I didn’t until I came across Mike Berners-Lee’s work. If you’re a small business and want to be kinder to the planet but not really sure what to focus on, you’ll find his work helpful. It’s data based, no fluff. And he gives simple, practical guidance on what would be best for the planet, based on scientific research.
I fell in love with his work after “How bad is a banana?” but I think I love “There is in Planet B” even more. It gave me perspective and has helped me know what to focus on most to make the biggest positive impact for future health of our planet.
My key takeaways on solving the energy consumption challenge:
- We need to both take carbon out of the air, as well as reducing our usage
- We need to both leave fossil fuels in the ground AND grow clean energy supply
- Efficiency improvements only help if overall consumption goes down with it
- Solar is the world’s best renewable opportunity by far & has enormous potential – it needs to be rolled out much faster
- Wind & hydro are useful but limited
- Nuclear is risk, permanently polluting, expensive & hard to roll out quickly but we might need it in low sun countries as it’s more reliable than wind or hydro
- We need to invest in electric vehicles, insulate, put up solar panels, pick pensions & banks that don’t invest in fossil fuels, fly less, not buy junk and make good stuff last
His analysis of carbon offsets are super useful:
- Least efficient & cheapest options: more fuel efficient stoves for African villages, protecting forests from deforestation & funding renewable energy. These things should just happen anyway.
- Next cheapest & by far more efficient: planting NEW trees or forestation BUT organisations should only sell these offsets once because trees stop absorbing carbon once mature (if verified, are acceptable in the short-term while DACCS becomes more accessible)
- Most efficient but most expensive: direct air capture & carbon storage (DACCS) but they haven’t managed to do it at scale yet, there are tech uncertainties, it’s expensive and needs a lot of energy to do it
So far, I’ve done:
- Invested in an electric car
- Picked a pension (PensionBee) & banks (Triodos for personal & Starling for business) that don’t invest in fossil fuels
- Try not to buy junk & buy 2nd hand, good quality products
Which one(s) do you think you could do?