A council in England is to charge owners of diesel cars more to park, as it looks to address concerns over their affect on local air quality.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has announced that it will impose a £15 surcharge on parking permits for diesel vehicles from next month, while it is widely thought that other councils in urban areas could follow suit.
The London borough’s most expensive parking permit will cost £176 and will apply to cars such as a three-litre diesel Range Rover, The Telegraph reports.
Diesel cars tend to attract lower road tax because of their low CO2 emissions, but these cars tend to have higher emissions of other gases, such as NOx, leading to fears over their true environmental impact.
The rising popularity of such cars, driven by their typically strong fuel efficiency and low CO2, is leading Government to reconsider their status as ‘green cars’.
A spokesman for Kensington and Chelsea council told the newspaper: “Historically, diesels, while better on CO2 emissions, have tended to be rather worse than petrol engines of similar size in relation to local air pollutants such as particulates and nitrogen dioxide. In Kensington and Chelsea there is a problem with local air quality.”
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