So here's a question.
Can we travel more but pollute less?
Net zero. Net zero. Net zero. Net zero.
We've all heard a lot about net zero,
but what does it actually mean?
Especially when it comes to transport,
because that already accounts for about
27% of all of the emissions in the UK.
And actually those emissions are expected
to grow by more than any other sector.
So how do we keep travelling on planes,
trains and cars and still reach net zero?
Let's take this to the road first
because you probably already guessed that
electric vehicles are going to play
a massive part in net zero.
But it's not just like we can wait till 2050,
then suddenly switch over all at once.
Even if tomorrow every single person who bought
a brand new car bought an electric one,
it would still take 15 years before every
single car driving around out there was electric.
Ok, there's a lot of things that are going to
have to go right for that to happen, not least
making them actually affordable for everybody.
But let's just imagine for a sec that it does, right?
And everybody's driving around in electric cars.
You're on the motorway, the wind is in your hair.
Suddenly the battery is dying.
Where is the charge point?
One of the big issues with the electric vehicles,
of course, is that up until quite recently
and still a little bit now, people have got
to have lots of different plugs in the boot
of their car in order to access
the different charge points.
Even so, we could need ten times the number
of charge points we currently have.
So from 21,000 to 210,000.
Yeah, that's one huge infrastructure requirement.
But here's a bigger one for you,
because the roads aren't just about cars.
98% of all of the stuff in the UK
and food is transported by road freight.
That means lorries.
But relying on charge points and batteries
for massive trucks just isn't feasible.
So what about a different idea?
Connecting the heavy goods vehicles
to overhead lines like a train line.
Vehicles would click into that
when they got onto the motorway
and click out of it and then just run
on their fuel tank or their smaller battery
for the local elements of their journeys.
It's an interesting idea, isn't it?
Sort of like if a tram pulled up alongside you
on the motorway. To electrify 65% of trucks
in this way, we would need to lay cabling
along around 5,000 miles of road.
So it's a big challenge. But right now,
the main solution for passenger vehicles
is still batteries and even here, there’s a
whole bunch of problems to solve.
So I'm heading to Imperial College in London
to find out more.
The supply chain for lithium ion batteries
actually is very complex. You obviously need
lithium, where most of the world's lithium
comes from places like Chile and Argentina.
In the US, 79% of all lithium lies near
Native American reservations.
We also need elements such as cobalt, where
a lot of the world's cobalt comes from
the Congo at the moment, where there are concerns
about ethical mining. So we're starting to see
drastic changes in the supply chain of materials.
And one of the challenges is that
the demand for batteries is currently outstripping
how fast we can actually dig these things up.
Worst case scenario, we could run out of
lithium before ever reaching net zero.
Right now, even though battery recycling
makes a lot of sense,
very few lithium ion batteries are actually recycled
and actually taking a battery pack apart
can be quite dangerous because these often are
at several hundred volts.
Yeah, we don't have the answer to the lithium
problem yet, but with so much emphasis on
going electric for net zero, it's one of
the biggest challenges we'll need to address.
But let's just zoom out for a second,
because transport is more than just roads
and it's more than just transporting humans.
It's also about transporting our stuff.
So a massive 90% of all things, from cars
to fridges to clothes, are transported by sea.
And in fact, if the shipping industry were a country,
it would be the sixth largest emitter in the world.
It's responsible for about 940 million tonnes of CO2
every single year.
So what ways can emissions be reduced
from shipping?
Here are five possible solutions.
Number one, slow steaming.
Yes, just by slowing ships down,
you can save fuel and drastically cut emissions.
Number two, change a ship's shape.
This here is a delightfully named bulbous bow.
It's pretty good for reducing drag.
Number three, use wind power. Yes, really!
Making freighters look more like sailing boats
is actually a thing, like this concept.
Number four, alternate fuels like hydrogen or biofuels.
But some of those have their own issues.
And number five, decrease the number of ships.
So I guess we could consider sending
a bit less stuff around the world,
maybe making fewer purchases of things
we almost certainly didn't need.
And then, of course, there's planes.
The most common way the aviation industry
mitigate their carbon footprint is
carbon offsetting.
The problem is that through tree planting,
we haven't physically got enough land
to accommodate the number of trees that
we would need to do that.
The thing with planes, right, is that they need
to be as light as possible to be able to fly.
And right now, batteries are just too heavy.
Kerosene, which is the current airline fuel,
is very energy dense and batteries currently
can't compete against it.
So where does that leave us?
The big problem with aviation is that
the solutions, the technical solutions,
really aren't there. So this has to be about
looking at the demand side of it.
So how much of this is actually about
personal responsibility?
It's a real tension when it comes to net zero
between what we as individuals should do,
because every signal we make in terms of
what we buy makes a signal, whether it's to
a policy maker, a company or whatever.
And that's really important.
It's actually only about 15, 1-5% of people
in the UK who are responsible for
75% of the flights.
There are big policy changes required
to bring in something like a frequent flyer tax.
So this is where we are right now.
It's obvious we need some major changes
to the way we travel. The good news is that
we've already taken a lot of these steps,
but it's still a pretty long road ahead.