A road user charge for electric vehicle use in Australia seems not a matter of if, more a question of when. But should common sense prevail, it won’t just apply to EVs.
Early this year, Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers was said to have floated the idea at a private dinner event, and again mentioned road user charges in June — but not specifically in relation to electric vehicles. The subject was also reportedly raised at meeting of transport leaders and government officials at a forum Sydney this week.
Now it appears a road user charge will see further discussion at The Economic Reform Roundtable, being held in Canberra from 19 to 21 August. The event involves leaders from business, unions, the community, government and various experts. They’ll be getting their heads together to build consensus on ways to improve productivity in Australia, enhance our economic resilience and strengthen budget sustainability.
The reasoning often put forward for introducing an EV road user charge is two-fold.
Fuel Excise Avoidance
Electric vehicle owners don’t pay fuel excise (aside from those with plug-in hybrids when they top-up with petrol), and fuel excise pays for roads.
Sort of.
The current rate for fuel excise is 51.6 cents for every litre of fuel purchased, but a rebate (tax credit) is provided to some eligible businesses. Fuel excise is collected by the Federal Government1 and goes into general revenue, which can be spent on just about anything; including roads2.
According to the Parliamentary Budget Office:
“Since 1992, successive Australian Governments have established road funding levels solely in the budget process and there has been no effective link between fuel excise and road expenditure.”
The Australian Automobile Association states it works out only 57% of the value of fuel excise collected went back into land transport projects in the decade to 2022-23.
But it’s not just electric vehicles that have (some, but increasing) impact on fuel excise collection. Fuel excise has declined as a proportion of Australian Government revenue over the last 40 years; long before electric vehicles hit the scene. And as vehicles generally become more efficient and fuel more expensive, the federal government will be collecting less at the pump.
So, something has to give; but it’s not just an EV issue.
Road Damage
Electric vehicles can be on the heavy side due to the weight of their batteries and it’s claimed this will lead to increased road damage. But the number of big utes and SUVs on the roads is also growing.
The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) says July’s top 3 best- selling vehicles in Australia were:
- Toyota Hilux (2100 kg to 2286 kg)
- Toyota RAV4 (1650 kg to 1760 kg)
- Ford Ranger (2,156 kg to 2,390 kg)
And the top 3 EVs (TheDriven):
- BYD Sealion 7 (2,225 kg – 2,340 kg)
- Tesla Model Y (1,900 kg – 2,000 kg)
- Geely EX5 (1,715 kg – 1,765 kg)
According to a report released by Transport Energy/Emission Research (TER) last year:
“… the fact that fossil-fuelled (petrol, diesel, LPG) internal combustion engine (ICE) cars have also consistently increased their mass over time (car obesity) is often ignored.”
Again, it’s not just an electric vehicle issue — and electric and ICE light vehicles aren’t doing most of the damage. It’s trucks. Added: And fuel tax credits for eligible fuels used in heavy vehicles with a gross vehicle mass greater than 4.5 tonnes can be claimed if the vehicle is used in an on-road business activity.
Solution: A *Universal* Road User Charge
The Australian Electric Vehicle Association (AEVA) has repeatedly stated that any future federally collected road user charge must apply to all vehicles, and regardless of fuel source. It backs a universal charge based on mass × distance to ultimately replace fuel excise.
“A universal, mass × distance road user charge would serve the same role as fuel excise – a pay-by-use system which is proportional to the impact driving has on society and infrastructure,” said AEVA National President Dr Chris Jones late last month. “EV drivers don’t have a problem with it – we just want to ensure the system is fair.”
Professor John Quiggin from the School of Economics at The University of Queensland also supports a universal road user charge, but in terms of impacts on society also points out:
“In a properly functioning economic system, fuel taxes should be considered a charge on motorists for the harmful pollution their vehicles generate.”
Footnotes
- States can’t collect excise, and this is why Victoria’s application of an EV road user charge ultimately failed. ↩
- At a state/territory level, car registration fees usually go into that jurisdiction’s general revenue, and from there can also help to pay for roads. Additionally, council rates help fund maintenance of local roads. ↩
About Michael Bloch
RSS - Posts
I’m with John Quiggin.
RUC for all and a reduced fuel excise with a higher weighting for diesel and no exemptions for off road use.
Spineless Labor will take the easy out though.
I think use the same system as France, you pay for each section of freeway that you use.
I’m France it’s necessary to stop and pay, however being a single country on a continent, we could.simply expand the system of etag toll roads, and pay a usage charge.
When you say freeway section, do you mean sections of varying length, or set units e.g. 10km? The latter would clobber non-urban dwellers, yet again giving inner city dwellers a free ride.
Why not move to the congestion model where city roads are where the taxation\usage charge occurs?
I still think if Labor opts for an RUC on all then the excise+GST must be dropped. You can’t triple tax the same thing – vehicle use. If Labor want to keep the excise+GST then the RUC must be an EV levy.
As an EV owner, I feel road levies are inevitable, but also feel the rate should be weight & distance levied. I feel this would be best managed by a levy on registration: the vehicle owner would state the expected annual mileage with 10Kkms being the minimum charge, so the levy would be pre-paid. If the amount expected was exceeded, extra distance can be paid, or if left until the following registration, a penalty interest charge could be added. I feel the rate should be around 1.5c/Km/tonne. (so around 2.5c/Km levy for average EV).
I, too, feel this levy should be universal on all vehicles. The fuel excise could be reduced by a similar amount (say 15% reduction), The levy would be payable on all road-going vehicles, so no reduction for business because all vehicles damage the roads to some extent.
I also feel the levy should only be used for transport: roads, rail, cycle ways, footpaths etc. Local councils could also be funded partly by funds from this pool, based on needs.
Back when I started driving (1980s). I thought the rego inspections recorded the odometer for calculating part of the fees?
Found an old NSW rego certificate:
“Tax Levy $19.65 Weight Tax $39.65”
“FULLY ALLOCATED TO ROADWORKS”
Nigel Pearson: – “I thought the rego inspections recorded the odometer…”
In NSW, the rego inspections certainly do. My last Inspection Station e-Safety Check Report (aka ‘Pink Slip’) included data for:
Inspection date:
Amount paid:
Number plate:
Class:
Make:
Model:
Odometer reading:
Compliance date:
Many modern vehicles can receive software updates, including feature enhancements and security patches, over their built-in mobile data network, also known as Over-the-Air (OTA) updates. This eliminates the need for dealership visits for these updates. The vehicle typically downloads the update via its mobile data connection & then prompts the driver to install it.
Perhaps the relevant motor vehicle registries in their applicable jurisdictions could access the vehicle odometer readings via the vehicle’s mobile data connection periodically, where possible, & charge a distance tax? Monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, whatever?
As an ev owner I have no problems paying my share but I think the fuel excise tax should be abolished and every road vehicle charged on a weight/km driven per year . Has anyone thought about the fuel bought for motors that aren’t on the road mowers gensets off road bike quads buggies etc.
Perhaps check to see whether those already get the fuel excise rebate. There are many exemptions.
Yes, road user charges.
Yes, pollution charges.
Pay as you go.
Even a road user charge is an idiot idea, because it disproportionately punishes users like the trucking industry, who are hauling freight not for their benefit but for ours. They’ll pass the costs back to us, and we’ll end up paying them anyway, as consumers.
The truth of road funding, as somebody who works with it every day, is that it’s been woefully inadequate for decades, well before EVs came on the scene, even with fuel excise. Most local councils are millions in arrears with basic road maintenance, because there’s no money. It’s an essential service, we don’t charge sick people more to use the health system or levy higher rates on heavy electricity users.
As with the renewables rollout, which is floundering now because governments of all persuasions thought the market could do it for them, essential public infrastructure has to be funded and governed from the top.
I was under the impression that trucks get the current fuel excise returned to them, but perhaps I’ve misunderstood that? On an Australian Automobile Association page it states that trucks, coaches, and buses already pay a Road User Charge on each litre of diesel they buy, though it notes agricultural, mining, and other non public road use sees a rebate\tax credit on the fuel excise they pay. If trucks are already paying a RUC, it will only have an impact if the cost changes.
There’s a diesel fuel rebate. It’s cost the country over $200 billion since 1990. A road user charge based on weight and miles would be a wrecking ball for trucking, unless they got rebates, in which case what would be the point of the charge in the first place, given that heavy vehicles do most of the damage to roads.
Is a rebate a cost? If it’s tax returned then that’s not government paying out money, rather it’s government saying they should never have collected it.
Perhaps the purpose of the RUC needs to be determined first, then the details of it? If it’s an EV levy then it doesn’t apply to trucks, unless they’re EV trucks. If it’s a tax on all vehicles, then Labor needs to decide how much they want cost of living to rise by – trucks will need to pass this tax on. And if it’s a tax on road damage …
I think every variation of user-pays for essential public services is doomed to fail and lead to perverse outcomes. If there isn’t enough funding for roads, ‘print’ some more money (quite seriously). Use the MMT ideas. Governments have been doing it since 2008 anyway to fund all sorts of things.
But that’s just it, is it an essential public service, or inner city privilege? Outside capital cities, especially the urban cores of said cities, you don’t get taxpayer funded essential public services, it’s user pays, and there’s vastly fewer to pay, meaning it’s vastly less affordable or viable.
Charging congestion taxes e.g. 1c per kilometre of city driving, would cause folk to rethink their need to congest roads, as well as where they should live and work, p[us raise revenue to fund infrastructure. Of course nobody wants Big Brother tracking them everywhere they go so that won’t happen.
MMT – MultiMedia Technology, Modern Monetary Theory? You’d probably better clarify which MMT you mean as there’s at least 80 of them: https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/MMT
” They’ll pass the costs back to us, and we’ll end up paying them anyway, as consumers.”
Isn’t that the point?
The alleged point is to make those who inflict the most damage on roads with more of the costs of their upkeep. But they’ll just pass it on to all consumers in higher precises for freighted goods. So it defeats the purpose, everyone pays more, and sure they should share the costs of goods they’re all receiving, but why go through the stupid detour of charging heavy road users first and then making them pass on the costs to customers? Plus it disadvantages people in regional areas who have to travel much longer distances on average.
Trucks already pay a road user charge. It’s 32.4 cents per litre.
Not distance-based though, or only indirectly.
Fuel taxes go to general revenue, and so user-pays is nonsense. A smoke screen. Road funding was already woefully inadequate, before EVs came along.
Universal charge km x weight charge as per AEVA makes sense. Note that vehicle damage to roads is not a linear – double the axle weight causes 16 times the damage.
There HAS to be a pollution charge. It can’t continue to be totally socialised given we all don’t drive polluting vehicles anymore but EV drivers still pay the socialised cost of pollution.
I think congestion sorts itself out on an inconvenience basis (as long as we have sufficient public / active transport to provide an alternative, but only if we are not building more roads to deal with it. New roads = congestion charge. Electronic tolling can make this a very easy matter.
The big problem here is that absent commonwealth legislation, the states can’t do this so we need an accord with the feds to make this happen and perhaps finally have a direct link between road use and the charges applicable to it.
As an EV owner I am OK with a road user charge as long as it is equitable and the money raised is all spent on roads.
A charge based on weight and distance travelled seems fair but only if it is applied equally to all road users including trucks.
The excise on petroleum fuels could be reduced and in decades to come phased out as it disappears from general use and becomes pointless.
The big problem with this arrangement though is how does the distance travelled by all vehicles get accurately recorded and reported.
“The big problem with this arrangement though is how does the distance travelled by all vehicles get accurately recorded and reported.”
I’d suggest it be reported at registration time…you log your odometer reading, you forcast your km to be travelled for the coming year, and pay by the month…next rego, rinse and repeat…if you come under your km estimate you get a refund, go over and you pay extra
That is all good in theory but would be wide open to both rorting and honest mistakes.
The only viable solution I can see is to wait until technology makes it simple to automatically report a vehicles kilometers directly to the billing authority.
Every registered vehicle would need to be fitted with a device that would do that.
What of vehicles that reverse their odometers to ensure their costs remain low? Not sure how it’s done, only that some (older?) vehicles can get it done.
Easier for the Registered owner to estimate their yearly Kms, with Minimum of !0KKms. So the owner pre-purchases their estimated Kms then if exceeded, they are charged penalty interest next rego. Commercial vehicles can top up if required (easy on-line purchase) or private can either pay annually, or buy a top up if they wish to but they will pay fee if kms/yr exceed estimate by more than 5KKms. Fairly panless way to implement I feel.
That road and car taxes pay more in general revenue than is spent on road is false.
The road lobby is at work again.
The Victoria public transport users association (PTUA) calculates that Australia pays 69 billion into the road system (including externalities such as road trauma and noise) and collects 45 billion.
https://www.ptua.org.au/myths/petroltax/
Part 1 of 2
A core principle of environmental policy should be that polluters bear the full cost of the negative externalities they create. To this end, I support a broad-based tax on all emissions, whether they affect air, water, or land. This approach moves beyond the scope of a traditional fuel or carbon tax, applying to all sectors of the economy, including industrial manufacturing, energy production, and agriculture. The tax would be directly tied to the quantity and toxicity of pollutants released, creating a powerful economic incentive for all entities to reduce their environmental impact.
I totally agree but let’s get rid of fuel excise altogether and replace it with an emission excise instead.
A road charge can then be expressed as;
1. g’s C02/km x cents/g + a standard rate per km travelled travelled on public roads.
2. Weight could be configured into registration costs.
I think the charge should include an emissions component – to pay for the air pollution and health costs:
Emissions intensity X Weight X Distance travelled
But isn’t that *precisely* what this scheme is intended and designed *not* to do? Excise exemption of climate repair was tolerable when BEV numbers did not amount to a pimple on a pumpkin, but as BEVs become popular, the fossil mafia demands disincentives.
The brilliance of a general RUC is that it not only damages the climate rescue effort, but can *eliminate* ICE’s pollution penalty! A 30% price drop on petrol, at no cost to the fossil mafia, will increase their profits. The small penalty on clean transport is just a juicy bonus.
Compare: The world’s biggest bank, Morgan Stanley, says:
Three degrees of global heating “could more than double the growth rate of the $235 billion cooling market every year, from 3% to 7%.
@ 11:41 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FYFJNKgJR0
It is now a contest between cheaper clean tech, and profit maximising disregard for social consequences. Oil money has bought votes worldwide for decades. I don’t expect decisions for optimal outcomes.
A global mean surface temperature (GMST) anomaly that is +3 °C (5.4 °F) above preindustrial levels—which is predicted to be reached by between 2054 and 2065 (assuming a continued linear rate of warming)—is likely to be incompatible with civilisation.
Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf have produced a pre-print paper titled Global Warming has Accelerated Significantly, currently in peer-review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYVKW04ukiY
The University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) published their report on 16 Jan 2025 titled Planetary Solvency–finding our balance with nature: Global risk management for human prosperity. The IFoA report is suggesting without immediate policy action to change course, Catastrophic (i.e. ≥25% GDP loss and ≥25% human mortality) or Extreme (i.e. ≥50% GDP loss and ≥50% human mortality) impacts by year-2050 are eminently plausible.
As a summarising meta-study, the paper in that clip nicely wraps up what we’ve been seeing lately from various scientific sources.The ERA5 model seems to best fit now, but with El Niño’s statistical noise, yes, their dates are a few years early, I suspect. Perhaps most damning is that the ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) now shows as close to the +5°C per CO₂ doubling that Svante Arrhenius’s paper described in 1896, 129 years ago.
+5C is so incredibly horrifying…
Erik Christiansen: – “The ERA5 model seems to best fit now, but with El Niño’s statistical noise, yes, their dates are a few years early, I suspect.”
And yet the Earth’s albedo, the fraction of sunlight incident on Earth that is reflected back to space, apparently keeps falling. See Figure 1 in the recent communication by James Hansen & Pushker Kharecha titled Seeing the Forest for the Trees, posted 6 Aug 2025.
Page 7 included:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2025/ForestTrees.06August2025.pdf
If it’s user pays then put the already missing 43% back into where it’s supposed to be and problem solved.
A mass × distance road user charge should be a mass^4 × distance road user charge since road damage is proportional to the axle load to the fourth power.
A 5 ton truck with two axles would cause road damage about 16 times that of a 2.5 ton SUV, about 600 times that of a 1 ton small car and 6 million times that of a 0.1 ton bicycle (but probably this experimentally (?) derived law would not extend this far and in fact bicycles cause absolutely no road damage at all).
I don’t know anyone who has a 100kg bicycle!
Perhaps a 0.01t bicycle would be better, and a lot more common.
The relevant weight is the total of bike plus rider so 20kg plus 80 kg.
Internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles continued to dominate overall sales in Australia, with 206,810 sold in the March quarter, or 72.68 per cent of the total market. This was a reduction from 215,789 sales in the December quarter, or 75.1 per cent of the market.
https://www.aaa.asn.au/2025/05/bev-ice-sales-fall-as-hybrids-and-plug-ins-accelerate/
Meanwhile, it seems Australia’s liquid fuel security is becoming ever more precarious.
https://crudeoilpeak.info/australian-diesel-import-dependency-on-middle-east-oil-update-april-2025
https://crudeoilpeak.info/australian-petrol-import-dependency-april-2025-update
And humanity’s current energy use is putting us on the road to ‘climate ruin’.
https://www.lithgowenvironment.au/docs/road-to-climate-ruin-geoff-miell-4jun25.pdf
Anything that discourages the rapid phaseout of operating ICEVs threatens Australia’s longer-term energy security and is ultimately ‘civilisation suicide’.
Politicians of both stripes are too gutless to take on the noisy lobby groups who will object to change. As EV owners are currently a minority, they will be rolled.
It’s long been the case that rail freight pays full costs at a competitive disadvantage to road freight which receives a substantial implicit subsidy through NOT paying the fair cost of mass to the power 4 times distance. A fair chunk of freight would move off road and onto rail if this were squared up. I wonder what the cost savings from reduced road damage and trucking accidents would be?
A fair formula applied to all vehicles, including road damage and health costs (e.g. respiratory) WILL be opposed by anybody receiving an implicit subsidy and won’t get up. Politics as usual.
Darrell: – “Politicians of both stripes are too gutless to take on the noisy lobby groups who will object to change.”
…unless change is imposed on us through external factors beyond our control.
Chris Martenson’s recent presentation at the Limitless Expo covered peak oil, energy scarcity, economic impacts, shale oil limits, AI’s ridiculous energy demands, looming natural gas challenges, and resilience strategies, duration 46½ minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhhlbQL4UYg
See also my earlier comments at:
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/ev-road-charges-mb3246/#comment-1727165
US petroleum geologist Art Berman suggested:
“… I’m quite confident that before this decade is over we’re going to see some serious supply concerns by markets for both oil and natural gas, and it would not surprise me if that happened in a year or two…”
https://youtu.be/rv85LTMO8TQ?t=2233
Brace for impact…
The fundamental problem is what is being taxed and why? If the excise is to fund roads then the free ride EV drivers are getting must end. If it’s a sales tax then it’s more open to debate, but again it’s unfair that EVs are getting a free rise. And if the excise is a sin tax, well that’s just plain silly – the reality is Australia is an enormous country so vehicle emissions are only really significant in very limited areas i.e. capital cities. In that case a congestion tax would be a better solution than a fuel tax, or perhaps even radically higher rates to register a vehicle in the congested areas e.g. Sydney or Melbourne – pay for the privilege if you refuse to use public transport, with additional fees and charges to deal with congestion.
From what I’ve read in comments it seems like many support a RUC on EVs, but the concern is Labor will impose it on ICEVs which are already paying excise and GST on top.
…it appears that most comments here are by drivers who live in or near metro areas. ANY ‘formula’ that blindly and simpistically involves a ‘x distance’ factor will GREATLY impact and disadvantage those of us that live in the ‘country’. There is No / Minimal public transport, so using a private vehicle is not an option, it is a necessity. Access to Services isnt 10k’s down the road (with likely multiple options). eg a return trip to access specialist services eg medical, can involve a return trip of 300 … 500 … 800+ km. It wont matter how cheap the fuel is – whether you drive an ICE or EV or PHEV, it will be devastating to the communities impacted 🙁
A great point.
User-pays public services are a stupid idea.
What’s the alternative, yet more taxpayer subsidisation of inner city life?
If you use the service, why shouldn’t you pay for it? And if it’s government owned then it doesn’t even need to make a huge profit so ticket prices will be lower than if operated as a private company.
Because humans invented public services to create economies of scale, to absorb cost of living pressures on individuals. By extension, it’d be like saying only those who claim from insurance should pay for it.
Many who use the service need it to survive, it’s not them freeloading off anybody. Like all the outer suburban commuters, who would pay a lot more if a road usage charge was introduced, even though they have no choice but to drive long distances to work.
The big issue is how would they collect it?
Give them your milage for the last year when your annual rego is due and pay a hefty bill? I cant see that working out to well.
But i agree, the fuel excise on ICE engined cars acts as a “carbon tax” and further incentive to go electric.
Government should just try making those who should pay tax, actually pay tax, and stop giving tax cuts if they are not making enough tax revenue.
I think a nice $200 a tonne excise tax on all fuel exports (Coal, gas, oil) would also make them a buck or two if they really need to make some money in the short term. And if it stifles exports of fuel, well that would be a shame… not.
100% this comment billions in revenue for gas companies in aus and they dont pay a single dollar of tax, in almost every circumstance the average aussie is the one forking the bill for most corperations and Australia.
“The big issue is how would they collect it?”
That was my first thought too, Andrew. I’ve been looking online but can find no details about how this might be implemented.
So if I quit smoking, I still have to pay those tobacco excise duties?
NZ has had a RUC for a long time now. Might be worth looking at that system as a base and then seeing what could be improved/changed to suit Aus.
Just a thouhgt.
…. from what I understand, ICE vehicles are exempt from RUC in NZ, whilst PHEVs are half the cost of EVs at $76 /1000k’s.
“But that’s just it, is it an essential public service, or inner city privilege? Outside capital cities, especially the urban cores of said cities, you don’t get taxpayer funded essential public services, it’s user pays, and there’s vastly fewer to pay, meaning it’s vastly less affordable or viable.”
Sorry, scratching my head here. I live in regional Australia and we have taxpayer-funded public services. Public services aren’t generally user-pays. And roads are absolutely vital to life outside capital cities.
“MMT – MultiMedia Technology, Modern Monetary Theory?”
Yes.
ouch! if the cost of an EV is double that – 15c a km – that would cost me a hundred bucks a week if I was driving an EV!
You wouldn’t want that bill at the end of the year – do you know how they collect it?
I have no objection to the introduction of a road user charge, provided it is done in a fair and equitable manner. This would include:
• The charge should apply to all vehicles, both EV and ICE. The fuel excise could then be scrapped, or better, the revenue used to address the myriad of health issues that result from the air pollution caused by ICE vehicles.
• The charge is proportional to the likely damage caused; this means of course that road user charge for heavy vehicles should be of the order of 10,000 times that of regular cars.
• The revenue is explicitly set aside for road maintenance. (Media outlets, without exception, perpetuate the myth that fuel excise revenue is set aside for road maintenance). If there is a policy decision to not enforce full cost recovery, say, for heavy vehicles usage, any shortfall is made up from general revenue, not by artificially increasing the charge for regular cars.
Last I checked about 54% of fuel excise went into road projects.
I suppose you could argue the rest goes into health funding to offset the damage done by air pollution??
We should still be paying enough for EV motoring to make bicycles and public transport attractive so perhaps the road user charge should be used to make bus, train and tram fares free.
I thought 100% goes into consolidated revenue. The fact that expenditure on roads might be 54% of this figure is irrelevant, You could equally argue that, for instance, excise on tobacco is used to fund roads
Hi Brian,
You could argue XX% of tobacco excise goes into hospitals to manage lung cancer.
It all goes in one end and gets distributed at the other.
The point is that fuel excise takes nearly double the revenue that is spent on roads. The trolls want fair funding for roads after all.
I guess the rest also goes into health care, to look after people who suffer from air pollution… something EVs create none of, bar tyre dust and vastly less brake dust.
We’d all be better off with a road user charge for mileage, one based on weight… which would make modest EVs with small batteries attractive.
And discourage the dullards commuting in dualcab 4wds.
And a carbon tax would be better again.
Paint me green, Anthony, but the fossil fuel excise is the only carbon tax we have, by my reckoning. Increasing it would be socially harmful now that maniacal US and local government debt has inflated prices mountainously while wages have been suppressed alarmingly, but retaining it would be a rare piece of sane transport policy, healthily promoting the sustainable energy transition.
The ABC reports today that it’ll likely take several years to introduce a distance excise. The longer, the better, as polluter-pays applies best to those who destroy the future of mankind by willfully pushing us past +3 degC before long. It’s not just ever increasing fire & floods, but ever more intense earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as Greenland rising 3 cm/yr moves all of Earth’s tectonic plates. (Fatty moves on the waterbed) The latest 8.8 R earthquake off Kamchatka presages bigger to come, not all so conveniently placed. And all due to fossil fuels burning our future.
How blind is our denial?
Sort of. Though we’ve all been habituated, all sides of politics, into thinking that ‘markets’ solve problems. The Chinese are demonstrating how blinded we’ve been by that belief, their renewables and EV rollout is led right from the top, which is why it’s working. Similarly the rollout of fossil fuel culture a century or more ago wasn’t the gradual accumulation of incentives to some fictitious market. Governments and businesses went all-in, in a culture-wide excitement at the shift.
The empirical evidence is out there. The slow progress we’ve managed with things like renewables and EVs is all driven by economies of scale for the technology out of China. Not by any market or incentive. If we want better roads, we won’t get there with any permutation of incentive taxes. The incentives for solar that worked here are all dependent on cheaper solar technology, mostly out of China. I still think we’ve begun the renewables transition in the dead-end of marketisation.
I had a great talk to a friend yesterday who rang me regarding the RUT, she has a PhD in environmental science, so I take notice of what she has on her mind.
She asked the question, ” would it just be simpler to have the RUT, the excise paid by using fast chargers?” She still has a petrol car and her husband has a diesel ute and travels for work.
We on the other hand have an EV and would have no problem with paying a RUT, a fair RUT.
In our local council area we already pay a “road network charge” it’s only about $300/yr. So, if I only charge my EV from our solar and drive on local roads, I already am paying for the privilege of using our local roads, which would be about 80-90% of our driving. So, if kilometre charge is indroduced I’ll be paying twice.
The real issue here is how to equitably fund the damage to the road network caused by the vehicles that are using it.
In country Victoria, the damage is predominantly SEMIs & TRUCKS
A five-axle, tractor-trailer loaded to the 80,000-pound (U.S.) Federal limit (36 tonnes), has the same impact on an interstate highway as 9,600 automobiles. In addition, as truck axle weights increase, pavement damage increases an at even faster rate. For example, while a truck axle carrying 18,000 pounds (8 tonne) is only 9 times heavier than a 2,000-pound (900kg) automobile axle, it does 5,000 times more damage.
Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
https://www.gao.gov/products/109954#:~:text=In%20addition%2C%20as%20truck%20axle,does%205%2C000%20times%20more%20damage.
Perhaps we should also be asking about warranties on quality of repairs upgrades as well (they don’t built them or repair them with the effort/diligence/oversight that they did in the past (e.g. before privitization)
Nick, your insightful perspective on the energy transition is highly intriguing. I sense that “the dead-end of marketisation” could play out in grid energy as rooftop solar and locally owned wind (in Denmark at least) democratise production and internalise consumption. But as surplus finds demand, trading with net consumers will persist, with less market dominance, except in distribution. It looks like a more level playing field – a trading commons rather than a dominated market?
Vikings did well with prized Damascus steel swords, arguably from India, apparently the source of Arabic numerals as well. USA gave us the solid state revolution, and now China enables the world with solar panels, EVs, and lithium batteries. PERC PV is Aussie tech, just Chinese made. Anteaters have evolved 12 times, also due to supply – the global mass of ants is over 10 times that of all wild animals.
Ample supply is a greater good, but oil addiction is killing us – our hive now needs safe sustenance.
Thanks Erik. I just think everything that gives the appearance of the ‘market’ at work is really the outcome of either planning and design, such as Australia’s historical success with rooftop solar, enabled by government subsidy using technology made highly affordable by even stricter planning in China.
And that without the momentum of China’s staggering investment and strategic planning, not even the Australian rollout would probably continue, in the absence of the economies of scale generated by the Chinese.
Every country pretty much except China is woefully behind its renewables targets, and is only even registering in the data because of importing of Chinese economies of scale. The idea Australia (or anyone) can just tweak some incentives and bring about an energy revolution is fanciful, in my view. It will need real top-level heft.
The fuel excise, as we all know, is just a tax on imports of fossil fuels and just goes into consolidated revenue.
Some of that tax (53%) is used for both building and the maintenance of roads.
As an EV driver, I do like well made roads though our roads in Central Queensland need a lot of maintenance at the moment. Living in a coal mining area you see the damage done by by the heavy haulage going to and from the mining areas. Mining trucks are also used on roads but they are equipped with a GPS device which sorts out distance travelled on public road and distance on site.
What if, the fuel excise applied to all fossil fuel used? Currently the Government misses out on about $11billion in excise revenue.
I now suggest we keep the current Fuel excise that way things remain the same for current public road users, then we start introducing what I’d call an “emissions excise” (others can call it a carbon tax if they want) on any other fuel used elsewhere. It could start off a small.
Where does the figure 53% spent on roads come from? The way it seems to me, the money from fuel excise goes into consolidated revenue; a deliberate decision was made to untie it from road maintenance costs. I.e., by design, the revenue contributes to all government programs. Certainly some of the revenue from fuel excise goes into road maintenance, but this would only be in the same proportion as road maintenance expenditure is to total expenditure. I’m happy to be corrected, but from figures I’ve seen this proportion is about 1%. I.e., about 1% of fuel excise revenue goes to road maintenance, with the balance going to defence, health, etc., etc.
Tom, your small, growing carbon tax could expedite the vital energy transition, without the pain of immediate heavy imposts. I.e. spend to substitute clean energy now, or pay more tax tomorrow. ICE cars are already paying with the other 47% of excise?
My bias sees multinational miners as well able to bear the additional minor impost of a carbon tax on their short-term exploitation of what could be our long-term resources, available for future generations if not ripped out too fast.
Now farming: Food is already expensive enough for struggling mortgage payers, and farming uses a lot of fuel. Pensioners could be given food stamps? I’ve tried India & USA for a (limited capability) EV tractor, but no go, even when offering to assist with field trials and product development. I suspect that it’ll take over a decade for EV tractor availability and on-farm battery swapping to mature to full usefulness. Government underwriting could prompt export to Australia, where currently not planned.
Dale: “+5C is so incredibly horrifying…”
We won’t see it. “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity” is what it settles at if we stabilise at double the old atmospheric CO₂ level, and projections show only +4°C by 2084, so it’ll be 2100 or so, I figure. You could say it’s a good way from today’s 430 ppm to 560, but emissions are still growing, & feedbacks are beginning. (e.g. CH₄) Subsequent decades of reluctant ramping down to zero can easily get us to the doubling.
China has briefly been the biggest emitter, but should peak in 2027, then shame the world, as its efforts are gargantuan. (Running half the world’s EVs for a start.)
Parts of the world will be uninhabitable. (The tech editor of Renew magazine moved to Tasmania years ago.) Billionaires are building subterranean bunkers. I’m happy with 64m above current sea level in Victoria. But in the MDB, build atop 6m high islets, as westcoast Jutland farmers resorted to centuries ago, and still retain on the low land. Adapt! 😉
Erik Christiansen: – “You could say it’s a good way from today’s 430 ppm to 560…”
Per NOAA:
https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/
James Hansen, in a livestreamed conversation on Aug 18 said:
“You know the greenhouse gas forcing, when you add, uh, methane and chlorofluorocarbons to carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, uh, is about four watts per metre squared. We’ve now reached the double CO₂ level equivalent of, uh, double CO₂, but we’ve also put aerosols in the atmosphere and they cause a negative climate forcing, a cooling. Yeah. And that, uh, that forcing is probably in the range from -1 to -2 watts per metre squared. So it’s a big deal.”
https://youtu.be/w5jShXBD6ck?t=628
+2.0 °C by sometime in the 2030s means likely ~20-40% population beyond livable niche.
https://globaia.org/habitability
Best exploit the domestic battery subsidy to the hilt, then, as even rapidly growing renewable grid capacity will be challenged by closure of the last coal power stations, and probable substantial BEV incentives and/or mandates in ten years. Failure to curb fossil fuel burning, perhaps hardest on India, Africa, etc., is hitting here too. What happens to building costs when each site must be inside an inflated plastic dome with aircon? (Yes, OK, India first. But then?)
Batteries, more rooftop solar, switch from ICE to BEV … and insulate the home, as Anthony shows us. It’s not optional, but vital even in the mid-term.
WInter PV yield here was 6.5 kW at 8:30 a.m., consumption 10.5 kW at 10:30 with spare capacity. 46 kWh battery at 98% SoC by 10:00, and yesterday’s 168 km of BEV travel will finish recharging in an hour, 29 kWh in so far. Not a drop from the grid, 100% carbon neutral, travel included. It won’t save us, but we can delay and minimise the pain … if we care to.
Geoff, with current research, as in your Page 7 quote, showing us all (except the slow IPCC) in agreement with the +5°C climate sensitivity established 129 years ago, I was going to pipe down. But today’s ABC radio report that signs of irreversible collapse of WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) are already confirming its inevitability really ought to goad us all out of slothful reluctance to act. (Its full +4.3m sea rise will take time, but it’s baked in now, literally.)
Yes, albedo reduction could maintain our global cooking rate after the El Niño spike, and AMOC slowing due to ice melt cooling, causing reduced CO₂ sinking, will only confirm your estimate, on reflection. An ice-free Arctic in summer is only a few years away; 15% reflection instead of 85% has to hit.
If every western multi-car family soon swapped out one ICE for a BEV, how many Mt of CO₂ would that obviate? Measures to buy time for adaptation are a civilisational priority – determining how much we lose.
What’s fascinating is that we pretty much stopped the world twice, to fight two world wars. For existential risks only a tiny fraction of the magnitude we’re facing with climate change. It’s a measure of the power of the status quo that almost nothing can be done it seems to accelerate action.
History shows that the level of change required tends to only come when the status quo is catastrophically disrupted. Planck put it well, change even in science tends to happen ‘one funeral at a time’.
Erik Christiansen: – “But today’s ABC radio report that signs of irreversible collapse of WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) are already confirming its inevitability…”
…and I think there’ll be much more ice mass loss, including the Greenland Ice Sheet. On 22 Aug 2022, at the Cryosphere 2022 Symposium at the Harpa Conference Centre Reykjavik, Iceland, glaciologist Professor Jason Box said from time interval 0:15:27:
“And at this level of CO₂, this rough approximation suggests that we’ve committed already to more than 20 metres of sea level rise. So, obviously it would help to remove a hell-of-a-lot of CO₂ from the atmosphere, and I don’t hear that conversation very much, because we’re still adding 35 gigatonnes per year.”
https://youtu.be/iE6QIDJIcUQ?t=927
Where do I think SLR is heading? See Slides #8-9 at:
https://www.lithgowenvironment.au/docs/road-to-climate-ruin-geoff-miell-4jun25.pdf
Burning more carbon is ‘civilisation suicide’!
Geoff, I’m staying well clear of any “CO₂ removal” notions, as we’re still increasing emissions, and those have to hit zero before removal becomes more than talk aimed at procrastination. It is a massive task just to replace all fossil energy fast. Additionally providing extractive undoing of past emissions might in fact be left to the algal blooms in the spreading seas, working over the head of the Statue of Liberty and Big Ben. (Dismissed as our childrens’ problem?)
I lacked the characters to mention Greenland, already adding one cubic km of meltwater to the oceans every 33 hrs – wait till it gets hot!
Oligarchs will sell aircons at great profit, and real estate (on high ground) will appreciate. But action is accelerating, if not adequately. Undergounding the grid is dear now, but *cheaper than tomorrow*, when today’s pylons are flattened. If we don’t then we’re all intermittently off-grid in a decade or so. Only numerous local batteries can then provide local grid power.
Erik Christiansen: – “I’m staying well clear of any “CO₂ removal” notions…”
Just stopping further GHG emissions is not enough. The current global mean atmospheric CO₂ concentration (i.e. 420-428 ppm) has not been this high since the Pliocene Epoch, 5.33 to 2.58 million years ago, where the GMST was 2–3 °C higher than today.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/?intent=121
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene
Erik Christiansen: – “I lacked the characters to mention Greenland, already adding one cubic km of meltwater to the oceans every 33 hrs…”
It depends on the time of the year & environmental conditions. The recent Greenland heatwave has the cumulative daily ice sheet mass balance at more than 100 gigatonnes of net loss for the 2025 hydrological year (to 22 Aug).
https://x.com/climate_ice/status/1958820304869847399
1 Gt of water = 1 km³ of water ≈ 1.0905 km³ of ice