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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

According to a recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), 2016 was a record year for electric vehicle (EV) sales. More than 750,000 EVs were sold worldwide last year, compared to 547,220 sold in 2015.

Transportation makes up a significant portion of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—14 percent globally according to a 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. In the US, cars and trucks account for nearly one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions.

The transportation sector is a stubborn one to clean up, too. An example can be found in California, where even as carbon-reducing policies have brought GHG emissions from the energy sector down to 20 percent, transportation still currently makes up 40 percent of the state's emissions, according to a recent statement from the state's Public Utilities commissioner.

Alternative-fuel vehicles are important to hitting emissions goals, but the IEA report says that currently, there is not enough momentum behind plug-in cars without strong policies incentivizing adoption, like tax credits and zero-emissions vehicles lanes.

[...] 2016 showed that if certain incentives are taken away, sales falter. Such a scenario played out in the Netherlands where tax incentives were gradually phased out for Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV), which dropped PHEV sales by 50 percent. Battery electric vehicles (BEVs), however, weren't affected by the tax, and sales grew by 47 percent.

In Denmark, too, the country started reinstating registration taxes after years of exemptions for EVs and ended some government procurement programs. As a result, the country saw a 68 percent drop in electric car sales in 2016. New Danish incentives will be added this year, however—the country will begin offering a purchase tax rebate on EVs based on battery capacity—which ought to produce an interesting data point to next year's report.

-- submitted from IRC

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