On Tuesday, December 19, The Government of Canada announced a gradual phasing out of gas powered light vehicle sales until 2035, after which all new vehicles must be 100% emissions free.

“Transportation is the most polluting  sector in Canada after oil and gas, a lot of that comes from road transportation. So from the vehicles we drive that are on the road, from sitting in traffic. This regulation is aiming  to ensure that we’re putting forward technologies like zero emission vehicles, that includes electric vehicles, that will drastically reduce emissions within that sector and this regulation says that it will have emissions reductions of 360 million tons. That’s the equivalent of 62,000 Olympic swimming pools full of gas that have been burned,” explained Meena Bibra, Senior Policy Analyst with Clean Energy Canada. 

“To put that into perspective, around 15,000 premature deaths happen in Canada because of air pollutants from exhaust fumes, essentially.  Moving to zero emission technologies is going to ensure that there’s going to be $90 billion of net benefits coming from just air pollution. That’s less visits  to the hospital, to their emergency room. If you have an asthma attack or if you have lung disease,  impacting children less than an elderly folk less or those who already have other diseases that are related to respiratory illnesses.”

Cortes Currents: You’re quoting the same statistics I saw in the government press release and their backup material. Where did they come from? 

Meena Bibra: “The air pollution analysis essentially came from the atmospheric fund, but they used data from Health Canada and from Environment Canada to make this analysis. The ’62,000 million tons’ illustration was actually done by Environment Canada themselves, as a part of the regulatory process. It’s required that they quantify what those emissions reductions are going to be looking like.”

By 2026, 20% of Canada’s new car sales must be emissions free, which can be fuel cell or plug-in electric. According to a recent report from Clean Energy Canada, British Columbia has already crossed that threshold, but the rest of the nation is lagging behind.  

To put a local spin on this story, Cortes Currents recently interviewed Forrest Berman-Hatch, lead author of the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) report ‘The Carbon Footprint of Traveling to or from Cortes Island.’ He identified the ferry as the biggest polluter for any vehicle travelling to Vancouver, but if you are driving an EV that is almost the only source of pollution.   

We have a number of EVs on Cortes, including at least two Teslas, a Chevy Bolt and a number of e-bikes, but the only charging port is at Hollyhock.  

Cortes Currents: What can you tell us about Canada’s charging infrastructure?

Meena Bibra: “The most accurate update that we found for charging infrastructure in Canada is about 25,000 charging ports. The Auditor General recently released a report saying that the federal government is on track to meet its targets of 33,500 chargers by 2026.  The federal government has also spent 2 billion on charging infrastructure investments. So we are moving in the right direction.”

“The Federal Government can’t do everything by themselves. This is where it’s going to be really important to bring in other partners like provinces,  utilities, municipalities,  car makers as well to build infrastructure where it’s needed.” 

“A perfect example of that would be in BC,  the provincial government actually offers rebates for at home charging and we know that at home charging takes up 80 to 90% of people’s charging needs. So these kinds of complimentary programs are going to be really important to ensure that we’re building out all the necessary infrastructure.”

“One of the things that we are going to be seeing with these sorts of EV availability standards that the government has just announced is eventually automakers are going to have to start making vehicles that fit the budget of all Canadians. When you start having to sell 20%,  60% 100% emissions free vehicles, carmakers can’t just sell luxury electric vehicles. They’re going to have to start selling  more affordable vehicle models. There has been analysis that’s shown that by 2035, this can equal up to 20% of savings off of the price of an electric vehicle.” 

“So today, electric vehicles are already more affordable, when you look at the overall costs associated with operating and maintaining them and the lower fuel costs. What this is going to do is it’s going to make those vehicles even more cheaper. So those upfront costs can be recouped more quickly.” 

“This will be particularly important for low and middle income Canadians who might not necessarily have the access to the credit right away or to those programs right away for addressing those higher upfront costs for electric vehicles.”

“We actually just did an analysis where we looked at some of the more popular electric vehicle models that are being sold across Canada, and then we compared them to their equivalent gasoline powered model.”

“The example Minister Guilbeault had spoken about was comparing the Chevrolet Bolt to the Toyota Corolla Hatchback. When you look at the upfront cost of the vehicle, while that might be a little bit more expensive for the Chevrolet Bolt when you actually incorporate the lower fuel costs and the lower operation and maintenance costs, which are almost negligible, you can save up to $33,600 dollars over that 10 year ownership period. That’s coming from those lower fuel costs and maintenance and operational costs that are really quite negligible.”

“We did that with  larger vehicles as well. In Canada, we really like to buy pickup trucks and SUVs. So we also extended that analysis, for example, to the Hyundai Kona. We also did it with the F 150 pickup truck.  Even there, we saw cost savings that were upwards of $40,000 over the lifetime of the vehicle.” 

“Even for those electric vehicle prices that were higher, compared to their gasoline powered equivalents,  that margin is becoming smaller over time.  Also the break even points for most of the models we saw was one year or less.” 

Cortes Currents: When are we going to start seeing more electric vehicles in the used market?

Meena Bibra: “Even today,  you can check on Auto Trader and there is a used electric vehicle market. You can buy an electric vehicle from a few years ago.”

“When you actually start increasing the sales requirements, eventually those vehicles are going to end up in the used vehicle market. There’s going to be more affordable second hand electric vehicles on the market.  In 2035, that whole pool is going to increase quite substantially.”

“The estimates then show an average vehicle in Canada lasts on the road between 10 to 15 years,  so by 2050. All vehicles on the road will eventually be electric or zero emission vehicles.”

Top image credit: screenshot from Natural Resources Canada infogram on Office of the Auditor General’s website

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