What can I do about climate change?
Transportation
Vehicles are responsible for 64% of the greenhouse gas emissions in Cranbrook and are therefore the biggest opportunity to reducing our environmental impact.
Active transportation
Active transportation means that your journey is human-powered. Typically, people think of cycling, but this could include things such as walking, skateboarding, or scootering, even with electric assistance.
Active transportation can offer you several key benefits: it is a great way to ensure that you get or stay staying healthy (and cheaper than a gym membership), save money on fuel or transit, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and can even be a way to meet people along your journey. If the physical aspect of active transportation is a bit of a barrier, consider an e-bike or e-scooter.
Need you commit to active transportation in the rain or in the bitter cold? Only if you want to. You can try starting small first to see how you like it. Even one day a week makes an impact.
What resources are there to help me do this or provide more information?
Alternatives to commuting alone
Admittedly, active transportation just isn’t practical for everyone all the time, but this doesn’t mean that driving alone in a vehicle every day is the only remaining choice either. Here are a couple other alternative options:
Carpooling with someone who lives or works on your commute can actually be a convenient solution, especially during winter when vehicles need ice scraped off. Sharing the cost of transportation is an option, and there is no need to commit to carpooling every day or with the same person. When working out of town, the cost saving associated with carpooling can become substantial.
If you live near a bus route to somewhere that you go, you might be able to just hitch a ride to your destination by taking the bus. Buses in Cranbrook aren’t well utilized so you won’t have a hard time finding some space for yourself.
What resources are there to help me do this or provide more information?
Electric vehicles
There are a lot of opinions on electric vehicles, and a lot of misinformation too. At the time of writing, electric vehicles for some applications either do not exist or may provide limitations. This technology has been improving very rapidly, and many more models and applications of vehicles continue to be developed. The limitations of electric vehicles continue to diminish, and electric vehicles today would make a great choice in a lot of people’s lives. Generally speaking, electric vehicles offer several advantages: that are quiet, fast, and fully featured vehicles with excellent handling, smooth operation, low cost to operate and almost no maintenance. Electric vehicles have lower associated greenhouse gas emissions than internal combustion engine-propelled vehicles, even if charged from an electric grid powered by fossil fuels. In BC, the electric grid is hydroelectric powered, resulting in very small emissions associated with driving an electric vehicle.
If a fully electric car just isn’t the right fit for you, consider a hybrid vehicle. Traditional hybrid vehicles use a battery to extend the range of an internal combustion engine-propelled vehicle, whereas a plug-in electric hybrid vehicle that uses a battery to provide the first short distance of driving, then after that uses the battery to extend the range of the internal combustion engine. These vehicles will cost less in fuel to drive them than conventional vehicles.
Batteries can be a problem even with my non-electric vehicle. Do electric cars even work in the winter?
Batteries in traditional internal combustion engine-propelled vehicles are an entirely different chemistry than those in electric vehicles, so they don’t act entirely the same. Lithium-ion batteries that are used in electric vehicles are still negatively impacted by the cold, and electric vehicles will generally see around a 30% reduction in range when the temperatures dip well below zero. So, while an electric vehicle will operate perfectly well in the cold, there could be a range issue if the vehicle is needed to travel a long distance on the highway on a cold day.
Internal combustion engine-propelled vehicles produce heat as a by-product of a hot engine. In the winter, the engine takes a while to heat up, and so does the inside of the vehicle unless it is left idling for an extended period. Electric vehicles don’t have such waste heat to use, so there are dedicated heaters added to them that can heat inside the vehicle rapidly, but heating the vehicle drains the battery and is one of the main reasons for the reduced winter range. Some electric cars can have the heat turned on in advance like a remote starter and if this preheating it performed while plugged into a charger it can minimize the impact on range.
Won’t an electric car be a pain for the highway, needing to wait to charge all the time?
This could be a challenge, but for most households the likelihood of this being an issue is a lot less than it seems. Below are some factors to think about that could influence if needing to charge could be much of an issue for you.
How far your destination is
If your destination is beneath half the range of your electric vehicle, a round trip should be possible without worrying about finding a charger. If your destination is within the range of your vehicle, then all you need to do is find a charging station at your destination. When your destination it is further than the range of your electric vehicle is when things become a bit more complicated, as you will have to stop somewhere along the way to charge. though, then depending on the distance, you might only have one stop along the way If your destination is less than double the range of your electric vehicle, (such as if you were travelling to Kamloops, Kelowna, Edmonton), the stop for charging could be combined with a mealtime, or even visiting a store you can’t find in Cranbrook. Longer trips though will require several stops, which depending on how often you like to take breaks, might be more than you are prepared to compromise.
How often you like (or need) to stop for stretch breaks, snacks, meals, or attractions
If you like to travel by driving long distances all in one go, stopping only to fuel up, you might find an electric vehicle to be an inconvenience. Otherwise, the
charging can be done at a time when you might be stopping anyways, or maybe should be stopping to give your body a break.
How often you travel on the highway
Unfortunately, many people regularly drive vehicles that are larger than what they need on a regular basis because they may need to use some additional functionality of the vehicle, like towing or hauling, on a rare instance. These people could have saved a lot of money on the purchase price and on gas if they purchased a more economical vehicle and rented a vehicle for rare instances where more functionality is necessary. If you are concerned that an electric car might hold you back just in a rare instance that you would need to haul something or travel on the highway for a long distance, consider just renting a gas car for such instances. If you do non-stop long distance trips somewhat regularly, an electric vehicle might be an inconvenience.
How many vehicles you have in your household
Most multi-vehicle households do not need to take all vehicles on long distance trips on the highway at the same time. Simple planning could typically keep the longer ranged vehicle being used for the longer ranged tasks.
What time of year you would typically drive on the highway
Range is impacted by winter weather, but most highway trips are taken during the summer. If your main highway driving is for summer vacation, you don’t need to plan for the lowest range in winter conditions. However, if you frequently drive long distances in the winter, an electric vehicle may be an inconvenience.
Whether you tow anything
The advertised range for an electric vehicle will not be as long when towing. An electric vehicle might not be the right choice for this application unless the distances are short.
I can’t install an electric vehicle charger where I live
For the amount of driving that most people do on a regular basis, a regular wall outlet
is sufficient to charge an electric vehicle; even a vehicle has is only at home and available to charge for eight hour each day, will be able to charge for 48km worth of range every day. Even with 48km per day of charging, your electric vehicle will have a battery with capacity for more than that range, this distance can easily be exceeded as long as it isn’t done consistently. If your vehicle requires driving a greater average daily distance than what you can charge from a regular outlet, you may need to supplement with visits to public charge stations, which are often located in convenient places so you can do errands or other activities while charging.
https://electricvehicles.bchydro.com/charge/choosing-a-home-EV-charger
https://pluginbc.ca/charging/finding-stations/
Aren’t electric vehicles worse for the environment because of battery manufacturing?
This is a contentious issue, one which is the cause of the biggest misconception about electric cars, and part of the reason that it remains such a big misconception is that it is based on truth, but, it is only a partial truth. Manufacturing any new vehicle is not great for the environment. However electric vehicles are indeed more resource intensive to manufacture. Some people focus exclusively on these manufacturing impacts and declare that electric vehicles are as bad or worse for the environment than internal-combustion engine propelled vehicles, but there is more to the story than this. The extraction, refinement and distribution of oil and gas, on top of the direct emissions from combustion in vehicles has a substantial toll on the environment. Electric vehicles reduce emissions so substantially that over their lifetime there are much less environmental impacts associated with the vehicle. An electric vehicle works out to be much better for the environment despite what is involved in manufacturing.
The largest tailings dam in the world is for oil and gas, and this pollution is within our own country. These remain toxic for much longer than those typically produced by mines for minerals.
What resources are there to help me do this or provide more information?
Electrical Vehicle Myths
Tailing Ponds
CBC Oil Sands Tailings Release Effluent Regulations
Travelling longer distances
Greenhouse gas emissions per passenger for a commercial airplane flight are greater than the emissions from driving the same voyage alone in an average gas-powered car. Unless you drive a large pickup it is a better choice for the environment to drive instead of fly whenever this is possible, especially if you are not travelling alone. If you are travelling between places outside of Cranbrook with well-developed public transit infrastructure, a train can sometimes be quicker than a flight and much lower emissions.