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All public Transport free at point of use.
It needs to be there before it's free. It needs to be safe, frequent, reliable and convenient - if not it doesn't matter how much it does or doesn't cost, no-one will use it.
Cost is not the main driver when it comes to the decision of "do I use P/T or do I go by car?"
Also, having at least a nominal charge means the service is seen as more valuable. There's a fair amount of psychology involved. Plus tickets/smart cards etc are an excellent way of tracking usage, journey times and so on, it's very valuable data.
All the costs/tax associated with driving gets put on fuel duty. Pay to drive.
What about EVs?
There's an argument for a tiered system - ICE cars pay via fuel duty, EVs pay via a "road tax" equivalent but coming up with a workable option isn't easy.
One possibility is more toll roads and if you pay over a certain amount in tolls per year then your road tax gets refunded so you're still paying but not being hit twice.
A ban on bottled water
A ban on single use plastics
Like most people I have Lots of opinions, a few ideas, no real power or influence beyond who I vote for... So pretty much zero chance of precipitating change.
It's no accident that the currently available measures with the potential to both reduce (direct and indirect) household fossil fuel consumption are expensive and have been made harder to access, it would be 12-20K to put useful solar on our roof with Battery storage in the garage and would be worth it if we didn't have a Mortgage & energy bills to pay and children to feed. At the same time the landed gentry round our way have displaced some of their Horsies to turn fields into solar farms. The wealthy are already capitalising on Solar PV as a business opportunity while us plebs are trapped paying a premium for gas and rotted down dinosaurs...
Properly Subsidised residential rooftop solar would be one of the first things I'd look at, and if businesses want some tax relief they can claim against solar installations on their rooftops, sold back to the grid, rather than relying on Tory PMs to commit career suicide on their behalf.
Oh And insulation, lots of it, everywhere the one thing we could do today to drive down energy demand rapidly, if we can throw tax breaks at bankers we can throw some money at kingspan...
...because it needs a complete rejig of taxation.
Long overdue generally, the uneven distribution of wealth, in a convoluted system that helps those with more money hide it from the tax man fits hand in glove with environmental damage.
One of the biggest barriers to government implementing Environmental policies seems to be funding, does it cut off a revenue stream does it take time to create a new one? if we were getting the taxes we're really owed by Non-Doms and Big US firms we might actually be able to bridge those funding gaps. Economics and the environment are intrinsically linked, we keep doing things which we know are bad for the environment because we're unable to ignore the economic benefits...
I'd also like us to pull our finger out and get some new nuclear up and running, Don't care if its bought in AP1000s or whatever SMR Rolls Royce reckon they've got ready to go, but if the goal is to cut carbon, energy costs and build energy security new Nuclear is going to be necessary for the next 100 odd years...
I'd also quite like to see more old ICE cars being EV converted rather than people throwing £40k at a tesla. IIRC there's a French company already doing that and has some support from their government (???). Over here EV conversions seem to be almost exclusively for rich buggers to spruce up a classic Porsche. We were a nation that loved small, cheap hatchbacks not so long ago, obviously all those old Yaris/Fiesta/Corsa are seeing their engines go pop and just being replaced with a ICE powered "crossover", I'd like to see them used as feedstock Chassis' for a cheap EV runabout industry, more jobs, fewer emissions.
Of course we do need to invest in public transport across the board, both to service towns/cites and in rural areas. and I'd like to see more done on "active transport", the default should be to exclude motor vehicles from town/city centres and make the streets semi-pedestrianised with primacy given to cycling and bus routes leading in, not making sure you can park a car within 150m of the shops.
oooh
im not sure on the insulation. I would bet theres a lot of people with damp houses after that...
I would have all public transport electrified or on hydrogen. Its all return to base stuff so entirely possible. make this essentially free.
limit cars to 150bhp. bikes to 100bhp
no stopping outside of schools (one way drop off only)
Universities to ban students from having cars.
I don't think insulating houses is practical. Its mainly a problem of dishonesty, but also because its just messy to implement and impractical. What you could do though is subsidise the actual insulation products themselves substantially, meaning that it becomes more affordable. Some things mentioned on here:
Green VAT rate for certain product groups and certified products
Free Public Transport
Incentives for land based solar and wind including increasing the feed in tariff
Eat the rich
Stop buying shite
Solar and solar thermal (solar thermal is less resource intensive in production than pv so I think it's still worth it) on all new builds and all roof replacements (over a preset potential - no point wanging it on a building where it won't produce) as a planning condition.
I don’t think insulating houses is practical. Its mainly a problem of dishonesty, but also because its just messy to implement and impractical.
It's actually relatively cheap and easy plus it gives near instant results in terms of lower energy bills.
Problem is that for homeowners, it's not really top of the list (against say, a new kitchen) and for landlords, well they don't care cos they're not paying the bills.
So you mandate it, similar to the Smart Meter rollout. Government backed scheme, trained and accredited workforce, and maybe a tiered pricing structure based on (say) the council tax banding. It's actually a remarkably easy scheme to do once the initial work is in place. The population gets home improvements for free/cheap, energy usage and costs (and therefore emissions) dramatically decrease.
Kind of a long term thing but 10 years of that would still end up being cheaper than the money lost in tax breaks to the rich or 5p/l fuel duty cut.
It would have cost less to make all buses free at point of use than it has to cut the fuel duty rate.
50m zero development/cultivation corridor either side of watercourses
All steaks in restaurants must only be served rare or very rare.
And compulsory portion size.
Had a starter last week that would have been a main course 10 years ago and a lasagne that would feed 3.
Both served with a huge salad.
Proper fat lad starter kit.
No one needs that much.
Ban golf
As demonstrated by some of the answers on here, first thing you need to do is an audit to see what is using the most energy or producing the most damaging greenhouse gases, then work from there concentrating on the most damaging whilst alongside picking any low hanging solutions.
Properly Subsidised residential rooftop solar would be one of the first things I’d look at
And who pays the subsidies? It needs to be widely adopted or it won't work. So solutions need to be affordable by almost everyone and subsidised only for the poorest 10-20% of the population. So sny solution for the majority of the population needs to be affordable without subsidy or we are all just subsidising ourselves. At the moment it is the better off who are being subsidided by everyone else to buy EVs.
Anyway covering household electricity use for daylight hours 9 months of the year is only a small slice of the pie. Heating in winter is the big part and solar will contribute very little towards that. Last March our energy was 262Kwh electricity and 1892Kwh gas. Currently UK solar covers around 9% of demand for 6 hours a day and will be less over the next few months.
More nuclear is the answer to burning less gas.
People need to give up on the idea of not living near where they work.
So what do you recommend, that they don't take the job, quit ?
As ever, absolutes don’t work across a whole population, we all start arguing about the 10% at either extreme, and are too divided to agree on the measures that would improve things for 80% of us.
It's not 80%.... by a long way over a typical persons working time.
Even assuming a typical 2 people working in a house the chance of both working locally is unlikely (depending what you call local).
What do they then do if one gets their place of employment moved to the next town?
Heating in winter is the big part and solar will contribute very little towards that.
There are ways around that.
dickyboy
As demonstrated by some of the answers on here, first thing you need to do is an audit to see what is using the most energy or producing the most damaging greenhouse gases, then work from there concentrating on the most damaging whilst alongside picking any low hanging solutions.
all this depends on what is defined as "eco solutions for society".
On one hand if you want to reduce CO2 then you need to ban petrol and use diesel and get rid of ULEZ zones to stop long journeys around them but to do the latter you'd have to justify climate change over air quality where people live.
Not having kids.
Simple. Stop eating dead animals.
Even assuming a typical 2 people working in a house the chance of both working locally is unlikely (depending what you call local
funnily enough I know many folk who live and work within a few miles
"Heating in winter is the big part and solar will contribute very little towards that."
There are ways around that.
What are the ways @molgrips? In all seriousness as this is a live issue for me - I looked at putting a 15kw solar array in a field and a load of battery storage. 15kw is way overkill in the summer - enough for running my house 4 or 5 times over - with *everything* on electric.
But in the winter - 15kw array is basically bugger all because from November > March there's simply not enough sun even if I massively overspec my normal requirements. A multiple of bugger all is bugger all.
So I'm left looking at LPG for the winter months. Which rankles.
Biomass is a lie - it's not renewable at all. So whacking in a log burner with a back boiler doesn't help the environment.
Wind is lolzroffles unreliable and expensive - and for the rest of the sunny year would be a total waste.
That leaves me fossil fuels or nowt in my little, remote, welsh 18th century stone farmhouse.
Not having kids.
Agreed. obviously not possible or desirable for everyone to do this, but a gentle population decline would remove a lot of the issues of home and infrastructure building.
So my answer is, normalise/make socially acceptable the concept of being childfree. The number of people who were undevided/their partner wanted them/family and parents guilted them into it... if they didn't have kids, and everyone who did want kids still did have them; everyone would be happier and we would all be better off.
@ayjaydoubleyou - it's absolutely possible for people who want kids to keep it to one. But what we should be doing is in the meantime is removing child subsidies for more than one kid.
Nothing I've ever said provokes more rage in parents however.
But if you want more than one kid, you're part of the problem. Too many humans for our desired consumption is the ultimate cause of most of our issues. We need a few billion at absolute most - and we're heading rapidly towards 9 billion - which is way more than the earth can ever support sustainably.
So removing subsidy for children is morally the correct thing to do. Parents should be bearing full economic responsibility for their children - and even though that could potentially put some kids at a massive disadvantage through no fault of their own when you weigh it against our potentially existential issues then it's a no-brainer.
Have less kids. Stop making it easy for people who want more than 1.
Currently UK solar covers around 9% of demand
That's commercial solar only.
And there lies the problem, if the question is “Simple to implement eco solutions for society”, then discouraging living in nice remote bits of Scotland but making it as convenient as a city by driving everywhere is definitely an answer.
I’m fairly sure a large proportion of the “home counties” would quite like to live somewhere more rural too!
It’s the opposite of moving near to a music venue and complaining it’s noisy. Moving somewhere and complaining that there’s no public transport.
What are you talking about?
Matt used Killin (I assume it's there he's referring to) as a counter to the notion that villages are exclusively dormitory towns for the bigger population centres. They're not, plenty of people work in the surrounding area but not in easy to link places that would make public transport viable. There are plenty of places all over the UK where that is true outside of the dormitory towns of the Home Counties and where your proposal falls right on it's arse.
One size does not fit all, like most of the frankly one dimensional "solutions" proposed above. @Dickyboy is about the only one that actually has the right answer (I realise others have proposed thoughtful suggestions, I just mean in a general sense).
first thing you need to do is an audit to see what is using the most energy or producing the most damaging greenhouse gases, then work from there concentrating on the most damaging whilst alongside picking any low hanging solutions.
And as it's 3 pages in it's about fair time to call Godwin, **** me some of you are twisted bastards. Eugenics and eco-facism hand in hand, lovely.
Not having kids.
I think the birth rate is falling globally isn't it?
Simple. Stop eating dead animals.
I've tried eating live ones - the buggers keep moving and some can be quite dangerous.
squirrellking - shooting 90% of the worlds population would go a long way to reducing pollution?
Sand power stores. Ok its not for everyone but you can heat sand to 300c plus before it turns to glass.
Get enough tons of sand super hot using solar and you have thermal mass to generate power or heat.
And it stays hot, or requires alot less power to stay hot. Doesnt boil, doesn't freeze. Its plentiful. Farm silos are everywhere and alot unused.
Yes you need insulation, and infrastructure.
The gov put aside 20 billion to offset our power bills, 10 x 2 billion projects invested into saving, generating, storing and distributing power would have been more sensible but no
Its not a vote winner.
One "motor" vehicle per home.
Re-nationalise trains and buses network.
Two one-way flights per person per year.
Abolish next day delivery except for local supermarkets.
stop buying new bikes, there is absolutely no need to replace a couple of year old bike with another one, just because its has a 1 degree tweak to geometry or a different axle standard.
see also pointless gear changes for 10spd to 11spd, to 12spd etc..
and only one set of tyres per bike until its fully worm out. The amount of oil/refined hydrocarbon that goes into tyre manufacture is bonkers for them to go into a tyre pile and then landfill/incineration when there is plenty of life left in them
oh and ban dogs, cats, and any more humans for a bit
easy and simple
No street lights.
Every light up the motorways to have a tiny wind generator.
Easy to implement? Ban most electrical goods including all luxury items.
Ban all double wrapping of anything. Be kind, Give the packagers 2 months to implement this.
Ban all background noise in anywhere public along with most lighting including all over night display lighting.
As time goes on add on a replacement tax for most sales whereby a trade in isn't made.
All personal flights to have a 200% eco tax.
Plague.
it's the population of the world thats the problem isn't it?
Re the housing issue mentioned on page two.
Problem is that we are all greedy. There are stacks of house around me that 30 years ago would have been great first time places but instead they have been extended because we all need more than one bathroom, a spare room/office and a play room plus of course every three year old needs their own bedrooom.
Lets have a ration on bikes. Who needs a new one every five years?
One “motor” vehicle per home.
Per house, or only for a couple? What happens with adult children living at home, or people living in house shares?
my objection to anything that places restrictions on what the two adults in a cohabiting relationship do, is how that will undo the last half a century in advances in gender equality.
it’s absolutely possible for people who want kids to keep it to one. But what we should be doing is in the meantime is removing child subsidies for more than one kid.
I'm not sure - would you rather have two couples with one kid each, or one couple with two kids, and one couple with none?
Two kids, ideally with a small age gap is in a practical way, easier for that first couple to manage in a comparatively eco-manner. It also is I think, better from a social perspective, there are several issues coming from the one-child-policy far east now that those kids are young adults.
stop testing for endotoxins in pharma manufacture (saves using horseshoe crab farming for their blood as well as an added bonus) and means that more folks will die
also stop using plastics for containing drugs and go back to waxed paper which also means more folks will die, but will be more eco friendly
stop burials and small scale crematoria , all bodies to be sent to EFW incinerators for mass burning and electricity generation. Also saves on the use of coffins, varnish, and the toxic emissions produced during their combustion
instead of a funeral, everyone to gather round a kettle for a cuppa in memory of uncle dave, whose tubby corpse has just produced that energy
Reusable coffee cups. In 2019 I used 3 disposable cups. 2020 saw a decline due to COVID, but 2023 I will attempt to use none. I have a collapsible silicone cup I carry with me.
It’s not 80%…. by a long way over a typical persons working time.
Even assuming a typical 2 people working in a house the chance of both working locally is unlikely (depending what you call local).
Actually, statistically speaking, 80% isn't far off. Especially once you look at the massive weighting of population in cities (IIRC it's more like 2/3rds of households both adults work sufficiently locally that they don't need to drive). So we could have a solution for 2/3rds of the population. More in some areas, less in others.
But again, the problems is that the alternatives to driving are generally terrible, especially when those that "lead" are more interested in skimming a bit off the top, and making sure their mates are all taken care of.
TBH, we could just make WFH legally mandated for those that can do it. Instead of getting micro managers deciding that you've got an "essential" job and need to be located in the office 40 hours a week (or 60 if the manager gets their way).
Mate of mine did this during lockdown, key staff within the company (bank with 60000 employees) were allowed to apply for key worker status. Which their senior manager/director would approve. Not one single person in her group (about 1200 strong all told) was eligible, over 300 applied. About 10 got it, all because of infrastructure issues (no reliable internet at home, or nowhere secure/suitable to work.)
So you mandate it, similar to the Smart Meter rollout. Government backed scheme, trained and accredited workforce, and maybe a tiered pricing structure based on (say) the council tax banding. It’s actually a remarkably easy scheme to do once the initial work is in place. The population gets home improvements for free/cheap, energy usage and costs (and therefore emissions) dramatically decrease.
Thats what I mean by messy to implement. Who's training all these people. Who's accrediting it? If we know anything about the Green Homes and other schemes they cost a lot and don't get the results desired, or at least not nearly good enough value. See Smart meter roll out as another example. Expensive to roll out, done almost nothing for peoples bills and consumption, lots of issues with swapping suppliers etc. The reality is they've probably been a total waste of time unless something significantly changes.
What we need is scalable solutions that don't require central administration on a house by house basis. Otherwise it's going to be expensive, lack uptake and deliver very little.
Extra tax for all those who choose to have children. The carbon footprint of a newborn child for the next 80+ years will be vast and way more than any amount of tinkering with renewables etc.
Children are a lifestyle choice, no different to choosing which car to drive, so tax them accordingly. They are certainly a disaster from the planets perspective
Reusable coffee cups.
You have to use a LOT of disposable cups to make up for one decent sized ceramic mug, if they are biodegradable, it's ridiculous, something like 3-4000. Which for me would be about 10 years. They had a poster up at work when they changed coffee supplier 3 or 4 years ago.
Saying that, the pint glass i use for drinking water was bought in Finland in December 92 by a colleague, and has been in daily use at work since. The beer advertised on it they stopped making in the late 90s.
I like Tazzys solutions
I’ve been using the same Starbucks reusable cup since 2006. If I forget to take it with me, I’m not allowed a takeout coffee. It really bugged me in my first year at uni that the bin in the coffee shop was full by 09:30 EVERY morning!
Children are a lifestyle choice, no different to choosing which car to drive, so tax them accordingly. They are certainly a disaster from the planets perspective
the younger generations are more invested in positive change than we are. Without kids who’s going to reverse or slow the damage mine and previous generations have done? They’ll likely have much smaller Carbon footprints than we do.
New builds to have solar, super insulation and to include rainwater harvesting/recycling.
Close the loopholes and enforce the above legislation at the building reg level.
Subsidized solar, insulation and rainwater harvesting/recycling for current homes.
Not for profit community repair shops.
Corporate tax for non serviceable appliances/consumable goods.
Breeding tax - 2 kids max before each consecutive one costs money.
Close down Drax power station.
Mandatory euthanasia at 65, free up housing stock, so no more new homes need to be build, reduces the burden on the NHS, no need for society to carry the burden on non productive deadweight, less need for old folks to run the heating all of the time, reduce the population in an easy to managed phased approach, also means no need for a pension funds, so more money can be used for Eco tax without compromising in living standards.
Now you are going too far tazzy - thats less than 4 years away for me
So what do you recommend, that they don’t take the job, quit ?
If there are no green transport options, yes, people will have to change jobs, or move.
The solutions to this are really difficult, life changing. Failing to do it is, ultimately, life ending.
@TJ how about if we ran a kind of televised OAP version of the Thunderdome? the general population love a bit of blood and guts, its been a distraction from the the general crapness of existence since we became "civilised" the looser to be used a animal substitute for meat in pies and burgers for those intent on maintaining a meat eating habit?
entertainment and food, all without additional need of livestock and saving millions tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from cows and sheepsies
🙂
So long as you have a decent chance of surviving
Ban on all new mug production. There must be at least 10 mugs per person in the UK already.
As people are economically driven (for the most part) raise the price of energy to the point whereby individuals start cutting back on personal energy use (while putting in place a scheme to support personal energy allowance at low cost).
Even assuming a typical 2 people working in a house the chance of both working locally is unlikely (depending what you call local
tjagain
funnily enough I know many folk who live and work within a few miles
Funnily enough it currently includes me and I know of others but over a working life it's unlikely to continue.
People aren't sitting in traffic jams or squeezed into overcrowded trains out of choice.
If we’re going crazy how about a lifetime kWh consumption allowance? Once it’s been used up you get euthanised and burnt for fuel.
If we’re going crazy how about a lifetime kWh consumption allowance? Once it’s been used up you get euthanised and burnt for fuel.
great idea! if we remove emotion from the decision making process, its actually a very logical solution.
you have a lifetime carbon footprint, want to drive fast cars, live in big houses and travel the world, go for it, full in the knowledge that you will be dead in your late 20's to ensure that you cause no more harm in a lifecycle than a parsimonious pensioner who has lived a simple life.
People aren’t sitting in traffic jams or squeezed into overcrowded trains out of choice.
yes they are. They made a choice to live where they did and to take that job.
People aren’t sitting in traffic jams or squeezed into overcrowded trains out of choice.
God help me but I'm agreeing with TJ
Their choices need to be expanded by investment in green transport - and I'm not convinced personal EVs fall under that banner in the medium-long term, but where I live has always been determined by how long it takes me to get there. I chose to relocate and leave the industry of my first career because I didn't want a lifestyle involving long commutes, and I've done 3-4 different jobs in the 23 years since so that my commutes are short by car or cycleable ny bike.
Not eating beef, generally going vegetarian, not flying, eating locally produced seasonal food and rejecting single-use plastics are all pretty simple. Driving only when absolutely necessary is harder - society is built around cars - but it's a critical change to make.
Do you care enough to accept that flying to the Alps to ride a bike is something in the past? That driving up to Scotland to ride a few times a year isn't compatible with all this?
'The Age of Stupid' was made 13 years ago now. And here we are..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1300563/
And who pays the subsidies? It needs to be widely adopted or it won’t work. So solutions need to be affordable by almost everyone and subsidised only for the poorest 10-20% of the population. So sny solution for the majority of the population needs to be affordable without subsidy or we are all just subsidising ourselves. At the moment it is the better off who are being subsidided by everyone else to buy EVs.
Well how do you pay for anything?
I'd be happy to tax the arse of the wealth horders, go after their off-shore holdings etc, maybe stop subsidising their Teslas, double fuel duty and bump up VED on the Landy they use on their estate at the weekend? like I said Wealth inequality is as much a root cause as anything.
I agree any subsidy it needs to be accessible to those most in need, right now your roof is an untapped resource whatever your income bracket. Perhaps you don't own the solar panels on it, maybe the organisation that does pays you a percentage back for every KWH generated and fed back to the grid or into storage???
How you pass benefits on to renters is a further discussion, but we often seem to get into these debates and end up not taking an opportunity because any money/saving derived has to be channelled to the 'right' people and get more caught up in that than doing something because it's overall beneficial...
Anyway covering household electricity use for daylight hours 9 months of the year is only a small slice of the pie. Heating in winter is the big part and solar will contribute very little towards that. Last March our energy was 262Kwh electricity and 1892Kwh gas. Currently UK solar covers around 9% of demand for 6 hours a day and will be less over the next few months.
It does feel like there's a lot of surfaces pointing up at that shiny sky Orb that we could shove a panel on still, 9% during daylight hours seems pretty good as a 'slice' considering how little solar PV there is relative to roof spare in the UK currently.
Like I said the wealthy already seem to be taking advantage by farming the solar-leccy.
Coupled with better insulation to drive down heating energy requirements, you could put a dent in the nations consumption requirement and chip something back into our energy security...
More nuclear is the answer to burning less gas.
As I said after saying we should do more solar and insulation, but building a nuclear power station isn't quite as easy as chucking up more PV panels and kingspan, and we're after the low hanging fruit first here...
rejecting single-use plastics
that bit is actually really difficult, unless we want to reduce the safety of pharmaceutical and medicinal items, single use items are actually more energy efficient than stainless steel, glass and autoclaving for sterility, independent full Life cycle analysis studies have found that cleaning and sterilization are the largest contributors to energy use in pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities, And stainless steel equipment, despite being reusable, needs large amounts of heat and water to ensure it is sterile for the next batch. In addition, chemicals used to clean equipment are eventually released into the environment, which can have a negative impact on ecosystems.
Overall, the environmental impact from producing, using and disposing of single-use equipment is significantly lower than traditional stainless steel. This was found to be the case across all impact categories, including climate change, human health, ecosystem quality, resource consumption and water consumption.
so its more a case of selecting the areas where single use plastic and recycling is actually beneficial over the alternatives and then banning uses where its not required.
People aren’t sitting in traffic jams or squeezed into overcrowded trains out of choice.
yes they are. They made a choice to live where they did and to take that job.
largely because of their birthdate no less.
As comes up time and time again - do you believe you would be living where you live now had you been born in 1982 doing the same job you did pre retirement.
maybe if these pesky youngsters didn't eat all the avocado toast they could afford a house closer.
Ban second homes.
Ban student rental housing, they have to have halls accomodation provided by establishment.
Ban private renting of homes.
do you believe you would be living where you live now had you been born in 1982 doing the same job you did pre retirement.
I would still be living in a muscle power distance of my work. This is non negotiable for me
Might not quite meet the OPs brief but autonomous vehicles.
do you believe you would be living where you live now had you been born in 1982 doing the same job you did pre retirement.
I would still be living in a muscle power distance of my work. This is non negotiable for me
do you believe you would own this house or be stuck on the rental market.
Ideology is great when your beyond it.
If we’re going crazy how about a lifetime kWh consumption allowance? Once it’s been used up you get euthanised and burnt for fuel.
THat would also solve the monarchy question and most of the land owners of the country as they would probably hit their lifetime consumption allowance by the age of 10
Might not quite meet the OPs brief but autonomous vehicles.
The cost of developing and building the infra and then the vehicles to do this on a widescale basis is more than any benefits gained.
They work small scale or in controlled environments - loads of factories use AI systems, small scale robots etc but releasing actual passenger carrying cars into a public realm and expecting them to be *fully* autonomous means basically rebuilding all of society.
Tesla prove this quite frequently when yet another of their super smart cars crashes and kills someone. Or catches fire.
Autonomous lanes on motorways are the easiest obvious "half way house" but currently there's a supply/demand issue where there's no point building it cos the tech isn't really there yet.
Insulated kettles with a adjustable boil control.
Sensor / button activated street lighting.
Cars in street lit areas to use sidelights only.
These would make very little difference.
Most times when you boil a kettle, you use the water immediately. You should be only boiling enough water for what you need, there really won't be much benefit from having an insulated kettle.
The primary reason for street lighting is safety. There would be serious political resistance to reducing it to save a fairly trivial amount of energy.
Car headlights use a trivial amount of energy compared to powering the car. The reduction would be barely measurable.
If you want to make a serious difference in energy consumption, insulating old houses and getting people out of cars will make a much bigger difference than messing about with kettles and streetlamps.
Autonomous lanes on motorways are the easiest obvious “half way house” but currently there’s a supply/demand issue where there’s no point building it cos the tech isn’t really there yet.
I'd love to see road trains where a series of trucks can link up wirelessly, all being controlled via the front driver. With no "thinking distance" they can tailgate each other and drastically cut fuel consumption. Would need to limit the lengths of these trains to allow other vehicles on at junctions though.
My friend spent a year researching the effects of a force feedback throttle pedal for HGV's, adjusting the resistance of the pedal to facilitate more economical driving style. Thats the lengths the haulage industry is willing to go to to save fuel.
Okay a fair few things that the gov could do straight away to steer people in the right direction, but as per posting these are just the low hanging fruit and most of them already mentioned:-
Subsidise insulation materials & strictly enforce building regs.
Subsidise more eco housing to drive away from "detached" being the ideal.
Subsidise small electric vehicles - fiat 500 size being largest.
Ration household power use, soon as you get above current national average use for your type of property price per kWh goes up by 50%
Increase fuel duty back to what it would have been before green escalator was scrapped.
Subsidise (but not free) public transport so it is always cheaper than driving.
Make town & city centre parking more expensive - including taxing work place parking.
Insulate more houses. It's a complete no brainer. Not just fluffy damp inducing cavity backfills, proper external boarding for all the rest of us, same for lofts, proper boards between trusses, not just some fluff in the ceiling.
rising rate of cost/kwh on energy use. average 2.4 kids family is the border between low rate and high rate
plastic tax hit for any disposable consumer item packaging
restart the incentives for installing solar, home battery installs, etc
If we’re going crazy how about a lifetime kWh consumption allowance? Once it’s been used up you get euthanised and burnt for fuel.
These would make very little difference.
Most times when you boil a kettle, you use the water immediately. You should be only boiling enough water for what you need, there really won’t be much benefit from having an insulated kettle.The primary reason for street lighting is safety. There would be serious political resistance to reducing it to save a fairly trivial amount of energy.
1,270,000,000 kWh used from boiling kettles each year in the UK. That’s pretty much enough to power every single street light in the UK for a year. Kettles with temp controls, insulation and only using what is needed. Estimated 25% energy loss from the design and
materials used in a kettle.
Doing a shit tonne of seemingly trivial things will have a big impact and be a gateway for people looking to do less trivial things. Eating less meat and checking how your pensions and savings are invested are two really simple things everyone can do that will make a big difference.
If we are reducing the numbers of children and killing off everyone over 65, why are we doing all this?
Because the vast majority of these changes are things we should be striving for anyway. Why wouldn’t we want a fairer, cleaner and greener world? What’s the downside?
Edit - Double post
tjagain
yes they are. They made a choice to live where they did and to take that job.
I would still be living in a muscle power distance of my work. This is non negotiable for me
Do you think it's everyone else's job to support you refusing to work because it involves a bus ride?
Unless I'm mistaken you don't have a partner either but you'd presumably leave a lifelong partner who lost their job and only had an option of working in another place and split the kids if you had them?
It's a great luxury for a few to just refuse to work unless it's convenient but who is then going to pay for you to not work?
Okay a fair few things that the gov could do straight away to steer people in the right direction, but as per posting these are just the low hanging fruit and most of them already mentioned:-
Subsidise insulation materials & strictly enforce building regs.
That's a bit pointless for me...
Building Regs say I can't insulate under my floors unless I block the airflow as I can't get the regulation thickness hence according to building regs I have to not insulate.
I did anyway .. but perhaps what we need is more sensible building regs?
Promotion of air-to-air heat pumps i.e. split air conditioners. They are around 4-5 times more efficient than direct electric heating and even more efficient than air-to-water heat pumps. They can be installed at a fraction of the cost of an air-to-water heat pump and can supplement an existing system.
They are often stigmatised as a problem when in fact they are a part of the solution.
The pandemic worked quite well at reducing co2 emissions, how simple is it to implement another one?
I miss those clear skies and quiet roads.
Might not quite meet the OPs brief but autonomous vehicles.
Might be a while...
https://www.ft.com/content/cf443342-fb39-4877-bedd-3385f33be062