Nearly £1million of public money is being “wasted” by the Government on hybrid vehicles, it was claimed this week.
Campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance says such “green tokenism” has little environmental benefit, and the Government could save £888,000 by switching its 110 hybrids to 1.4-litre petrol Ford Focus cars.
According to the TPA’s figures, the dual-power Toyota Prius is £8,555 more than the Ford and the Honda Civic Hybrid £4,163 extra. Both cars are on the fleet. Policy analyst Matthew Sinclair said: “The money would be better spent on planting trees. There’s only a marginal difference in carbon emissions saved from switching to hybrids. But trees breathe in 730kg of carbon dioxide over a lifetime.”
The TPA said the money saved by switching to the Focus could buy 74,028 trees, which would remove more than 54 million kilogrammes of CO2 from the air. Sinclair added: “You would have to drive a hybrid car nearly six million miles before the carbon saving would equal that achieved by planting these trees.”