The consequences of a British combustion engine ban

Augustus Smith

No 1083, Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: Many countries plan to ban the sale of new combustion engine vehicles. I examine the impact of introducing such a ban in Great Britain in 2023, estimating demand, and calculating the reduction in the carbon externality using data on vehicle emissions and individual mileages. This reveals issues with the ban’s design, mainly due to hybrids’ popularity: anticipation will not incentivise firms to develop electric vehicles, low-income households would be harmed most, and CO2 emissions would not be substantially reduced. Using a revenue-neutral combination of sales taxes and subsidies delivers 50% of the ban’s climate benefit at 15% of the cost.

Date: 2025-06-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:62f9ffee-147c-4373-968f-e459eb58ab24 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oxf:wpaper:1083

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Pouliquen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).