‘Unlike Many Other Air Pollutants, Ammonia Emissions Have Increased since 2013’

30.07.2018

The Environment Agency says farmers must take the lead by changing their land management practices

Unlike many other air pollutants, emissions of ammonia have increased since 2013.
That’s the verdict from the Environment Agency, which says this rise is having a damaging effect on wildlife and habitats as ammonia deposits continue to acidify soils, pollute natural areas and saturate rivers and lakes.
These effects reduce biodiversity in sensitive habitats creating a knock-on effect for wildflower species, aquatic and insect life – the organisation believes as many as 95% of England’s nitrogen-sensitive habitats are affected by ammonia deposits.

Around 88% of the UK’s ammonia emissions come from the agricultural sector’s activities, which include fertiliser use, slurry storage and the intensive production of livestock.
The Environment Agency says farmers must take action by changing land management practices and using nitrogen more efficiently.

Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency, said: “Urgent action is needed if we are going to tackle the hidden blight of ammonia emissions. These emissions are having a detrimental impact on the environment, precious habitats and wildlife.
“As custodians of the land, farmers must take the lead by changing their land management practices.”

Source: energylivenews

UK Theme Parks to Offer Half-Price Entry in Exchange for Used Plastic Bottles

30.07.2018

Legoland and Thorpe Park among the attractions that have joined Coca-Cola in a trial offering instant incentives for recycling

Visitors to some of the UK’s most popular tourist attractions are to be offered half-price entry in exchange for used plastic drinks bottles, as part of a trial starting on Wednesday which gives instant incentives for recycling.

In a tie-up between theme park operator Merlin and drinks giant Coca-Cola, a series of so-called “reverse vending machines” will be installed outside the entrances of Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures and Legoland.

In a bid to boost flagging recycling rates and tackle plastic litter, the machines will reward users depositing any 500ml plastic bottle with half-price discount vouchers which can be redeemed at all 30 Merlin attractions in the UK.

The initiative – which will run until mid-October – follows research by Coca-Cola which reveals that 64% of Britons would recycle more if they were rewarded instantly for their actions.

At present, just 43% of the 13bn plastic bottles sold each year in the UK are recycled, and 700,000 are littered every day. Pressure is growing on the government, retailers and consumers to increase rates of plastic bottle recycling and cut marine pollution. In March, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, announced plans to launch a mandatory deposit system for bottles and cans in the UK, although details are still being worked out.

Conventional deposit return schemes – in operation in 38 countries – typically involve an upfront deposit which is refunded to consumers who return their bottles and cans. Fees vary depending on the size of the bottle or can and many increasingly use new “reverse vending machines” to automate the return.

“We want to reward people for doing the right thing by recycling their bottles and hope to encourage some people who wouldn’t otherwise have done so,” said Jon Woods, general manager of Coca-Cola UK & Ireland. “All of our bottles can be recycled and we want to get as many of them back as possible so they can be turned into new bottles and not end up as litter.”

Meanwhile, the Co-op – the first UK retailer to launch a deposit return scheme trial with reverse vending machines – is reporting positive feedback from thousands of visitors to major summer music festivals, with high take-up rates and reduced littering. Through a link-up with organiser Festival Republic, the machines have been used at Co-op pop-up stores at Download and Latitude, with Reading and Leeds festivals to follow at the end of August. Users receive a voucher to spend, while the collected bottles go on to be recycled to create bottles for the Co-op’s own-brand water.

Frozen food giant Iceland and supermarket chain Morrisons have also launched small-scale trials of reverse vending machines.

Source: theguardian

Almost all World’s Oceans Damaged by Human Impact, Study Finds

30.07.2018

The remaining wilderness areas, mostly in the remote Pacific and at the poles, need urgent protection from fishing and pollution, scientists say.

Just 13% of the world’s oceans remain untouched by the damaging impacts of humanity, the first systematic analysis has revealed. Outside the remotest areas of the Pacific and the poles, virtually no ocean is left harbouring naturally high levels of marine wildlife.
Huge fishing fleets, global shipping and pollution running off the land are combining with climate change to degrade the oceans, the researchers found. Furthermore, just 5% of the remaining ocean wilderness is within existing marine protection areas.

“We were astonished by just how little marine wilderness remains,” says Kendall Jones, at the University of Queensland, Australia, and the Wildlife Conservation Society, who led the new research. “The ocean is immense, covering over 70% of our planet, but we’ve managed to significantly impact almost all of this vast ecosystem.”
Jones said the last remnants of wilderness show how vibrant ocean life was before human activity came to dominate the planet. “They act as time machines,” he said. “They are home to unparalleled levels of marine biodiversity and some of the last places on Earth you find large populations of apex predators like sharks.”
Much of the wilderness is in the high seas, beyond the protected areas that nations can create. The scientists said a high seas conservation treaty is urgently needed, with negotiations beginning in September under the UN Law of the Sea convention. They also said the $4bn a year in government subsidies spent on high seas fishing must be cut. “Most fishing on the high seas would actually be unprofitable if it weren’t for big subsidies,” Jones said.
The new work joins recent studies in highlighting the threat to oceans. Scientists warned in January that the oceans are suffocating, with huge dead zones quadrupling since 1950, and in February, new maps revealed half of world’s oceans are now industrially fished. “Oceans are under threat now as never before in human history,” said Sir David Attenborough at the conclusion of the BBC series Blue Planet 2 in December.

The new research, published in the journal Current Biology, classified areas of ocean as wilderness if they were in the lowest 10% of human impacts, either from one source, such as bottom trawling, or a combination of them all.
As most are on the high seas, very few are protected. “This means the vast majority of marine wilderness could be lost at any time, as improvements in technology allow us to fish deeper and ship farther than ever before,” Jones said.

Climate change is causing growing damage and Jones said Arctic wilderness areas protected by ice cover in the 1970s had now been lost after the ice melted and fishing boats were able to access them. It is increasingly a global problem, he said: “In future, as climate change gets worse, I think you can definitely say pretty much everywhere in the ocean is going to come under increasing level of threat.”

There are some bright spots, such as the remote corals in the British Indian Ocean Territory around Diego Garcia, from which islanders were controversially removed in the 1960s. In the Antarctic, major fishing companies now back the creation of the world’s biggest marine sanctuary.

The new study aimed to include the maximum area of likely wilderness, said Ward Appeltans, at the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission run by Unesco: “So the claim that only 13% of ocean wilderness remains is all the more striking.” He said the research focused on the ocean floor, and did not include impacts on the water column above it, and backed calls for a global ocean conservation treaty.
Jones said: “Beyond just valuing nature for nature’s sake, having these large intact seascapes that function in a way that they always have done is really important for the Earth. They maintain the ecological processes that are how the climate and Earth system function – [without them] you can start seeing big knock-on effects with drastic and unforeseen consequences.”

Source: theguardian

London Ranked Best City in World for EV Infrastructure

28.07.2018

London councils are set to install another 2,630 charging points in the next financial year

London is the best city in the world for electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure.
That’s according to a new study from online home rental company Spotahome, which ranked a range of cities out of 10.
It awarded London the highest index score of 10, followed by Amsterdam scoring 9.63 and Rotterdam at 8.73.
As of July 2018, the UK had 162,000 plug-in cars, with London councils set to deliver another 2,630 charging points in the next financial year and the report said it was working hard to deliver a modern and environmentally sustainable capital city of the future.

Other UK cities are lagging behind – Manchester is currently ranked in 18th place with a low score of 1.76, Edinburgh is in 31st at 1.1 and Leeds is in 35th place after scoring only 0.88.
Oslo ranked 6th despite Norway having more EV sales per capita than any other country in the world.

At the bottom of the rankings were major cities such as Cape Town, Cairo, Sao Paulo and Seoul, which all scored 0.
Melissa Lyras, Brand and Communications Manager at Spotahome, said: “If more cities invest in EV infrastructure they will help to facilitate growth in the market, improve air quality and the ultimately, the health and wellbeing of the people living there.
“London is a great example of a city succeeding in those goals, alongside other European countries who dominate the top ten.”

Source: energylivenews

Extreme Global Weather Is ‘the Face of Climate Change’ Says Leading Scientist

28.07.2018

Exclusive: Prof Michael Mann declares the impacts of global warming are now ‘playing out in real-time’

The extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change,” one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of now “playing out in real time.”
Climate change has long been predicted to increase extreme weather incidents, and scientists are now confident these predictions are coming true. Scientists say the global warming has contributed to the scorching temperatures that have baked the UK and northern Europe for weeks.
The hot spell was made more than twice as likely by climate change, a new analysis found, demonstrating an “unambiguous” link.

Extreme weather has struck across Europe, from the Arctic Circle to Greece, and across the world, from North America to Japan. “This is the face of climate change,” said Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University, and one the world’s most eminent climate scientists. “We literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.”
“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” he told the Guardian. “We are seeing them play out in real time and what is happening this summer is a perfect example of that.”
“We are seeing our predictions come true,” he said. “As a scientist that is reassuring, but as a citizen of planet Earth, it is very distressing to see that as it means we have not taken the necessary action.”

The rapid scientific assessment of the northern European heatwave was done by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and also colleagues in the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium. “We can see the fingerprints of climate change on local extremes,” he said.
The current heatwave has been caused by an extraordinary stalling of the jet stream wind, which usually funnels cool Atlantic weather over the continent. This has left hot, dry air in place for two months – far longer than usual. The stalling of the northern hemisphere jet stream is being increasingly firmly linked to global warming, in particular to the rapid heating of the Arctic and resulting loss of sea ice.

Prof Mann said that asking if climate change “causes” specific events is the wrong question: “The relevant question is: ‘Is climate change impacting these events and making them more extreme?’, and we can say with great confidence that it is.”

Mann points out that the link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer is a statistical one, which does not prove every cancer was caused by smoking, but epidemiologists know that smoking greatly increases the risk. “That is enough to say that, for all practical purposes, there is a causal connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer and it is the same with climate change,” Mann said.

Other senior scientists agree the link is clear. Serious climate change is “unfolding before our eyes”, said Prof Rowan Sutton, at the University of Reading. “No one should be in the slightest surprised that we are seeing very serious heatwaves and associated impacts in many parts of the world.”

It is not too late to make the significant cuts needed in greenhouse gas emissions, said Mann, because the impacts progressively worsen as global warming increases.
“It is not going off a cliff, it is like walking out into a minefield,” he said. “So the argument it is too late to do something would be like saying: ‘I’m just going to keep walking’. That would be absurd – you reverse course and get off that minefield as quick as you can. It is really a question of how bad it is going to get.”

Source: theguardian

A New Study Reveals that Urban Green Spaces May Be an Antidote to Depression

27.07.2018

green-2662561_960_720 — Photo-illustration: Pixabay

A recent study shows that symptoms of depression can be reduced for people who have access to green spaces. Researchers in Philadelphia transformed vacant lots in the city into green spaces and found that adults living near these newly planted areas reported decreased feelings of depression, with the biggest impact occurring in low-income neighborhoods.

Researchers at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine teamed up with members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to transform and observe 541 randomly selected vacant lots in Philadelphia. Eugenia South, assistant professor and co-author of the study, said Philadelphia’s littered lots were an ideal environment to set-up their groundwork. “There’s probably 40,000 of them in the city” she told NPR, “but they’re concentrated in certain sections of the city, and those areas tend to be in poorer neighborhoods.” According to the study, lower socioeconomic conditions have already been proven to distress mental health states.

The researchers separated the lots into three groups: a control group of lots where nothing was altered, a set of lots that was cleaned up of litter, and a group of lots where everything, including existing vegetation, was removed and replanted with new trees and grass.

“We found a significant reduction in the amount of people who were feeling depressed” South said. Her team used a psychological distress scale to ask people how they felt, including senses of hopelessness, restlessness and worthlessness, as well as measuring heart rates, a leading indicator of stress, of residents walking past the lots. Low-income neighborhoods showed as high as a 27.5 percent reduction in depression rates. South said, “In the areas that had been greened, I found that people had reduced heart rates when they walked past those spaces.”

While previous research has cross-studied the beneficial effects of green spaces on mental health, experts, such as Professor Rachel Morello-Frosch from the University of California, Berkeley, are regarding this experiment as “innovative.” Morello-Frosch said that previous studies were observational in nature and failed to provide concrete statistical results as this study has offered. Morello-Frosch, who was not involved with the analysis, said, “To my knowledge, this is the first intervention to test — like you would in a drug trial — by randomly alleviating a treatment to see what you see.”

Parallel research has identified indicators of crime-reduction and increased community interaction, showing that green spaces are a low-cost answer to improving many facets of a community’s well-being, now including mental health.

Source: Inhabitat

Greek Wildfires: Dry Winter and Strong Winds Led to Tinderbox Conditions

27.07.2018

greece-1899001_960_720 — Photo-illustration: Pixabay

An unusually dry winter, with less than average rainfall interspersed with localised flooding in some areas, is emerging as a major contributing factor to the wildfires that are ravaging the mainland of Greece.

Lack of the expected steady rainfall in the winter months meant groundwater sources failed to recharge and left vegetation unable to recover fully from the high temperatures of the 2017 summer. As a result, when temperatures topping 40C hit some areas during this summer’s heatwave and drought, the conditions were already in place for wildfires to take hold.

Strong winds then fanned the flames and spread the fires widely before stretched fire-fighting teams could gain control. The fact that the fires took hold on land close to densely inhabited and resort areas was largely a matter of chance, but one that led to a death toll of more than 70 people and wrought devastation on homes.

These are widely regarded as the short-term causes of the fires, but experts are also concerned that the conditions experienced in Greece in the last two years are likely to be replicated more often in future, owing to the changing climate.

Nikos Charalambides, executive director of Greenpeace Greece, said: “As the death toll rises and the full size of the disaster is still to be recorded, it would be premature to attribute these [fires] to either climate change or the failures of the fire prevention and fire-fighting mechanisms.”

However, he said the contributing factors included drought, strong winds and unusually high temperatures, all of which are likely to be aggravated by climate change.

The current heatwave across Europe and much of the northern hemisphere could be seen as “a foretaste of what weather extremes we are threatened by as the climate crisis progresses”, said Charalambides.

Growing more trees and managing forests properly would help to make the land more resilient to droughts, heatwaves and fires, he added. Forests also act as a cooling factor on the local climate and support a range of biodiversity.

Charalambides also called for a greater focus on the prevention of fires in Greece in place of a traditional focus on boosting firefighting capacity. Alongside this, there should be more emphasis on drawing up plans for evacuation in the case of disaster, particularly in areas where pine forests are near to human habitation.

Rachel Kennerley, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “The immediate priority must be to tackle the terrible fires, and to support the people whose homes, lives and livelihoods have been put at risk or devastated.”

But she said the longer-term impacts must also be taken into account when the immediate danger has passed: “Extreme heatwaves are predicted to become more frequent as climate change takes hold, meaning drier forests and countryside, and a greater risk of fire. Politicians must wake up to the extreme weather battering the planet and take tough and urgent steps to slash the climate-wrecking pollution being pumped into our atmosphere.”

Ray Rasker of Headwaters Economics, an expert on wildfires and the built environment in California, said buildings in high-risk areas could be made more resistant to fires in future, often through relatively simple measures. He cited nonflammable roofing material and siding for houses, not using wooden decks, installing fine mesh screens on roof vents, and planting fire-resistant vegetation close to houses.

He also warned that in the aftermath of large fires there is often a temptation to waive or loosen high building standards in order to rebuild as quickly as possible, which he said would be a mistake.

The short-term Met Office forecast for Greece is for temperatures from around 26C to around 30C, with some localised thunderstorms and a small amount of rainfall in a few areas.

Source: Guardian

UN Pact Acknowledges Climate Migration for the First Time

26.07.2018

migration-2698946_960_720 — Foto-ilustracija: Pixabay

The final draft of a UN compact on migration published July 11 recognized the existence of climate refugees specifically for the first time, The Thomas Reuters Foundation reported Thursday.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration acknowledged climate change as a cause of migration, both due to extreme weather and “slow onset events” like drought after various advocacy groups pushed for the addition.

“It’s the first time the international community has recognized that migration and displacement can be caused by climate change disasters and has made specific commitments on how to address that,” Walter Kaelin from the Platform on Disaster Displacement told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Weather disasters displaced an average of 26.4 million people a year between 2008 and 2015, according the UN. And in March the World Bank warned that more than 140 million people in Africa, South Asia and Latin America could be forced to migrate due to climate change unless the world acts quickly to lower emissions, according to Reuters.

Most of the climate change mentions in the current compact come under Objective No. 3, calling on signatories to “Minimize the adverse drivers and structural factors that compel people to leave their country of origin.”

The compact lists investing in “climate change mitigation” as one way to minimize these forces.

The compact also calls on signatories to share information to better understand and predict climate-caused migrations, develop strategies to combat the effects of climate change, consider possible displacement when creating disaster response plans, coordinate at a regional and subregional level to make sure the humanitarian needs and rights of climate migrants are met and develop strategies to respond to the challenges posed by climate-based migration movements.

“After this compact, no one can say: ‘We don’t see a relation between climate change and displacement and migration,'” head of climate change and resilience policy at CARE International Sven Harmeling told The Thomas Reuters Foundation.

“But we’ll have to see how fast and how many governments will sign up to this,” he added.

The compact will be officially adopted at a meeting in Morocco in December.

The compact is non-binding and does not require countries to agree to targeted goals or to grant any climate migrant legal status.

It was first begun in 2015 in response to the refugee crisis in Europe, which saw the largest number of refugees enter the region since World War II.

The compact was originally agreed to by all 193 UN member countries, but the U.S. pulled out last year and Hungary also promised to withdraw Wednesday.

The U.S. government has since come under fire for its treatment of Central American asylum seekers at the country’s southern border, some of whom are partly fleeing drought and food insecurity linked to climate change.

Source: Eco Watch

Croatian Firm Lent €130m for Efficient Heat and Power Units

26.07.2018

A Croatian energy company has been granted loans totalling €130 million (£116m) for new electricity and heat co-generation units.

HEP will replace outdated oil and gas-fired turbines and boilers with modern, efficient and environmentally friendly systems in the capital city of Zagreb.

The capacity of the two combined cycle gas turbine units will be 150MW of electrical energy and 114MW of thermal energy.

The funding has been announced under a joint effort by the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Commission’s Juncker Plan.

Jyrki Katainen, Commission Vice-President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, said: “As the EU transitions to a cleaner and more sustainable economy, it is crucial that we replace older, polluting power plants with climate-friendly versions. This is precisely what this project will do: generate electricity for residents of Zagreb in a more sustainable way.”

Source: Energy Live News

Typhoons, Floods, Heat Waves Batter Asia

25.07.2018

From flash floods in Vietnam to a blistering heat wave in Japan, countries across Asia are suffering from extreme weather, CNN reported Sunday.

The events come nearly two months into the continent’s annual rainy season that extends from June to November, according to The Straits Times.

A 2016 study showed that typhoons in Asia had gotten 50 percent more intense in the last 40 years due to increased ocean temperatures and were likely to get even more intense due to climate change, The Guardian reported.

In Vietnam, Typhoon Son Tinh made landfall as a tropical depression on Wednesday, The Straits Times reported.

It led to flash floods and landslides that claimed at least 21 lives and inundated villages in the country’s north, CNN reported.

The flooding has damaged 15,000 homes and submerged 110,000 hectares (approximately 271815.92 acres) of farmland, The Straits Times reported.

In Shanghai, another tropical storm forced more than 190,000 people to evacuate as it made landfall Sunday afternoon.

“Ampil, the 10th typhoon this year, has made landfall on the island of Chongming in Shanghai at 12:30 p.m. local time Sunday (12:30 a.m. ET), packing winds of up to 28 meters (approximately 75.5 feet) per second near its eye,” the municipal meteorological observatory told state-run media outlet Xinhua, according to CNN.

Both of these storms also battered the Philippines, which is now seeing the end of Tropical Depression 13W or Josie.

Philippines authorities said Saturday that at least five people have died and more than 700,000 have been impacted by floods and landslides caused by heavy rain, The Straits Times reported.

Finally, a deadly heat wave has struck Japan as it recovers from catastrophic flooding.

The heat wave has lasted two weeks and killed at least 30 people, BBC News reported Saturday.

The government issued new warnings Monday as the nation’s highest ever temperature of 41.1 degrees Celsius (approximately 106 degrees Fahrenheit) was recorded in Kumagaya in Saitama outside Tokyo, The Times of India reported.

Temperatures in Kyoto have stayed above 38 degrees Celsius (approximately 100 degrees Fahrenheit) for seven days, the longest in recorded history.

CNN’s Van Dam reported that the heat wave had impacted around 90 percent of the country and that the heat index, which factors in humidity, had risen into the 40s.

“Sweating is only as good as your body’s ability to evaporate that sweat off of the skin. Heat indices in the mid 40s are making it nearly impossible for the body’s response to properly take effect,” he told CNN.

The heat wave is also making it harder for volunteers working in areas of the country hit by devastating floods earlier in the month, BBC News reported.

Source: Eco Watch

Green Foods Could Clean Up the Construction Industry

25.07.2018

We’ve all heard of eating our vegetables, but what about building with them? A new study by Lancaster University‘s B-SMART program will examine the effects of incorporating root vegetables – yes, vegetables – into cement production for a stronger and more sustainable way of building. The project, funded by the European Union, has brought academic and industrial stakeholders together in order to identify “biomaterials derived from food waste as a green route for the design of ecofriendly, smart and high performance cementious composites.” The program has proved successful insofar as creating a much more durable concrete mixture, with far fewer CO2 emissions from the process – all by adding some nutritious beets and carrots.

Professor Mohamed Saafi, lead researcher at Lancaster University, reveals the cement is “made by combining ordinary Portland cement with nano platelets extracted from waste root vegetables taken from the food industry… this significantly reduces both the energy consumption and CO2 emissions associated with cement manufacturing.” This news comes none too soon for developers in urban areas contending with new green regulations enforced by governments both nationally and internationally. If recent trends continue, concrete production – which accounts for approximately 8% of CO2 emissions worldwide – will double in the next 30 years.

According to Saafi, when root vegetable nano-platelets, such as those found in beets and carrots, are introduced into concrete, “the composites are not only superior to current cement products in terms of mechanical and micro-structure properties but also use smaller amounts of cement.” The initial tests have attributed this to an increase in calcium silicate hydrate, the compound which reinforces the cement, thanks to the vegetable extracts. The new concrete mixture also boasts a longer-lasting, less corrosive body and denser micro-structure, also attributed to its green food invigoration. So next time you don’t feel like eating your vegetables, just remember – they could make you stronger, too.

Source: Inhabitat

UK Electric Car Drivers Face Paying More to Charge at Peak Times

25.07.2018

ev-charging — Photo-illustration: Pixabay

British electric car drivers face having to pay more to power their car if they refuse to shift their charging to off-peak times, in a move designed to lessen their burden on the electricity network.

There are currently 160,000 plug-in cars on UK roads but rapid growth means their impact on the energy system must be managed carefully, said energy regulator Ofgem.

If enough drivers top up their cars when they get home from work it would put extra pressure on power networks, which already face a peak in demand between 4pm and 6pm.

Such a scenario would require costly upgrades to local electricity grids, which everyone would ultimately pay for through their energy bills.

“If electric vehicle users choose to charge during peak times, under current arrangements they will impose considerable costs, which will be borne by all consumers,” Ofgem said as it published reforms to promote the use of electric cars.

Vulnerable energy consumers would likely object to “subsidising more affluent early adopters” of electric cars, the regulator added.

Ofgem’s solution is to encourage plug-in car owners to use smart charging, where a vehicle could be plugged in at 5pm but would only start powering up at midnight, when electricity demand is much lower.

Incentives to use cheaper charging could include energy tariffs that offered cheaper electricity at certain times, such as when solar and wind power are generating larger amounts of power, or when demand is low.

Such an approach requires homes to be fitted with smart meters, which are in 10m households but whose rollout has been slow.

Charging an electric car overnight at home will cost around £4 for 100 miles of range, depending on the electricity tariff. A similar distance in a petrol car would cost around £17. However, charging an electric car at public points is more expensive than at home, particularly on rapid chargers.

Failure to charge smartly could be financially penalised, Ofgem said. “Consumers should be rewarded for being flexible with their demand but may pay a premium if their behaviour adds to peak demand or local congestion [on power networks],” the regulator added.

The regulator admitted it was not yet clear how such a fee would be applied, or how much it would be, as its work was at an early stage.

As a last resort, electric cars would have their charging interrupted if their demand on local power networks threatened outages to households. However, this is only expected to occur in extreme cases.

Analysis by the regulator found that with smart charging, 60% more electric cars could connect to existing electricity networks before they needed to be reinforced.

As part of the reforms, Ofgem is proposing that power grid owners should offer “off-peak” connections to the grid to avoid the cost of reinforcing networks.

That could benefit the operator of a fleet of electric vehicles, if they could be flexible over when they powered their cars, as they would pay less in network charges than for a conventional “anytime” connection.

Jonathan Brearley, the executive director, systems and networks at Ofgem, said: “Ofgem is working with the government to support the electric vehicle revolution in Britain, which can bring big benefits to consumers. Our reforms will help more users charge their electric vehicles and save them money.”

National Grid recently revised upwards its projections for the take-up of electric vehicles and said it expects 11m electric vehicles by 2030, 2m more than it thought only a year ago. By 2040 it expects 36m electric vehicles.

The company has also stressed the need for cars to be charged smartly, which it believes could limit the increase in peak electricity demand to 8GW, or about two and a half times the capacity of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.

Last week a new law was passed in parliament that will require anyone installing an electric charge point to make it capable of smart charging.

Source: Guardian

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