Electric transport
Today COP 26 themed post is about electric transport. the12daysofcop.wordpress.com/drive-electric/
It's a big gain carbon-wise, but this one - unlike many other climate saving actions which can cost virtually nothing - is an expensive step.
Electric cars are wonderful - we've just bought a second-hand Renault Zoe - and for the first time in my life, I actually enjoy driving. It's incredibly smooth, quiet and responsive. (It has a 200 mile range in Eco mode)
It's not a step we'd expected to take for several years. With nearly everything, the best item carbon-wise is the one you already own. Cost of manufacture is never trivial. But, when the garage investigated why our car was behaving in a manner that made it dangerous to drive, they finally (after several weeks trying to trace a transient fault) told us that the cost to repair it was a lot more than the value of the car.
So, we bit the bullet and went electric.
Not everyone is going to be able to afford to do this in the short term. It will be a while before electric cars trickle down to the bottom of the second-hand market, but it will be increasingly viable as time passes.
Charging networks should also improve - I know people who are concerned that they won't have a charging point where they normally park at home - I suspect the likely solution will be available charging points where people work and shop. A lot of car parks and supermarkets are already introducing chargers.
BUT - and it's a big but - the best environmental options will still be walking, cycling and public transport. (yes, guilty here - it turned out that getting our granddaughter to school was the killer - there's no bus service from here. She can get the school bus from where her parents live, but not from here, and it's only walkable when the weather in fine and we have an hour for the walk there and back again.)
Electric cars are lower carbon, but not zero carbon. It's important to remember that.
With any new energy saving technology comes what is known as the 'rebound effect'. If it gets cheaper, people do more of it, and thus wipe out much of the carbon-savings.
If you start driving further because your electric car is cheap and green to run, then it isn't as green as you intended.
Electric bikes are so efficient that they're actually more carbon-friendly than walking the same distance. (The carbon cost of the food you burn is higher.)
I went out this morning on mine and came back with two charity shop curtains (in the panniers) that will hang in our office. They have linings, so will keep in more heat than our existing curtains.
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