Iceland’s Ministry of Transport (MoT) has established an environmental working group to examine new ways of encouraging consumer purchases of so-called eco-friendly passenger cars.
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Fact-finding missions are planned to Denmark, Sweden and Norway to examine the full range of tax initiatives on offer to motorists in these neighbouring Nordic countries.
The MoT has already approved a new disc-operated scheme by Reykjavik City Authority (RCA) that will permit eco-friendly passenger cars to park free of charge in the city centre and suburbs. The scheme is to be rolled out in other cities, towns and urban areas in Iceland from January 2008 onwards.
“Eco-friendly cars represent just 1% of the total registered passenger cars in Iceland. The government believes that the time is now right to introduce special tax and other concessions to promote vehicles in this category. Such initiatives will form an important part of Iceland’s environmental and carbon dioxide reduction programmes,” said Gisli Marteinn Baldursson, chairman of the MoT’s working group.
The MoT’s goal is to create a competitive market for ‘green’ cars in Iceland, said Baldursson. The Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid are currently the biggest selling models there.
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By GlobalData“There are currently some seven different ‘green’ passenger cars on sale in Iceland. The initiatives that we plan will hopefully increase that number to 25 over the next two years. We will also work with car hire companies to encourage them to add ‘green’ cars to their fleets. Hertz has already agreed to operate a small fleet of hydrogen-fuelled cars,” said Baldursson.
Additional measures being considered by the working group, based on measures elsewhere in Scandinavia, are to waive toll fees for ‘green’ cars. The MoT is also examining a Swedish government scheme that offers a premium of EUR1,000 to buyers of ‘green’ cars, and the systems in force in Sweden, Denmark and Norway that waive vehicle registration fees for ‘green’ cars.
The Swedish scheme is applicable to electric and hydrogen-fuelled cars, as well as petrol and diesel cars with CO2 emissions which do not exceed 120g/km, a figure which corresponds to a consumption of 5 litres per 100km.
The working group will also examine Norway’s HyNor project which aims to create a national network of hydrogen filling stations. The first segment of the project will see the establishment of a so-called ‘hydrogen motorway’ between Oslo and Stavanger by 2009.
“We are working towards a car vehicle tax based on carbon dioxide emissions rather than weight. Some hybrids are heavy but relatively low in fossil fuel emissions. Sweden is a good model for Iceland. Some 16% of all new car registrations are ‘green’ cars. This is where we want to go,” said Baldursson.
Gerard O’Dwyer
