London Clears The Air — Thanks To Low Emissions Zone Policies

July 28, 20243 months ago Steve Hanley 0 Comments

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Motor vehicles are marvelous things. They allow us to go wherever our hearts desire at a moment’s notice. They transport the manufactured goods that are so essential to modern living — food, clothing, Moët & Chandon — and bring them into our cities for us. But they cause issues in places like London. One problem is congestion. There are just too damn many cars and trucks. In the days of horses and carriages, the average speed in central London was 3.5 miles per hour. Today, with all the wonders of modern technology available to us, the average speed in central London is still around 3.5 miles per hour.

The other thing about motor vehicles is that the crud they spew out of their tailpipes poisons the atmosphere and makes us physically ill. It makes no difference whether you are driving a MINI or a Mercedes. Internal combustion engines all emit something called fine particulates — tiny particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter — that pass directly into our bloodstreams when we breathe them in. Once that happens, they get distributed throughout our bodies and lodge in our brains, our testes and ovaries, and all the other organs of the body. Our children are especially vulnerable to damage from fine particulates as their bodies develop. Other pollutants created by internal combustion engines are nitrogen oxides which are associated with chronic respiratory illnesses such as asthma. Once again, children are affected by NOx pollution the most.

The city of London has taken a number of steps to try to mitigate the congestion and pollution issues associated with motor vehicles. More than 20 years ago, it began charging all vehicles entering central London £15 (roughly $19) a day to discourage people from driving into the city. In 2019, a new fee was applied to polluting vehicles coming into a slightly larger area of London. Vehicles had to meet tailpipe emissions standards or pay £12.50 pounds (about $16) to enter.

Last year, Sadiq Kahn, the mayor of London, expanded that fee to the entire city, which meant that drivers in the outer regions were affected as well. The new policy brought protests, primarily from conservatives, but Kahn was still re-elected by a comfortable margin, according to the New York Times.

New Data From London ULEV Zone

This week, London published data showing that the air is cleaner in all of London since the new policy went into effect. Concentrations of particulate matter and nitrogen oxide dropped significantly in the first six months after London expanded its Ultra Low Emission Zone, according to the new data. That data supports the mayor’s efforts to persuade motorists, particularly those in the suburbs, that the extra costs are good for public health. The air is measurably cleaner in outer London, where opposition to the expansion was robust.

On Thursday, his office released figures on how the city’s air had changed in the first six months of the expanded low-emissions zone. The report covers the first six months of the expansion across all London boroughs and shows that pollutant emissions in 2023 with the London-wide ULEZ expansion in place are dramatically lower, compared to a scenario without it.

Within the outer London ULEZ area, NOx emissions from cars and vans are estimated to be 13% and 7% lower than a scenario without the expansion. This is equivalent to removing 200,000 cars from the road for one year.
PM2.5 exhaust emissions from cars in outer London are estimated to be 22% lower than without the expansion (6% more than expected).
Across all measures, these impacts are aligned with, and in many cases greater than, what TfL estimated in the consultation for the outer London expansion.
NOx emissions savings in outer London now represent over 90% of the total emission reductions seen in London as a result of the London-wide expansion.

The report also shows that, compared to what roadside NO2 concentrations are estimated to have been in different parts of London without the ULEZ and its expansions:

Levels in Outer London are estimated to be 21% lower
Levels in Central London are estimated to be 53% lower
Levels in Inner London are estimated to be 24% lower

London Air Quality Improvements Outpace Rest Of UK

The report shows that London’s air quality at the roadside is continuing to improve at a faster rate than the average for the rest of England. The ULEV expansion brought five million more Londoners into the ULEZ, and today’s report shows that outer London — which has historically had worse air quality than the rest of England average — now has levels of pollution much closer to levels in the rest of the country.

Even in the short 6-month timeframe covered by the report, roadside NO2 concentrations in outer London have dropped by up to 4.4% compared to what would have been expected without the London-wide expansion of the scheme. Given the size of outer London, every percent makes a huge difference.

Compliance levels have also increased further than expected, with 96.2% of all vehicles subject to the ULEZ now compliant (based on those vehicles recorded driving in London), up from 90.9% in June 2023. This has been aided by the mayor’s £210 million scrappage scheme that was launched in January 2023 to encourage London car owners to switch to cleaner vehicles. To date, 53,351 applications have been approved. There are now fewer older, more polluting vehicles driving in London, with 90,000 fewer non-compliant vehicles detected on an average day in February 2024 compared to June 2023, representing a 53% reduction in non-compliant vehicles in the first six months of operation.

A Tough Political Choice

According to Mayor Sadiq Khan, “The decision to expand the ULEZ London-wide was a difficult one, but necessary to save lives, protect children’s lungs and help reduce the risk of Londoners developing asthma, dementia, and a host of other health issues. Today’s report shows that the ULEZ is working even better than expected. The expansion to outer London is already having a significant effect — driving down levels of pollution, taking old polluting cars off our roads, and bringing cleaner air to millions more Londoners.

“London’s air quality is improving at a faster rate than the rest of England, and 96 per cent of vehicles are now compliant, with tens of thousands of Londoners benefiting from our scrappage scheme. It’s thanks to our bold policies, including ULEZ, that we are now set to get London’s air to within legal limits by 2025, 184 years earlier than previously projected. But there’s still more to do and I promise to continue taking bold action – including more to clean up out air and rivers – as we build a fairer, greener London for everyone.”

The BBC reported in April that the citywide Ultra Low Emission Zone had brought more than £130 million into city coffers. The amount of revenue is expected to drop over time, however, as more motor vehicles in London become ULEV compliant. By 2026, the city is not expected to collect any revenues at all from ULEZ fees because all cars will be in compliance by then.

It’s the first piece of evidence showing what congestion pricing, imposed on the whole of London, has done to pollution levels. The lessons learned by London could help gain support for similar measures in other large cities. City officials have come under increasing public pressure to clean up their air in recent years, but also face pressure from motorists and industries opposed to congestion pricing policies. Stockholm has had a congestion price since 2007. A 2018 study showed that it had reduced air pollution by 5 to 15 percent and had also reduced the rate of acute asthma attacks among young children.

The Takeaway

This information makes it crystal clear. It costs money to undo the damage done by fossil fuel pollution. Some people don’t think it is worth the cost. They think breathing dirty air is just part of the price we pay to live in a modern society. Global heating is an abstract concept that some find difficult to comprehend, but seeing a child with asthma struggling to breathe helps get the point across — burning fossil fuels is slowly strangling not only our planet but ourselves as well.

Lots of people complain about heavy-handed government policies like expanding the ULEV zone in London. They say they are indicators of a communist or socialist mindset. But if protecting human health is the result, perhaps we need more of those policies.