How EVs could be part of answer to UK’s fuel reserve worries | Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars
The Iran war has sent oil and diesel prices to their highest levels in years, triggered warnings about fuel rationing across Europe and calls for Britain to drill for more oil and gas in the North Sea. But analysis shows the UK is looking for solutions in the wrong places, and one of them is people sitting in driveways or parking on the streets.
If more drivers switch to electric vehicles, Britain will sharply reduce its consumption of petrol and diesel; Every car will be charged from the grid rather than at the pump, expanding the country’s fuel reserves, and experts say the potential impact will go far beyond that.
The UK could significantly reduce petrol and diesel consumption if more drivers switch to electric vehicles. Every car charged from the grid rather than from the pump increases the country’s fuel reserves, and experts say the potential impact goes far beyond that.
Before the war, the UK had around three weeks’ reserves of car fuel: according to the report, 21 days of petrol and 22 days of diesel. official data Analyzed by policy consultancy Mandala Partners. If the UK had as many electric cars as world leader Norway, this reserve could amount to an extra seven days’ worth of petrol. Around 32% of all cars on Norwegian roads are fully electric, compared to 5.4% in Britain.
Researchers estimate that Britain’s current electric and hybrid cars are already saving around two days’ worth of fuel. The figure underlines the size of the opportunity at a time when Shell chief executive Wael Sawan said on Wednesday that Europe could face fuel shortages from April if the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf’s main shipping route, remains closed.
The difference between the countries is doubly striking because Norway presents greater challenges for electric vehicle drivers. It is the longest country in Europe, with freezing winters that shorten battery life. But long-standing range anxiety has been quelled by a dense, government-supported and commercial charging network. By comparison, such excuses are fewer in the UK, the researchers said.
“Those who argue for energy security justifications for new exploration and reducing taxes on domestic oil and gas production should also advocate for electrification,” Mandala Partners wrote.
Even more ambitious, Britain’s electric car fleet could go further than simply replacing petrol use and become an active buffer against future energy shocks by storing and resharing energy.
The RAC Foundation estimates that every electric car, when plugged in and not in use, is a battery on wheels, sitting idle 95% of the time. When cars are fitted with the right types of charging points and inverters, the stored energy can flow back into the electricity grid when people use more electricity or the supply decreases.
Alex Schoch, Octopus Energy’s director of electrification, said the technology, known as vehicle-to-grid, “turns your car into a virtual power plant.” An electric car usually packs around 40 kilowatt hours of power, enough to power the average UK household for a few days. “This allows EVs to not only charge from the grid, but also send energy back, powering homes, balancing the grid, and even supporting your neighbor’s water heater,” Schoch added.
In an energy supply crisis like this, supporters say, excess electricity distributed across the country could make a big difference. Rather than relying on gas-fired power plants to meet spikes in demand, the fuel behind much of Europe’s current price rise, the grid could instead use millions of car batteries.
The drivers’ motivation is that they can make money from it. Octopus claims that customers using its main vehicle-to-grid tariff save around £620 a year on charging costs by selling it back to the grid when demand is high and buying it back cheaply overnight.
Despite this, he has not been caught yet. Less than 100 people currently use two-way pricing on this plan, but more than 10,000 have expressed interest, Schoch said.
One obstacle is tax policy. Electric vehicle owners pay electricity tax when charging their vehicles’ batteries. They then have to pay the same tax again when refilling after selling it back to the grid. Germany and the Netherlands passed laws to prevent this, but England did not. Schoch called this the “biggest thing” holding technology back.
The other is that the hardware is not yet available. While many electric cars, such as Volkswagen’s ID series, Nissan Leaf and China’s BYD models, already feature two-way charging, other automakers have not rolled out the feature en masse. Schoch believes this will change within three to four years as demand increases.
Energy regulator Ofgem recommended If half of the 11 million EVs expected to be on UK roads by 2030 had two-way charging capability, they would be able to send 16 gigawatts of power back to the grid every day. This is almost half the output of Britain’s gas power plant fleet.
EVs will effectively be “a durable, distributed virtual battery that could be a key part of absorbing price shocks,” Schoch said.
This all calls for filling the UK’s roads with electric cars, but the effort is stalling. In February, the sales share of battery electric cars decreased by 1 percentage point compared to the previous year, due to the general coldness in the sector. Ford, Volkswagen and Vauxhall-owned Stellantis have invested tens of billions of pounds in electric vehicles in favor of more profitable internal combustion engines as they face a decline in sales.
While there has been a recent surge in interest in electric vehicles since the outbreak of the Iran war, Ian Plummer, chief customer officer at listings site Autotrader, said this month that previous peaks (such as during the 2022 energy crisis) “have not led to sustained increases in electricity purchases.”
Meanwhile, the UK’s zero-emission vehicle mandate, which requires all new car sales to be electric by 2035, is also under pressure from industry lobbying. At a time when electrification is stronger than ever, the pace of its spread is far from certain.
