Surprise! London’s tax on polluting vehicles made everyone much healthier

The city of London has released a report showing drastic drops in air pollution since it expanded its Ultra Low Emission Zone, an area within the city where polluting vehicles must pay a congestion charge to visit.

The London Ultra Low Emissions Zone is an area within London where vehicles that do not meet modern emissions standards must pay an additional charge to drive. The charge is £12.50 (~$16) per day, and the restriction is enforced 24 hours a day.

It was first established under current London mayor Sadiq Khan in 2019, though had previously been announced in 2015 by Boris Johnson during his stint as London mayor.

While the area covered by the zone only encompassed Central London in 2019, Khan went on to expand it in 2021 and 2023, and it now covers all of Greater London, where around 9 million people live.

Each of these expansions met with resistance and the ULEZ became a flashpoint during UK elections, including specifically the London mayoral election. Previous UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took a pro-pollution stance in opposing the zone, despite it originally being proposed by his own party. In the end, despite the criticism, more Londoners supported the plan than opposed it, and Khan weathered the storm and was re-elected.

This zone is separate from London’s congestion charge zone, which covers Central London and applies to all vehicles that enter. ULEZ is intended to reduce pollution, while the congestion charge is intended to reduce traffic (though also has an effect of reducing pollution).

The ULEZ restrictions are actually not all that strict, especially from the perspective of us here at an electric vehicle publication – most diesel and petrol (gasoline)-powered cars made within the last 10 and 20 years respectively qualify, despite that they still create significant tailpipe pollution.

Also, there are exemptions available for delivery vehicles, buses and so on.

Nevertheless, despite these exemptions, a recent report released by the city of London shows how well the ULEZ has worked at lowering pollution in London and making everyone healthier.

Report finds massive drop in pollution after ULEZ implementation

The report points out that two of the most dangerous aspects of vehicle emissions – nitrogen oxides, which are responsible for smog formation, and PM2.5, which are tiny particles that irritate the lungs – have dropped by almost a third compared to if ULEZ hadn’t been implemented, in only the few years that the policy has been in place.

Specifically, NO2 is 27% lower and PM2.5 is 31% lower in outer London. Nitrogen oxides (which includes both NO and NO2) as a whole are down 14%.

Some areas have seen even more significant declines, like Central London, the most densely populated area. It has seen a drop in NO2 levels of 54%.

All in all, 99% of air quality monitors around London have showed a reduction in pollution, so the new rules have benefitted everyone.

This is important because prior to the report’s period, some 4,000 people died in London each year due to toxic air pollution. If the most toxic parts of air pollution have reduced by almost a third, that should mean over a thousand lives saved per year as a result of these policies – and the associated misery and health costs that come along with.

And those benefits have been seen most by the communities that need it. In “deprived communities,” which tend to see the most pollution in the first place, there’s been an 80% reduction in people exposed to illegal levels of pollution.

The policy has also led to an associated reduction in carbon emissions, as one might expect. In five years, total carbon reduction has equalled the amount of carbon put out by roughly 3 million individual air trips between London and New York.

EVs are quite popular in the UK, with almost 3 out of every 10 cars sold being electric in 2024. That number continues to rise significantly, partially as a result of these policies. But also, high adoption is what makes policies like this possible – if EVs are already available and popular, it’s much easier for individuals to comply.

All in all, between June 2023 and September 2024, London saw 58% fewer non-compliant vehicles on the road, showing a significant shift in transportation patterns in just one year. This was helped by a £200m ($258m) scrappage scheme which helped pay to get 15,232 old vehicles off the road.

Electrek’s Take

We’ve seen similar moves like this from other cities and countries, and each time, they seem to work quite well.

Congestion pricing, which again is not quite the same as ULEZ, has been popular in a number of countries and cities, and has definitely resulted in lower pollution, less traffic, and easier trips – and it works quickly, too.

And, despite what those who have fallen victim to oil propaganda like to say (feel free to check the comments on our articles or social media sometimes, sigh), sure enough, electric vehicles are helping to clean the air a lot.

We’ve seen real-world results that areas with higher EV adoption see lower pollution, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, except that, oil, one of the richest industries in the world with a lot of experience lying to you, has been trying to tell you otherwise.

And when temporary measures are taken by cities to transform their mobility systems, everyone seems to love it. When Paris kicked cars out and increased walkability and transport availability during the Olympics, the transformation got rave reviews. (We’ll see if Los Angeles can do the same in 2028).

It’s also unsurprising that when you disincentivize bad things, they go away. The world currently affords fossil fuels a subsidy of $7 trillion per year, and correcting for that subsidy by making them pay some of their fair share makes them less attractive to people. Maybe we should do more of that.

So it’s unsurprising to see London’s ULEZ working well, but it’s nice to have confirmation, particularly given the controversy around it at the time.

We’d like to see similar schemes elsewhere – like New York City, which recently implemented congestion pricing for the famously traffic-choked city (“no one in New York drives, there’s too much traffic“). Though, just like every other good idea, former New York resident and convicted felon Donald Trump has tried to block NYC’s congestion pricing plan, in his apparent quest to make literally everything worse.

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