentioned that SUVs are inflicting big climate points and he or she recommended they need to be banned from Irish Roads.
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Speaking to Newstalk earlier this week, Ms. Daly defined that SUVs use far more petrol and diesel than your commonplace car, which causes an apparent situation once we’re working in the direction of hitting these climate targets.
She defined: “SUVs consume an awful lot more petrol or diesel than regular cars and people are buying them in huge amounts.
“This year for example alone about 58% of new cars were SUVs. That is four times more than in 2012.
“So, we are going in entirely the wrong direction. We need to take SUVs – and all cars really – out of our cities and towns and switch to more sustainable modes of transport.
“Then, for longer distances and the countryside, electric vehicles are a great solution to decarbonising.”
The Professor mentioned there are at the least three steps leaders of this nation could take to start mending the difficulty and defined that “certain countries do exclude petrol and diesel or anything but low-emission vehicles from their town and city centres, so I think we need to look at low-emissions zones in places like Dublin and Cork.
“That would go a large way towards killing the new car market for SUVs.
“The second thing is education. So, limiting marketing or having a big health warning – I would suggest a planetary health warning on new car sales
“Then of course there is taxation so the tax on new cars can be weighted against heavier bigger cars as well.”
According to Irishevs.com, SUVs are additionally the second-largest contributor to the rise in international carbon emissions from 2010 to 2018 and emit greater than 700 megatonnes of CO2 every year.
They declare that: “There are significant road safety and emissions gains to be made by including SUVs in the 2030 new car sales ban, and frankly such legislation may be the only way to hold car manufacturers accountable for promoting these vehicles so prominently.”
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