🌱 The Grumpy Optimists #76
Are electric vehicles really lower emissions than a combustion engine? The answer is pretty much always yes...
Happy Monday. 👋
Welcome back to another episode of The Grumpy Optimists. This weekend I have been fighting off a cold so please accept my apologies for a shorter newsletter, but there has still been some awesome climate news to come out of the last week.
From subsidies for green coal to high-speed trains to rethinking the way we think about flooding and climate resilience and, finally, some data to answer the tricky question, are electric vehicles better than combustion engines, especially when you consider the precious metals in the batteries? The answer is yes, as long as you’re not charging it with 100% coal electricity.
Without further ado, let’s dig in.
👀 Articles to read
🏭 Government offer £600m for green steel. Steel production is a highly energy-intensive industry due to its reliance on coal, producing around 7% of global emissions. The UK government will likely unveil £600m to help British Steel and Tata Steel switch to low-carbon steel. However, it’s estimated that the switch will cost 10 times as much as the government are offering, but it’s a well-needed investment.
🚘 Are electric cars better for the planet or not? Yes. Is switching from combustion to an electric vehicle better for the planet is a question that I seem to get a lot, but what’s the answer? While the production of the EV is higher than the combustion engine, it pays off after just two years. The benefits are even better when lower-emission electricity is used.
🐙 Octopus Energy pays £1m to customers for reducing energy. As part of the Demand Flexibility Service launched by the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) Octopus energy paid 400,000 customers a share of £1m for reducing their energy by an average of 60% between 16.30-18.00 last Tuesday. The scheme was used due to cold temperatures and a lack of electricity generation due to low wind power. The amount of energy saved was equivalent to the city of Liverpool being off the grid for an hour. Pretty cool!
🚆 Paris to Berlin and every high-speed train I get in. Yes, that is a reference to the hit song by INFERNAL, but this time we're looking for climate action instead of love. Currently, it takes 8 hours to travel from Paris to Berlin, but high-speed trains, projected to be available by 2024, will reduce the journey time and encourage people to opt for trains over flights. In the UK, a 2-hour train journey between Manchester and London can cost hundreds.
💰Green investment matches fossil fuels for the first time. Over $1.1 trillion was invested into clean energy production in 2022, matching fossil fuel investments for the first time. This is a major signal that renewables power the future and that fossil fuels are being phased out. This trend isn’t stopping here.
🫀Net zero is good for our health. It turns out climate action is good for our health too. A new study suggests the benefits will equal 2m extra years of life. Reduced air pollution, retrofitting homes, reducing red meat consumption and more journeys on foot than by car were the biggest contributors. This shows that climate policy has so many knock-on impacts and benefits, framing it in this way can help push beyond climate denialism. I mean, who doesn't want a longer, healthier and happier life?
👥 1 in 5 workers turn down jobs on ESG grounds. New research has found that 20% of employees would turn down a job if the company did not take ESG seriously. This is just another reason for companies to be serious about climate action.
📹 Videos to watch
💧Is it time to rethink how we protect ourselves against flooding? This short video is a great example of how humans have looked to tame nature and how it’s backfiring. Instead, we should be working with nature to build climate resilience.
I’ve written about this before in this piece - Can we defeat nature, or are we just shooting ourselves in the foot?
That’s all from me this week folks. Have a great one.
The Grumpy Optimists 💚