The average CO2 emissions of automobiles sold in the UK rose for the first time in two decades in 2017, thanks to plummeting sales of diesel vehicles, it has been announced.
Official figures released by the society for motor makers and Traders this morning will show that the UK new automobile market shrank by around 5.7 per cent in 2017, to 2.54 million registrations. Sales of petrol automobiles actually boosted slightly, by 2.7 per cent – but this was a lot more than offset by a drop in diesel registrations of around 17 per cent. December was an even worse month for diesels, in fact, with sales down by 31 per cent year on year.
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• electric automobiles twice as green as five years ago
As exclusively reported by automobile Express’ sister site Buyacar in December, the decline in diesel sales indicates that for the first time considering that CO2 records started being published two decades ago, the UK automobile market’s fleet average has gone up instead of down. A preliminary figure from the SMMT obtained by automobile express suggests that the average CO2 emissions of automobiles sold in 2017 will be around 121g/km – a rise from 2016’s figure of 120.1g/km.
