Driving an electric vehicle can help curb climate change

Tags: #ev-emissions

CNN has produced a quiz to identify ways in which you can help curb climate change and some of the answers may surprise you.

According to Project Drawdown (the data from which CNN uses for its quiz), if EV ownership rose to just 16 per cent of total passenger miles by 2050 over 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide could be avoided ¹.

CNN suggests this is more effective in reducing climate change than shipping goods more efficiently, flying less miles and investing in high speed trains.

For those that argue that more fossil fuels need to be burnt to charge EV cars, looking at the grid usage, a grand total of zero per cent of energy supplying the UK right now is coal powered. In fact, the UK on average generates 25 per cent renewable energy and if you add to that (the sometimes contentious) nuclear energy, it is pushing well over 50 per cent.

With these figures only likely to improve it is no wonder why CNN suggests driving an electric car is one of the biggest things you can do to curb climate change in the transport sector.

If you are interested (and everyone should be) there are things that you can do to help across all sectors. Food for instance; throwing away less food or changing to a plant heavy diet can have a six times greater impact than driving an electric car for 16 per cent of the miles you cover (or about the same as driving an electric car for 100 per cent of your miles).

Read more about Project Drawdown at: https://www.drawdown.org/

Take the CNN quiz at: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/04/specials/climate-change-solutions-quiz/

¹ https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/transport/electric-vehicles