Go Green

We have been distracted by Brexit. As we enter the next decade, we need to drastically change the way we live. We are running out of time - we are the first generation of humanity to recognise climate change and the last to be able to help stop it.

A great, gob-smacking idea. A breathtaking piece of new technology. A leap-making product of genius.

You know it when you see it.

Brilliance leaves you with that wonderfully curious sensation, asking the inevitable question: why did nobody think of this before?

The truth is somebody probably did.

New ideas – really great ideas - take time to establish. Even when they are ground-breaking and make life so much better.

Take the now well-accepted notion that our Earth is round. Just knowing this means we need not fear to explore, to discover, to literally widen our horizons as a species - because there’s no danger we’ll fall off the side. The ancient Greeks proved the Earth was round with mathematics alone. Yet it took another 2,000 years or so for it to be commonly accepted by Western society. (The Earth is in fact an oblate spheroid – a slightly misshapen round.)

Or let’s look at the humble umbrella. It took 50 years for this simple device to become socially acceptable in British society. It’s ‘inventor’, Joseph Hanway, had seen French ladies shielding themselves from the summer sun with parasols and thought it would be good to adopt the concept, make it more robust and waterproof and save Britons from frequent soakings. He did and was pilloried for his pioneering. He had rotten vegetables thrown at him as walked through the streets of London in the early 1700s, so ridiculous did people think the umbrella.

And what about the lightbulb? Surely, this ingenious, glowing glass globe makes such sense that nobody could possibly have thought of it as a bad idea? Guess what… It took 70 years from its first incarnation to becoming commercially viable. Through relentless ambition, Thomas Edison, who was backed by a certain banker named JP Morgan, lit up New York with electric light in 1882, and built the world’s first power grid and industrial-scale generators. But at the time, just a mere 137 years ago, many thought it ridiculous and dangerous.

Not all in the business community thought it a good idea either. For each home that converted to electric light was one less home John D Rockefeller, another giant of American industry and its most powerful oil baron, could sell his kerosene to. Fake news ensued, as Rockefeller ruthlessly seeded scare stories about the dangers of electric light in New York’s press.

Edison won, of course. His literally brilliant idea went on to change the world. Well most of it, sadly one billion of the world’s population still lives without access to electricity.

Like a panto villain, Rockefeller moved on to yet more skulduggery – and ran the idea of the electric car (being developed among others by Nikola Tesla – that surname might ring a bell) right off the road, in favour of noisy, smelly, polluting oil-burning piston power.

And here we are a century or so on… with the idea of the electric car becoming a rapid reality. Finally.

With it will come clean air, quieter streets and a related interest in renewable electricity. If your new electric car is zero emissions at the tailpipe, as the Americans like to say, why on earth would you charge it with fossil-generated power at the plug? That would defeat the point.

At Pure Planet, the new app-based renewable energy supplier, we’ve seen a massive uplift in people choosing fresh, clean energy to power their homes and cars.

We’ve made choosing clean energy cheaper than old, fossil-based electricity. Yes, green is now cheaper. So why wouldn’t you choose renewables? We also carbon offset all your gas at Pure Planet.

Put it another way: why would you spend more of your hard-earned cash to pollute and actually cause harm, to yourself, to all of us through the air we share and breathe, and to our Earth’s climate

The Pure Planet app

Pure Planet

that’s already warming way too much? But as much as a no-brainer renewables are – and as much as most Brits say they now favour renewables over any other energy source (around 80% according to the Government’s own data) – less than 10% of us have actually chosen a green tariff.

Thankfully, after two decades of reluctance, that number is now growing rapidly. There’s a new breed of green suppliers that are creating change. The new green suppliers are better value, usually digital and much easier to deal with.

And the renewable choice they are now offering British consumers couldn’t be needed more. Climate scientists say we drastically need to change the way we live. We should aim for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels. Even at 1.5 degrees we are going to see huge disruption to our environment.

Today, in the UK, each of us emits about seven tonnes of carbon a year, so everything and anything each of us can do will help. Sir David Attenborough, raw with urgency, implored us to act at the UN’s Climate Change Convention in Poland recently: “Right now, we are facing a manmade disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon”.

Did he just say we face the collapse of civilisation?

Yes, he did.

But don’t be frightened, do something about it. We are the first generation of humanity to recognise climate change and the last to be able to help stop it.

Choosing renewables for your home is one of the easiest things you can do to help combat climate change. You can save tonnes of CO2 from going into our atmosphere every year. It’ll save you money. It’s quick. It takes just seconds to switch suppliers on Pure Planet’s app. And best of all, you’ll feel good about yourself. You’ll deserve to. You’ll have bought into a great idea.

With just two elegant turns of the blades on a North Sea wind turbine you’ll be powering your home for a day.

No more flat earth, no more umbrella resistance, no more smelly kerosene lamps. Let’s choose a bright electric future. It’s an idea whose time has come.

Steven Day is a co-founder of Pure Planet, Britain’s first app-only renewable energy supplier - www.purepla.net.

Pure Planet is a Royds Withy King client.

Steven gave a TEDx Talk in Brighton 2017 on renewable energy: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=WNiWziEnfms