Extending the useful life of any manufactured item significantly reduces its lifetime environmental impact. The Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam does exactly this. Most retired vehicle batteries retain a significant amount of their capacity, often around 80%, so they can be repurposed into static operations such as emergency power storage or similar.

But that is not necessarily the end of its useful life.īatteries can do more at this point. This can be a significant issue in a vehicle, where the energy a battery can retain reaches a point where it is disproportionality used on moving the mass of the battery rather than passengers or cargo. All batteries lose their ability to hold a charge over time, as any mobile-phone user can attest. A big question is whether to reuse or to repurpose batteries before recycling. I enjoyed your look “ Inside the gigafactory” (October 29th). Kumar Chairman Indian Water Resources Society Meerut, India The groundwater levels are plummeting and need ever-more energy to draw water up to the fields. Agriculture remains the largest emitter, using large amounts of energy for extracting groundwater for irrigation.

Reducing wasteful consumption is equally important, and has not been dealt with seriously in India. But generating green energy is only one part. You rightly noted India’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions (“ Skunk no more”, October 22nd). Professor Heleen de Coninck Contributor to the 2018 IPCC special report and the 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Eindhoven University of Technology Technological innovation and stronger policy instruments backed by political certainty have a role to play, as you say, but we also need to change people’s behaviour and the financial system, expand human-capacity development and enhance international co-operation.Ĭlimate change is more than energy alone, and we cannot simply innovate our way out of it. IPCC reports have emphasised that the transformation of systems is needed to tackle mitigation and adaptation challenges fairly and sustainably.

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