The Environment

It’s certainly too late to save everything. A lot of damage is done, and a lot more would be done even if we went to net 0 on the least possible time.

It’s maybe not too late to save everything, probably. On our current trajectory, it’s at least possible we’ll see a total collapse of life on earth and extinction. But millions of people to all to sit on the streets refusing to move until someone does something then who knows, maybe our governments will slam the breaks on and spare is the worst.

But alas most people will sit at home and wait the inevitable. Irrational as it may be; that’s human behaviour I guess.

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Sorry for the delay on this follow up @N26throwaway :pray:

@Dan5 was already swift enough to link our Social Programme details.

This article should give a bit more context hopefully. It explains the difference as well as providing a great explanation about how companies should build a climate programme.

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It’s worth noting that most ‘carbon offset’ schemes we are familiar with are actually under this definition ‘carbon removal’ schemes. I feel the terminology is a bit confusing l, but that’s environmentalism for you.

I think a strength of Monzo’s policy is that it prioritises emission reduction because that’s the most important thing.

My feedback would be the part where the policy talks about carbon offsetting flights should be reconsidered to make it clearer it’s a last resort. Carbon offsetting/removal is a bit of a myth, especially for flights. You can plant a tree in Norway that might remove the same amount of carbon you put in the atmosphere by flying but a) it’s going to take the tree 20 years or so to do that and b) it might set on fire or something as that seems to be a problem trees are having right now and c) unless you planted that tree in the stratosphere the dangerous gasses from your flight are still very much going to be there.

I know businesses don’t like it and everyone loves a business trip but the only environmental option is to reduce all air travel to the absolute minimum and carbon offset as an absolute last resort. IMO all company flights should have to be justified and the justification should be verified by someone like an environment team with the option to reject if virtual contact could achieve the same or similar result

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I am all for meeting online (in fact it is my preference). But in my business, I am the only person who can make the call if it needs to be in person or not as it is myself who has the relationship with the company and individuals who I would be meeting. Putting a barrier in front of that would be a massive problem, and the bottom line is a competitor of mine would use it as an business advantage and travel instead.

I agree something should be done, but I don’t think that is it. Maybe incentivising not to travel somehow would be better eg seal the deal without travel and your flight cost is a cash bonus. But not putting a barrier in the form of people who don’t do my job and don’t know my contacts like I do.

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So, looking at the ‘big stuff’ probably the next issue to tackle for aiming for Carbon Neutral in the UK, at least, is how to replace Natural Gas.

At the moment the tech that a lot of people are looking at are Heat Pumps.

The Government though has just (today) released it’s strategy for Hydrogen and using that as an alternative to gas. They think this can be delivered with the existing infrastructure so should be easier and cheaper long term to switch.

There’s two different categories of hydrogen though - Green and Blue. Blue is being promoted by the traditional fossil fuels because, surprise surprise! it’s made using fossil fuels. Green hydrogen is made with renewal energy - but there’s currently not enough capacity to provide all that we need for that.

If the strategy works, there should be a ‘Hydrogen Neighbourhood’ by 2023, a ‘Hydrogen Village’ by 2025 and a Hydrogen Town by 2030.

Also in the strategy is developments for using Hydrogen as a fuel for lorries, boats, planes and buses - but not private cars.

What do you think? Is this a solution? Would you be happy to have Hydrogen pumped into your house (it shouldn’t be any more dangerous that Natural Gas? Maybe?)

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Personally, I’m optimistic about Hydrogen. I invested early in a few green hydrogen companies for that reason.

With that said though, do we really still need gas? I’ve been 100% gas free for about a decade now. Prior to that, Ecotricity were doing some interesting things with Cow poop, though I believe they stopped in an effort to rebrand themselves as the vegan energy company.

Bulb still do this though:

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New builds aren’t built with gas supply’s and we cut ours off a while ago.

Still I understand there’s a sustainability problem because the effect on the national grid of replacing all energy we produce via gas would be huge. And crucially, it’s seasonal, so ideally you want something that can be stored and distributed like gas. If you add enough power stations to service the winter heating demand, they’d be idle through the summer.

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What do they have/you use instead? And how does it compare cost/convenience wise?

Electric. I have economy 7 heaters. They are cheaper to run. You do have to store the heat overnight though, so there’s a bit of planning in that.

Cooking wise we moved to induction and it’s far superior to gas

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Back in 2001-2005, the flat I lived in had Economy 7 heating and all electric cooker etc. I never understood the heating system - there were just 2 random knobs and nothing to say what they did or how they worked which meant I definitely wasn’t using them correctly.

I’d hope that in the 15 years since then, those things have been modernised to make them smarter…

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Agreed.

I wouldn’t mind the switch from gas if there was a convenient alternative, especially if it was a ‘smart’ alternative. Might be something for a future house. I just hate the thought of having storage heaters, albeit my experience of them is over a decade old.

Ours are fairly new ‘quantum’ ones. They only release heat when you need them to, and they are very smart taking predicted weather conditions into account. In fact they are arguably better than a gas boiler because it’s easier to control temperature by room. They have improved basically.

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Exactly the same setup as @breville_monkey here too! Though we also have a home battery that we charge up overnight and gets used throughout the day which keeps day time costs low.

One of the things I like about Bulb, is in the summer, when little energy is used overnight, they’ll allow us to move to the regular tariff, which decreases costs a bit in summer too.

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Heat pumps, is my understanding.

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Remember the good old days when knackers paid for livestock carcasses? - no more.

The costs of recycling will have to trickle down sooner or later, but preferably sooner so that supermarkets finally get with the programme…

How much carbon does this forum generate :question:

Figured I’d plot my electricity usage per half hour against the average UK carbon intensity per half hour to find out how many kilograms of CO2 my electricity usage has produced. Turns out my household averages around 10kg of CO2 per week (if I didn’t feck up the formulas somewhere, which is entirely likely).

I’ve only been on a smart meter since October last year, so that’s how far I decided to go back.

Here is my households average grams of CO2 released per half hour since october last year;

For context, an average human releases around 20grams of CO2 per half hour (1kgCO2 per day). So my partner and I are emitting more CO2 than our electricity generation produces.

Obviously this is only half the picture, as I haven’t included gas here. Gas adds an average of 6.9kgCO2 per day for our usage. Around 4 times more than our electricity usage.

Next step is to figure out the CO2 I’ve saved by charging my EV at night rather than during the day etc (that block of higher emissions between midnight and 4:00am when carbon intensity is lowest).

If you’re curious what my households daily kgCO2 emissions looks like;

Oh god, make me stop. I’ve just thought about tracking quantity of amazon deliveries from my monzo data and calculating the estimated CO2 emissions from that.

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So they’ll do something now, right? Right?

Well they’ve run out of countries to invade…I think. They’ll still give it the token speech and not much else will happen at pace.

unfortunately, for anything at all to go through both houses in the US, it will need a significant amount of watering down.

It’s not just the republicans that will stand in the way, but democrats whose local areas rely heavily on industry funding from a specific industry or something like that, as well as all the lobbying money that big industry holds over their seats.

I really don’t see a way forward for carbon pricing in the US. This is maybe the most worrying thing of everything - because until the US adopts carbon pricing, no one else will do so fully for fear that it gives Americas economy an advantage over theirs.

I try not to think about this though because it just keeps leading to we’re doomed

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