This month’s guest blog post is by Anne Snelson, Founder of Lead With Sustainability a sustainability consultancy that helps individuals and businesses cut their emissions.
If you’re keen to find out more about climate change and ways to help reduce emissions, why not join one of the Lead With Sustainability carbon literacy training courses? Women Drive Electric members can get a very special rate!
Why Encourage Everyone to Go Electric?
People swap to electric vehicles for all sorts of reasons,but some of the main ones are due to the positive effectit has on the world and, of course, reducing climate change.
Air Pollution
Improving air quality is a great reason for making the shift. While transport pollutants have dropped significantly since 1990, 32% of nitrogen oxides are still caused by vehicles.
Unlike petrol and dieselvehicles, electric vehiclesdon’t have an exhaust, so it’s a great reason for people to make the switch.
Poor air quality contributes to about 30,000 deaths each year, costing the NHS £1.6 billion. If everyone movesmore quickly to EVs, it will reduce asthma, lung disease, lung cancers and cardiovascular disease.
And did you know? Women are more susceptible to poor air quality than men? So the quicker we shift to electric, the better for women!
Climate Change
We all know that using petrol, diesel and gas in our transport, heating and buildings is having a major impact on the world we live in.
In 2023, we had another warmest year on record, adding to the last decade where most years have been the same.
Last month, it was announced that temperatures have now been at 1.5 degrees above base level for more than a year. This was the target set at the Paris Climate Conference (COP21) in 2015, which 200 countries agreed we should do our best not to exceed.
Worldwide, we’re already experiencing more severe storms, droughts, fires and floods. Without major changes in how we live, we’re likely to hit 2 degrees soon. That will bring even more severe weather events, rising sea levels and it could trigger irreversible climate change “tipping points” too. So getting your friends and family to “go electric” is one of the very best things you can do.
Electrify Everything!
In the UK, transport is the largest emitting sector.
In 2022, it accounted for 28 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions and 34 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions.
While other sectors are reducing or rising more slowly, transport is increasing the most. So the quicker everyone cuts their travelling or moves to an electric vehicle running on renewable energy, the better it is for everyone.
The UK has a legally binding target to reach net zero by 2050. For us to achieve this, transport emissions need to reduce by 53% by 2035. That will only be possible if significant numbers of vehicles switch to electric.
How Are We Doing?
There’s currently about 41 million vehicles in the UK and 33 million of these are cars. We’ve recently celebrated hitting 1 million electric cars in the UK.
So we’re at about 3 per cent EV take up and entering the “early adopter” phase. Sales will start to increase significantly as we head towards “Early Majority”.
We’ve still got a good way to go though and anything we can do to speed up that process has to be good.
What Can We Do?
Most of what you can do, you’ll be doing anyway.
Telling people about your EV and how much you love it. Saying not to believe the myths (which seem to be everywhere).
With new technology, people tend to be nervous. So the more you can help others understand how easy it istransferring to an EV, the quicker it will happen.
Highlight how much you’ve saved and how nice it is being able to charge at home. Tell them about long journeys you’ve done without a hitch and how easy it is to find charge points using Zap Map.
Tell them how rarely you need a service or repairs,compared with the petrol or diesel car you left behind.These are the sorts of things people need to know.
And the more you can do this on social media platforms like Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, the more we all “normalise” the process. And the more we“normalise” it, the more “normal” our future lives will be.
Blog by Anne Snelson