Electric vehicles are ‘batteries on wheels’ that can put energy back into the
National Grid when solar panels and windfarms do not provide much power
Electric cars make some people afraid of the dark. While the batteries produce
much less carbon, they require much more electricity to run. This has prompted
ominous warnings that Great Britain and other wealthy countries set on banning
new petrol and diesel cars risk plunging their populations into darkness.
In recent months British net zero-sceptical newspapers have warned that the
shift to EVs would “risk overwhelming the grid, and threaten catastrophic
blackouts” when intermittent sun and wind fail to provide the necessary power.
Another article claimed: “It won’t take an enemy power to put us all in the dark
– just energy customers doing normal things on a normal winter’s evening.”
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Tag - Energy industry
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”.
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