Climate Change: What policy success looks like II

We've already seen that the government's clean car discount has been wildly successful at pushing new car buyers into cleaner cars (and since then the trend has only got stronger). But what does that mean for emissions? Good news:

The average carbon emissions of new and used imported cars has dived since the Clean Car Discount took full affect in April last year, Transport Ministry figures show.

The average light passenger vehicle imported in the 15 months to June 30 emitted 151 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre-travelled, down 19% on the average of 186 grams per kilometre-travelled in the 15 months before the “feebate” policy took effect.

The drop was equivalent to the emissions reductions achieved during the entire 11-year period before the Clean Car Discount was imposed.

Of course, this is only new cars, and there's a huge tail of dirty older vehicles still on the roads (the average New Zealand car is 15 years old). Absent other policies to take older, dirty cars off the road, its going to take a long time to cycle the whole fleet. But I think those policies will come eventually (given a non-National government), and the technology switch will eventually make support for fossil vehicles harder to come by in the long term, which will push things further. In the meantime, this will gradually grind vehicle emissions down. And the joy of it is that its all paid for by polluters.