According to The Times, the government of France has doubled the amount of the subsidy it pays to those who trade in their gas-powered automobiles for electric bikes to as much as €4,000 (about $3,976) per person.
The announcement comes a week after US President Joe Biden gave his signature of approval to a massive tax and environment measure that entirely overlooks the potential of e-bikes to combat the effects of climate change. However, the plan does not contain any funding for e-bike incentive programs, despite including millions of dollars for electric vehicle tax credits.
People are being financially incentivized to give up their polluting modes of transportation in favor of cleaner, more environmentally friendly alternatives with the intention that they will use the money to make the switch.
People who live in low-income families in low-emission urban zones and trade in automobiles are eligible for the entire €4,000 subsidy to spend toward purchasing an electric bicycle. This subsidy is available to people who trade in their cars. The incentive may also be used for traditional bicycles that do not have motors. Citizens of France with higher income levels are eligible for a lesser amount of government assistance.
The subsidy, which had its beginnings the previous year but was recently enhanced, came about as a result of the government’s realization that more work needed to be done in order to compete with countries like the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark, who are known for their love of cycling.
Currently, just 3 percent of the population of France commutes by bicycle, but the French government has said that they want that number to increase to 9 percent by the year 2024. In this particular category, the Netherlands has an impressively high 27 percent.
After trading in their old vehicle, citizens in Lithuania are eligible for a subsidy of up to €1,000 (nearly $994), which can be used toward the purchase of a new electric bike, scooter, moped, motorcycle, or even credits for public transportation. The policy is modeled after this hugely successful program in Lithuania.
But the money that France spends isn’t only going toward individual rewards. The administration of Emmanuel Macron recently announced that it would invest 250 million euros to make the entire city of Paris accessible by bicycle. And the assurance that the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, would keep her campaign pledge to create an additional 130 kilometers (almost 80 miles) of bike-safe lanes over the next five years helped her win reelection last year.
The country has seen a significant change in climate in the past years. Hosting the annual Tour de France, it has seen three times as many heat waves in the last 30 years than it did in the previous four decades.
According to research published this month in Nature Communications, Europe is a “heat wave hot zone,” with the frequency and severity of heat waves growing three to four times faster than the rest of the northern midlatitudes, including the hard-hit American West.
Heat waves will become more often as a result of human-caused climate change. However, the authors of the study claim that Western Europe is especially vulnerable due to changes in atmospheric dynamics and a trend toward temporary but persistent double jet streams — periods when the fast-moving air current flows west to east around the Northern Hemisphere splits into two.
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