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Putting into place this solution would hugely decrease the emissions for both electricity production and transport. Although it will not solve climate change, this would be a huge step forward to our goal.

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In some areas of the country, such as Cornwall, there are no motorways and so access to chargers would be more problematic. Similar charging areas could also be created on major A roads to solve this?

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There being more charging points would encourage people to buy electric cars, as it would become easier to own one.

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The charging areas would be surrounded by trees and plants, making the area look nicer visually and also more calming.

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Some cars would require different kinds of chargers, so each area would have multiple of different kinds of chargers.

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The solution that I propose is ‘Green Motorways’. This would allow for both the energy production and transport emissions problems to be solved, if not drastically aided. At the start of a section of ‘green motorway’, there would be a separate area (similar to a service station) off both sides of the motorway, where there would be parking spaces and around 15-20 charging stations. The area would have a relatively small shelter with benches and toilets, so that people had a place to wait when cars were charging. If many of these were created all over the motorway system, it would greatly aid the availability of chargers and encourage people to buy EVs more. As well as this, the small amount of land on either side of the motoway would have solar panels and wind turbines along it (when possible), to provide power for the charging points and the rest of the national grid. Wind turbines produce energy for 70-80% of the time, and the skies would most likely be clear and sunny when they couldn’t produce energy, meaning that the solar panels could generate power. Surprisingly, there is a gigawatt of power in a square kilometre of sunlight, so the panels would most likely be sufficient, due to the huge stretches of land they would cover.

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Many people will say that hydrogen power will be the solution to petrol and diesel powered cars, however this is not the case. The simple fact is that hydrogen contains 3 times less energy per gallon than gasoline and the technology is nowhere near researched or available enough to help slow the climate crisis. Hydrogen is produced mostly by ‘steam reforming’ anyway, which produces carbon monoxide in the process (then burned to make carbon dioxide). So, although it may be a potential solution for the future, we need to take action now so hydrogen cars are not the answer.

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The large amount of traffic in this photo shows how polluting motorways can be.

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I have chosen the subject of Clean Our Air

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Green Motorways

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One way we can do this is by utilising electric cars. Although there are other potential technologies that could be used, many people already own electric cars and they are much more readily available than other solutions. However, there are quite a few problems with this approach. The first is that charging points for said cars are nowhere near prevalent enough to support an all-electric transport network. Even now, there is only 1 charging point for every 49 EVs in areas such as the North West. As well as this, power for the vehicles is produced mostly by fossil-fuel burning power plants anyway, which effectively makes having an EV pointless.

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Most people will use a car every day to travel to work, school, and events. However, the vast majority of these cars will produce emissions. Across the UK, there are around 38 million cars filling the air with greenhouse gases, which amounts to 11.9% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas production. That might not sound a lot to you, but let’s put it another way: 122 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent was released by transport in 2019. Just transport alone. Another source, electricity production, is the largest single source of emissions, accounting for 25% of global emissions. These gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, stay in the atmosphere and reflect short wave radiation back at the earth. This causes the climate to behave more erratically and heat overall, as less radiation can escape. By reducing the emissions of these two sources, the amount of gases released would decrease hugely and have a great effect.