Electric vehicle rebate among staff proposals to speed up Toronto’s target to become a carbon neutral city
There’s lots of talk about the need to make Toronto a “pro-active city,” an “urban-renewable city.” As far as I can tell, the only people promoting this notion, to my knowledge, are advocates for electric vehicles and gas tolling.
But what if they are wrong about the need to be pro-active? What if there is indeed a market for electric vehicles in Toronto? And what if the city can generate a considerable revenue by allowing people to pay for, and use electric vehicles as they would any other vehicle?
That’s the idea behind a new proposal by staff at City Hall. The proposal is called Forward on Toronto’s Energy Plan and it suggests that a rebate program could be used to speed up the city’s target to become a carbon neutral city by 2030. The idea is that the program will be a huge boost to electric vehicle sales in the city. It is based on the idea of a carbon tax on vehicle-based modes of transportation that is a version of “negative fuel taxes.”
There are two parts of the proposal, and it is important to understand the difference between the two. The first part is a financial incentive for people to go electric. This part comes in the form of a rebate program for electric vehicle purchases or leases. The rebate comes in the form of a one time rebate that the purchaser or leasee pays into the city’s Clean Energy Finance and Innovation Fund (CEFI) after the purchase or lease of an electric vehicle. The second part of the plan would allow the city to sell tax credits to new purchasers of electric vehicles to increase the income stream to a greater or lesser extent. Each part of the scheme has its own benefits and challenges, but it is important to understand the two parts since it is easy to misrepresent them as
