Electric vehicle rebate among staff proposals to speed up Toronto’s target to become a carbon neutral city.
The city of Toronto committed $45 million in rebates to electric vehicle (EV) drivers in the 2015 budget.
According to information from Toronto Hydro, the city has spent $50 million in rebate payments, not including the $45 million in rebates provided per EV driver. Toronto Hydro says an additional $20 million in rebates has been provided to EV drivers, who made a total of 1,824 trips in the first three months of the 2016/2017 year.
The city has so far reached its goal of becoming an official “carbon neutral city” by 2018.
However, in 2016, the mayor of Ottawa criticized Toronto’s rebate scheme.
In July 2017, Toronto Mayor John Tory held a news conference about Mayor John Tory’s proposed action plan for Toronto’s climate change action plan and what he called “potentially an embarrassing scandal.”
Called Toronto’s Green Budget, the mayor’s plan was designed to put forward a plan for climate change action in 2018. It was first launched in the Toronto Star in December 2016. Toronto’s Green Budget is considered a pilot that will set the city’s climate action goals for 2020.
Some key elements include a carbon price, the city’s clean grid plan, and a number of measures that encourage EV drivers to drive more. Tory’s plan called for a carbon tax to be implemented by Metrolinx in 2019 and to expand the electric vehicle charging network and introduce a congestion charge for the busiest highways.
The proposal also included a rebate for EV drivers, a $500 incentive for EV drivers and a $400 rebate on electric vehicle purchases. The rebate would be given over 10 years.
Mayor Tory was quoted as saying the rebates:
“We’re going to provide EV drivers with a rebate equal to the cost of driving an electric vehicle to the best available charging station, the equivalent of the rebate that has been approved in California. It’s called a EV rebate and is designed to stimulate EV sales from the current five to 10 percent, and to create new EVs for people who