Campaign group says firms such as Uber should reveal data on driver miles to help boost wages Uber and other ride-hailing apps should be forced to publish data on drivers’ workloads so that regulators can tackle exploitation and cut carbon emissions, campaigners argue. Analysis by the pressure group Worker Info Exchange suggests drivers for Uber and its smaller rivals may have missed out on more than £1.2bn in wages and costs last year because of the way they are compensated. Continue reading...

A secondhand EV is a possibility for many families as the cost of desirable models, including Kias and Teslas, falls to £15,000 If your current car is on the way out and you think an electric replacement is too expensive, think again. Three-year-old Tesla Model 3s and Kia e-Niros that will do 250-300 miles on a single charge can now be bought for as little as £14,000. In the last year, forecourt prices for used electric cars have tumbled to the extent that previously unaffordable models are now within the reach of many families for the first time. Continue reading...

The country has long been the world’s biggest market – but the government’s interest is more geopolitical than environmental When Kenzi, an advertising worker in Shanghai, bought an electric vehicle in November she wasn’t even thinking about the environmental benefits. She had read Elon Musk’s biography and thought the Tesla 3 looked good. She also knew that if she bought an EV she could bypass the long wait and cost of getting licence plates, which are rationed by the government. “It’s not easy to get a licence plate in Shanghai, but you get a licence for free when you buy an EV,” she said. Continue reading...

As Tata Steel and British Steel close their polluting blast furnaces, will Labour get behind the switch to more energy-efficient technology – and secure jobs? The warning is to “wait for the snap, crackle and pop” as three glowing electrodes are dropped into an electric arc furnace in Cardiff. What follows sounds like thunder and lightning. It is a human-induced storm in a massive, ceramic-lined cup, holding 140 tonnes of rapidly melting steel. The plant, owned by Spain’s Celsa, melts scrap steel using high-voltage electrical currents that generate the 1,600C needed to turn the metal to liquid. The glowing steel is then ready to be cast, twisted and crushed into the rods used to reinforce concrete. Continue reading...

New computing infrastructure means big tech is likely to miss emissions targets but they can’t afford to get left behind in a winner takes all market The artificial intelligence boom has driven big tech share prices to fresh highs, but at the cost of the sector’s climate aspirations. Google admitted on Tuesday that the technology is threatening its environmental targets after revealing that datacentres, a key piece of AI infrastructure, had helped increase its greenhouse gas emissions by 48% since 2019. It said “significant uncertainty” around reaching its target of net zero emissions by 2030 – reducing the overall amount of CO2 emissions it is responsible for to zero – included “the uncertainty around the future environmental impact of AI, which is complex and difficult to predict”. Continue reading...

Tech giant’s goal of reducing climate footprint at risk as it grows increasingly reliant on energy-hungry data centres Google’s goal of reducing its climate footprint is in jeopardy as it relies on more and more energy-hungry data centres to power its new artificial intelligence products. The tech giant revealed Tuesday that its greenhouse gas emissions have climbed 48% over the past five years. Google said electricity consumption by data centres and supply chain emissions were the primary cause of the increase. It also revealed in its annual environmental report that its emissions in 2023 had risen 13% compared with the previous year, hitting 14.3m metric tons. Continue reading...