State Comptroller Matanyahu Engelman publishes a report on government actions to reduce air pollution in Israel originating from vehicles. The report has three chapters, the first dealing with the impact of air pollution in the field of transportation, the second with the promotion of electric cars in Israel, and the third with regard to taxation in the automotive industry with regard to air pollution. At the beginning of the report, it is noted that the cost of pollution from transportation is about NIS 7.2 billion, second only to the cost of pollution from electricity production.
Regarding the level of air pollution from transportation, its rate in Israel is relatively high compared to the average pollution in EU countries. A major cause of pollution is heavy vehicles (10% of all vehicles in Israel), the cost of pollution from them is about 61%. It was also found that the percentage of trucks weighing over 3.5 tons of total vehicles is 3.1%, but their share of pollution is 29%. However, since 2003, the Ministries of Environmental Protection and Transport have not conducted an economic feasibility study for scrapping heavy vehicles.
Beyond that, according to 2023 data, there are 42,402 vehicles that are not "old heavy vehicles" defined as "polluting." Old heavy vehicles are treated by installing filters, while the treatment of "polluting" vehicles amounts to marking them with a sticker and the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Transport do not have an organized plan for treating them.
In addition to establishing clean air zones, the European Union has declared clean air zones in more than 400 cities. Israel has only two clean air zones.
In the field of electric vehicles, at the end of 2022, about 408,000 (about 10.3%) of the vehicles were electric or hybrid, but only 507 garages out of about 12,700 were qualified to handle them. In the field of public charging stations as well, it turned out that the Ministries of Energy and Transport have not yet agreed on quantitative targets for the deployment of charging stations, and the Ministries of Interior and Energy have not yet determined the regulation regarding the establishment of charging stations in condominiums.
Regarding the preparations of the electricity sector for the entry of electric vehicles, it turned out that the development plans for the system prepared by Noga did not deal with the impact of electric vehicles, which could add hundreds of thousands or millions of new users to the electric grid. In addition, the Ministries of Energy and Environmental Protection have not regulated the recycling of old electric vehicle batteries. It also emerged that the legalization of charging stations for electric buses is stuck in some places due to disagreement between the various responsible bodies.
Regarding taxation of the automobile industry, it emerged that the taxation system that prioritized green vehicles, which led to a significant decrease in their imports, was changed and caused an increase in the import of these vehicles. It also turned out that many types of vehicles have a fixed sales tax rate that does not depend on the emissions of pollution from them.
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