The Netherlands is close to banning new fossil fuel sales
New car sales in The Netherlands will only be for electric vehicles as of 2025 if the same bill passed this week in the Dutch lower house passes in the senate.
The proposed legislation has received a majority vote in Tweede Kamer, the Holland lower house, which now needs to succeed only in the senate to become law.
With nearly 10 per cent or 43,000 of the nearly 450,000 new-car registrations in The Netherlands last year being for electric vehicles, the tide is turning on internal combustion. The ban would allow only full-electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles on Dutch roads, giving motorists nine years before taking effect, if the legislation is successful in the senate.
Dutch Labour party member Dan Vos said the time was right to pass such a legislation.
“We need to phase out CO2 emissions and we need to change our pattern of using fossil fuels if we want to save the Earth,” Vos said to Yale Connection.
However he acknowledged that the ban needed the scope to allow technology to improve and become affordable.
“Transportation with your own car shouldn’t be something only rich people can afford,” he said.
Norway has also become a monolith of electric vehicle take-up as the world’s largest market for electric vehicles with 24 per cent of its on-road fleet plugging in rather than filling up.
The Scandinavian country, despite being the 11th largest crude oil producer, has also seen its Progress Party come to agreement with three other political parties to draft legislation that bans fossil-fuel new car sales as of 2025, including private cars, commuter buses and light commercial vehicles, and by 2030 all utility vans, 75 per cent of coaches and 50 per cent of trucks would need to be hydrogen or pure electric powered.
For the legislation to pass, all major parties need to agree on the legislation originally proposed back in April.
