(Bloomberg) -- The dirtiest cars and trucks driving through London face tougher penalties starting next year after Mayor Sadiq Khan unveiled plans to crack down on air pollution.
Khan, who was elected in May, asked industry and consumers for their views on a plan to extend a surcharge on emissions. The program dubbed “T-Charge” would apply a fee of 10 pounds ($13) to the most polluting vehicles entering central London. He's also seeking to extend the city's planned “Ultra-Low Emission Zone” to include the North and South Circular roads.
Khan's program makes good on his election commitment to slash pollution and suggests that the U.K. capital won't water down its environmental program after the nation voted last month to leave the European Union. Sixty years after the U.K. adopted a clean air act in response to “pea-souper” smogs, the nation has said it won't meet EU air quality standards for 2010 until after 2030.
“Unlike the smokey pollution of the past, today's pollution is a hidden killer,” Khan said in a statement Tuesday. “Today we face another pollution public health emergency in London. Urgent action is now needed.”
The environmental group ClientEarth has sued the government seeking to force the ministers into quicker action, building on a Supreme Court order in 2015 that ordered a revision to existing plans. Khan said he would intervene in the case to seek tighter air quality rules and that he wants a seat at the table as the U.K. government negotiates an exit from the EU, noting that leaving the bloc may weaken resolve to fight pollution.
Conservatives, who ran the previous London administration and control the central U.K. government, signaled they may object to parts of the what was proposed by Khan, a member of the Labour Party.
“We all want to tackle NO2 emissions but most vehicles built after 2005 perform just as poorly as those built before so the cut-off date is meaningless,” Tony Devenish, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, said in a statement. “Small business owners and 'white van drivers' with older company vehicles will effectively be taxed for traveling into the capital to work. That cannot be right.”
Khan also proposed:
- Extending the Ultra-Low Emission Zone beyond the city center in 2020
- Starting the zone in central London in 2019, a year earlier than planned
- Introducing cleaner buses on the most polluted routes
- Developing a national program for scrapping diesel vehicles
- Requiring all double-decker buses to comply with the low-emissions zone by 2019, a year earlier than planned
London suffers some of the worst pollution in Europe, causing almost 10,000 premature deaths a year, according to research by the Environmental Research Group at King's College London.
"Leaving the EU should not be the first step of us going back to being known as the dirty man of Europe," Khan said.
Court Challenge
The U.K. probably will remain beholden to EU pollution rules even as it leaves the bloc, said Alan Andrews, a lawyer for ClientEarth. “EU law on air quality has been transposed into U.K. law,” Andrews said. “That will stay as binding law until the government gets round to repealing it, should they wish to do so.”
Quitting the EU would mean the U.K. government would no longer face fines from the European Court of Justice, he said. “But it is ClientEarth's legal action, not EU penalties, which have forced the government to act on pollution -- however woeful their actions so far have been,” he said.
Greenpeace praised Khan's plan, saying a large clean-air zone is the effective way to clean up London's air.
“Taking the dirtiest vehicles off the road will save lives, encourage car manufacturers to step up their game, and make it easier for drivers to make less polluting choices,” said Barbara Stoll, a campaigner for Greenpeace, said before Khan's official announcement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jessica Shankleman in London at jshankleman@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Jonathan Tirone
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