New report: The real cost of fossil fuels
2017 may have been the greenest year for electricity ever in the UK, but as recently as 2015, a report by the International Energy Agency found that four-fifths of the energy that goes directly into energy supplies around the world comes from fossil fuels. We all know by now that this continued reliance on ‘dirty’ methods of energy generation isn’t sustainable for lots of reasons. This is why, in our new report, we ask: ‘What’s the real cost of fossil fuels?’
Cost is the key word here, and is the core focus of the report. After all, the impact of continued fossil fuel use isn’t just associated with a financial cost; there are environmental, health and sociological costs that stack up with each lump of coal that’s burnt.
Let’s pull a few headline points from the report as an example – fossil fuels contribute to increased health problems due to polluted air, a wider gulf of inequality between the rich and poor, and military conflicts in areas rich in oil.
To highlight and explain the relationships between these problem areas and how they tie into the wider climate change debate, we spoke to experts from organisations including the NHS and World Wildlife Fund, who work to combat these issues every day.
Our report isn’t all doom and gloom though, as here at Good Energy we’re very much about providing a solution to the climate change problem (that’s why we spend all day talking about renewables!). As our CEO Juliet Davenport concludes:
“It’s about thinking across the board holistically and coming up with new thoughts about what we can really do as society going forwards.”
You can read the full report here.
