TRANSPORT MINISTER STEWART Stevenson will this week unveil a multi-billion pound switch to electric cars that looks set to take Scotland closer to a future of zero-carbon vehicles than any other country in the world.
In an audacious move that has been greeted with a mixture of admiration and derision by the business community, the minister will tomorrow announce proposals that will require the entire Scottish public-sector fleet, and the vast majority of new cars, to have abandoned petrol and diesel within only 11 years.
A target of a 42% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 was agreed by all the parties at the Scottish parliament last week. Stevenson is expected to tell the Transport, Technology and Climate Change Conference at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall that one key component of achieving that target will be a drastic cut in emissions from transport. This will ratchet up pressure on the government and the electricity industry to meet the existing target of half of Scottish electricity being renewable by that time.
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