The Australian government pledged A$178 million ($132 million) on Tuesday to speed up the rollout of hydrogen refuelling stations and charging stations for electric vehicles, but no EV rebates or targets to phase out gasoline cars were announced.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the expanded Future Fuels Fund provides ‘an Australian way’ to reduce transportation emissions, repeating a slogan he coined recently to describe the country’s climate change policy.
‘We will not force Australians to drive the car they don’t want or penalise those who can least afford it with bans or taxes,’ Morrison said in a statement, indicating that, rather, the strategy will focus on lowering the cost of low and zero emission vehicles.
The additional funding, which comes on top of a previous commitment of A$72 million, which will be spent by the end of June 2025, will go toward the purchase of electric cars and buses for government and commercial fleets.
Industry groups and environmentalists, on the other hand, argue that rebates and tax breaks are needed to encourage the purchase of cleaner vehicles in a country where transportation is the third largest source of carbon emissions.
In the first half of 2021, Australia saw a record 8,688 battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle sales, but they only accounted for 1.6 percent of total light vehicle sales. In September, battery electric vehicle sales in Norway, the world leader in EV adoption, accounted for nearly 80 percent of all new car sales.
The funding for transportation infrastructure comes just weeks after Morrison announced a net-zero carbon emissions target for 2050, despite international criticism that the major coal and gas producer is not doing enough to combat climate change.
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