5 ms·

Unfortunately it's not as black and white as that. The alternatives here in the UK are limited. It's basically ICE or electric. We have a staggering number of

by ItsBob 17d ago

Unfortunately it's not as black and white as that. The alternatives here in the UK are limited. It's basically ICE or electric. We have a staggering number of people that live in apartments so charging is out of the question except at public charging points and the cheapest I've seen is £0.40/kWh. Most of the fast chargers are £0.92/kWh. When I get my home charger fitted I'll be paying 6.9p/kWh between midnight and 6am but I have a driveway. Not everyone can give up ICE cars. The logistics don't add up for many people plus the entire world runs on diesel - every truck, earth-mover, factory etc. relies on diesel in some fashion.

SauciestGNU 17d ago
Individuals can do some things but not everything. I live in a place without reasonable public transportation but I've replaced 90% or more of my car trips with cycling, including for large grocery runs. I'll acknowledge not everyone is as fit as I am or as willing to put up with bad weather (I ride in snow for months out of the year). Pivoting agriculture from feed grains supporting the livestock industry to crops that humans directly consume would also improve the fuel consumption picture, but people are reluctant to reduce or eliminate meats from their diets.
- toomuchtodo 17d ago
  > Pivoting agriculture from feed grains supporting the livestock industry to crops that humans directly consume would also improve the fuel consumption picture, but people are reluctant to reduce or eliminate meats from their diets. Cattle herds are at 75-90 year lows, and roughly half of US beef consumption is driven by 12% of folks. They'll be fine with alternate protein sources. US cattle trajectories are locked in due to climate change induced supply cost inflation, meat packing consolidation, and cattle ranchers aging out (there are more farmers over 75 than under 35, average age of a cattle rancher is 58). https://www.npr.org/2026/05/29/nx-s1-5719511/beef-cattle-herd-food-prices https://www.npr.org/2026/05/29/nx-s1-5719511/beef-cattle-her... https://www.npr.org/2026/02/21/nx-s1-5719815/how-rising-beef-prices-are-affecting-oklahoma-ranchers https://www.npr.org/2026/02/21/nx-s1-5719815/how-rising-beef... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usda-climate-crisis-meat-consumption https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usd...
AnnikaL 17d ago
Huh, how does having options of ICE or EV cars mean high oil prices won't mean people try to use less oil? If gas prices go up, expensive public EV chargers will be more appealing. I hope you get better infrastructure re: charging soon; here in California (not known for low energy prices nor for infrastructure-building capacity) most fast chargers are between US$0.50 and US$0.70 (£0.37-£0.52) per kWh, so it is definitely possible. (You also need non-fossil-based electricity generation to truly decouple from oil/gas prices.) I share your worries about industry, though — although trucks, earth-movers, etc could theoretically run on batteries or hydrogen or something, industrial processes using petroleum and natural gas may be around for a lot longer.
- ItsBob 16d ago
  When I was referring to ICE vs electric I was referring to personal transportation only. Sometimes you just _can't_ use less oil. My own situation is that I make 5 sub-100 mile round-trip journeys each week now. It's the poster-child for home charging an EV. It saves me at least £3k a year on petrol alone. However, I had to pay an additional £7k over and above what I sold my petrol car for (just last week, in fact) in order to get a secondhand EV. I could have gotten a much older, higher mileage one for around the same as I sold my car but that was too big a gamble for me. So I was in a position that I _could_ use less oil by switching. Not everyone has a spare £7k lying around. I was told by a friend of mine (he's been driving electric for 5 years I think!) that a few years ago, the 92p/kWh fast chargers used to be about 30p. We now have waaaay more of them available and the price has gone up by about a factor of 3x so I don't see the price coming down any time soon and more infrastructure isn't helping in our case. The UK energy prices are really high too: £0.13/kWh is the global average and we pay £0.27/kWh [0]. So electric isn't always the answer either unless you can get a cheap tariff. Plus if you need to have a car and you live in a flat, you're only real option is petrol/diesel and a great many people here live in flats. In terms of industry, it will have some luck changing the last few miles of delivery over to electric. That may be fine though - leave the mega-miles to the diesel trucks and then city and town deliveries could be made by electric vehicles where they only need to do 200 miles of stop-start driving. Energy isn't free... if we want to power things we need to expend energy somewhere in the chain in order to do so. [0] - https://selectra.co.uk/energy/guides/tariffs/world https://selectra.co.uk/energy/guides/tariffs/world

by ItsBob 17d ago

SauciestGNU 17d ago

Individuals can do some things but not everything. I live in a place without reasonable public transportation but I've replaced 90% or more of my car trips with cycling, including for large grocery runs. I'll acknowledge not everyone is as fit as I am or as willing to put up with bad weather (I ride in snow for months out of the year). Pivoting agriculture from feed grains supporting the livestock industry to crops that humans directly consume would also improve the fuel consumption picture, but people are reluctant to reduce or eliminate meats from their diets.

toomuchtodo 17d ago
> Pivoting agriculture from feed grains supporting the livestock industry to crops that humans directly consume would also improve the fuel consumption picture, but people are reluctant to reduce or eliminate meats from their diets. Cattle herds are at 75-90 year lows, and roughly half of US beef consumption is driven by 12% of folks. They'll be fine with alternate protein sources. US cattle trajectories are locked in due to climate change induced supply cost inflation, meat packing consolidation, and cattle ranchers aging out (there are more farmers over 75 than under 35, average age of a cattle rancher is 58). https://www.npr.org/2026/05/29/nx-s1-5719511/beef-cattle-herd-food-prices https://www.npr.org/2026/05/29/nx-s1-5719511/beef-cattle-her... https://www.npr.org/2026/02/21/nx-s1-5719815/how-rising-beef-prices-are-affecting-oklahoma-ranchers https://www.npr.org/2026/02/21/nx-s1-5719815/how-rising-beef... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usda-climate-crisis-meat-consumption https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usd...

AnnikaL 17d ago

Huh, how does having options of ICE or EV cars mean high oil prices won't mean people try to use less oil? If gas prices go up, expensive public EV chargers will be more appealing. I hope you get better infrastructure re: charging soon; here in California (not known for low energy prices nor for infrastructure-building capacity) most fast chargers are between US$0.50 and US$0.70 (£0.37-£0.52) per kWh, so it is definitely possible. (You also need non-fossil-based electricity generation to truly decouple from oil/gas prices.) I share your worries about industry, though — although trucks, earth-movers, etc could theoretically run on batteries or hydrogen or something, industrial processes using petroleum and natural gas may be around for a lot longer.

ItsBob 16d ago
When I was referring to ICE vs electric I was referring to personal transportation only. Sometimes you just _can't_ use less oil. My own situation is that I make 5 sub-100 mile round-trip journeys each week now. It's the poster-child for home charging an EV. It saves me at least £3k a year on petrol alone. However, I had to pay an additional £7k over and above what I sold my petrol car for (just last week, in fact) in order to get a secondhand EV. I could have gotten a much older, higher mileage one for around the same as I sold my car but that was too big a gamble for me. So I was in a position that I _could_ use less oil by switching. Not everyone has a spare £7k lying around. I was told by a friend of mine (he's been driving electric for 5 years I think!) that a few years ago, the 92p/kWh fast chargers used to be about 30p. We now have waaaay more of them available and the price has gone up by about a factor of 3x so I don't see the price coming down any time soon and more infrastructure isn't helping in our case. The UK energy prices are really high too: £0.13/kWh is the global average and we pay £0.27/kWh [0]. So electric isn't always the answer either unless you can get a cheap tariff. Plus if you need to have a car and you live in a flat, you're only real option is petrol/diesel and a great many people here live in flats. In terms of industry, it will have some luck changing the last few miles of delivery over to electric. That may be fine though - leave the mega-miles to the diesel trucks and then city and town deliveries could be made by electric vehicles where they only need to do 200 miles of stop-start driving. Energy isn't free... if we want to power things we need to expend energy somewhere in the chain in order to do so. [0] - https://selectra.co.uk/energy/guides/tariffs/world https://selectra.co.uk/energy/guides/tariffs/world