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When China tries to tackle a problem, they often do it in the largest way possible. The latest example is the plan to build the biggest waste-to-energy plant on the planet. The incinerator, which is the most recent in the government’s efforts to curb environmental problems, will be a mile in circumference and eliminate 5,000 tons of trash daily. 

This enormous incinerator is the first of 300 plants that will be built in the next several years. Instead of being an off-limits industrial building, however, the sleek structure will have a visitors’ center that explains how burned trash is converted into energy. The rooftop of the building will be covered in solar panels to further increase the incinerator’s effectiveness.

The plant is planned for the enormous city of Shenzhen. If you’ve heard the name before, it’s probably because Shenzhen has become the tech manufacturing capital of the world. It’s where Apple, Samsung and most of the world’s biggest companies have many of their products assembled.

The city’s success has come at a price with regard to the environment, though. Shenzhen, located just north of Hong Kong, was the second-fastest growing city from 2000 to 2010 and is home to more than 12 million people. It’s also one of the densest cities when it comes to population.

Shenzhen is an extreme example of the problems that China’s fast economic growth bring. With populations and consumer consumption on the rise, a number of environmental-related quality-of-life issues have cropped up. In Beijing and elsewhere in China, vast manufacturing and an increase in automobile ownership has led to unhealthy smog that sometimes shuts down the city.

Overflowing landfills are also a big problem for China’s largest cities, especially since many of these landfills are unregulated and don’t follow environmental standards. Officials have cleared out some of these sub-standard landfills, but demand is so high that putting an end to the trash is a Sisyphean task. Waste-to-energy plants are seen as a solution to this problem, but they remain somewhat controversial.

A long-planned solution

However, people involved in the project insist that pollution generated will be less than what comes from the overfilled landfills.

"Burning waste naturally creates pollutants, mainly carbon dioxide — something in the region of one metric ton of CO2 per metric ton of waste," said Chris Hardie, an architect for the firm designing the plant. "This does not sound great for sure, but when you compare it to putting the waste to landfill, one metric ton of waste will ultimately produce somewhere in the region of 60 cubic meters of methane as it decomposes — and this has more than twice the negative effect on global warming."

The energy generated from trash incinerators is fairly negligible, as planners of the Shenzhen plant readily admit. The electricity generated is no doubt welcome, but incinerators are more about eliminating the waste in a fairly easy way that doesn’t require consumers to really change their habits. Think of them like a crash diet. They seem great for the short term, yet they’re not the best long-term solution for a healthy lifestyle. To really make a difference, habits need to be be completely changed.

A solution in the West

Across the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco is striving to be a “zero waste” city by 2020 and remove the need for landfills and trash incinerators outright. It’s an ambitious plan that has the backing of city and state officials. To reach this goal, a variety of legislation has been passed. Small plastic bottles are now banned. Hotels and restaurants are being targeted to generate less organic waste. Construction and real estate companies are also involved, as their debris and building materials have been an obstacle toward the goal.

What works in San Francisco might take a long time to work in a place like Shenzhen. San Francisco’s population is less than 10 percent of Shenzhen’s. The former is also much wealthier, despite Shenzhen having one of the highest GDPs in China.

Incinerators such as the one being planned in Shenzhen are something of a necessary evil at this point thanks to the city’s incredible growth. Incinerators are far from a perfect solution, but for the moment, they might be Shenzhen’s best option until the city is ready and able to change its consumption habits.

Image: Ground Level clouds strange weather Shenzhen China via photopin (license)

By Teresa Fogelberg

March 8, International Women’s Day, is a festive day in many parts of the world. In Africa and Asia, female employees get a day off. They receive flowers as a token of recognition for their role in the economy. Not so in Western Europe. In Amsterdam, where I am based, Women’s Day is either completely ignored by media and public opinion, or made slightly ridiculous. "Who needs a special day? We don’t need that: Our women have no problems. The era of feminism is so past century."

As an anthropologist I was trained by famous scholars like Margaret Mead, that the relationships between men and women form a universal societal and economic ordering principle. However diverse these gender relations are from society to society, they contain a fundamental element of asymmetry of power, to the disadvantage of girls and women, throughout history and in all societies, until today.

Thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt, who 70 years ago included discrimination on the basis of sex into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the world embarked upon a long journey to improve women’s lives and to fight global gender inequality. The first 25 years of my international career at the U.N. and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs were dedicated to that struggle.

During those years I learned three things.

1. There is progress but still heartbreaking disappointment

The modest improvements over the past decades, such as in life expectancy, level of education and reproductive health, have been outweighed by newly unveiled atrocities and abuses of women.

Today, there are 60 million more men than women in the world. Globally, women earn approximately 77 percent of what men earn, according to the International Labor Organization. Around a third of women worldwide experience physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lives. Intimate partner violence is the most common form of violence, in both developed and developing countries (PDF).

Harassment and sexual exploitation on the work floor are systemic. Many armed conflicts bring women in as part of the cause, and violence against women is often used as a weapon.

This should be No. 1 on the political agenda. It is not.

2. Women are incredibly strong and resilient

From all of them I learned that women do not only need a room of their own, as Virginia Woolf stated. They also need their own income and financial independence in order to invest in themselves and their children.

That’s what the women in Ghana, Mali and the Islamic Republic of Mauritania taught me. However poor they were, they would strive for some kind of income for themselves. And figures show that women in these circumstances invest 90 percent of their income into their families or communities.

3. Data serves as a liberator of women

I truly believe that the inclusion of specific goals for women and girls in the U.N. Millennium Development Goals and now in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as indicators, have helped. In the SDGs, there is a stand-alone goal on gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women (SDG 5), as well as gender targets embedded within the other SDGs.

Today we can find a wealth of data on the position of girls and women from sources like The World’s Women, Trends and Statistics, by U.N. Statistics. That’s my favorite as well as the annual World Bank data book as well as the Progress of the World’s Women by UN Women.

Another encouraging trend is corporate reporting. GRI Standards provide guidance for companies across the world to measure gender policy, performance and impact by the corporate sector with 16 indicators on gender woven throughout GRI’s G4 Guidelines. This includes a range of topics like (equal) pay, right to organize, anti-harassment, maternity and parental facilities, training, diversity of boards, and many others.

The result is more than 30,000 reports on GRI’s Sustainability Disclosure Database from over 90 countries with 53 percent of G4 reporters disclosing information on economic inclusion*.

But more reporting on gender equality is needed to close the gap so that organizations can understand their impacts and take action. This type of corporate reporting on gender is not only fast growing across the world, but it is also becoming mandatory. In 2014 the EU made it mandatory for some 6,000 large companies to report on human rights and gender, as well as gender diversity on the boards of companies. This information has the power to change the lives of women all around the world.

What will I do today? I can’t give my employees a day off. But I will bring flowers to my colleagues, whether male or female, to celebrate the special women in their lives and our shared goal of gender equality. Some might think this is old fashioned, but I feel that -- now more than ever -- we need to reconnect with the learnings of the past to find ways to break the deadlock for a more equitable future. Men and women around the world all have a role to play.

*The data included here is based on GRI’s Sustainability Disclosure Database as of 1 March 2016. The data available in the database is collected by GRI in collaboration with its data partners and captures all reports of which GRI is aware.

Image credit: Flickr/U.K. Department for International Development

Teresa Fogelberg is Deputy Chief Executive of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). 

How would you like the power company to pay you instead of a sending you a bill? That could be a reality if you lived in a so-called net-zero house that produces its own power while sipping energy like a miser.  The overall concept is that the residence uses no more energy than it creates.

The state-of-the-art, net-zero house that serves as an energy-conservation laboratory in Maryland has reportedly become so efficient that it quadrupled its energy surplus in its second full year of experimentation.

This is the latest in bragging rights from creators at the National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST. Instead of being inhabited by a living family, the model home is programmed to simulate the effect a family has via daily living, from how many times light switches are turned on and off to typical humidity levels.  The simulated family is allowed all of the modern comforts of a typical family, from comfortable indoor temperatures to technology-based entertainment.

The four-bedroom home has its own rooftop solar grid along with several smart-design features that help it meet LEED Platinum standards from the U.S. Green Building Council. The traditional-looking, two-story house has 2,700 square feet of living space.  In Maryland, that size house would typically incur an annual power bill of over $3,500. Instead, the photovoltaic panels atop the roof generate enough power for this home to run, plus a small surplus of power that could be returned to the central power grid. The project reported a surplus of 1,655 annual kilowatt-hours over the previous test year.  In a year's time, the rooftop PV system generated more than 13,700 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

While the solar rooftop may look like the most impressive feature of the net-zero home, it's not the primary means of making it a standard bearer. Senior research scientist A. Hunter Fanney explained: "If all the solar panels were taken off the [home], it would still use 60 percent less energy than homes currently built to code." In other words, energy efficiency itself is the main strength.

For second-year improvements, tweaks to the home's heating system greatly improved efficiency without sacrificing comfort, Fanney said. Another savings came from reducing the outdoor ventilation rate.

TriplePundit asked Fanney to explain how practical the model house would be for the typical family.  As for the ability to construct it, he told us the home could be replicated because the technology being used is off-the-shelf and readily available.  However, cost-effectiveness could be a challenge for many people, since the house includes features that put it at approximately $250 per square foot of living area. "Compared to an identical house that would meet the 2015 International Energy Conservation Code, it costs approximately $120,000 more."

This model home report comes as various industry standards are moving toward net-zero homes being more readily available on the market and this being the new construction standard by approximately 2030. Demonstration projects like this are showing what can be done with houses that need not depend on a power grid. However, current policies of many utilities and the communities they serve can often be prohibitive to homeowners.  For instance, the incentives for homeowners to create their own solar power in the state of Nevada was recently undermined by a policy change.

We asked LEED fellow, architect and author Eric Corey Freed to weigh-in on what this model home means for the green building industry.  He responded: "The key to solving the challenge of climate change lies in fixing our buildings and transforming all of them to be net-zero energy. Not only will this slash our carbon emissions, but will save building and homeowners billions in energy costs.

"The [Maryland test-house] shows us how the key to achieving net-zero is in building an efficient building (with a tiny base load) in the first place. My hope is this model will serve as a catalyst for the industry to develop new financial models and incentives for existing building owners to retrofit and upgrade their buildings."

We asked NIST's top scientist how the average homeowner can save energy even without a new home, and Fanney offered these tips, in order of cost-effectiveness:

1. Conservation -- sealing of cracks/openings to prevent unwanted air from leaking into or from the house, followed by increasing the amount of thermal insulation in the exterior walls/ceiling of the structure.


2. More efficient heating/cooling and water-heating equipment and appliances.


3. Addition of renewables in the form of photovoltaic panels or a solar hot-water system.

Image courtesy of the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Kiva, the microfinance nonprofit that connects individual lenders to entrepreneurs seeking loans in order to break of poverty, has largely been a success story since its launch in 2005. According to Kiva’s statistics, over $820 million in small loans from almost 1.4 million people have been distributed to borrowers in 84 countries — with a repayment rate of over 98 percent.

Kiva’s model is relatively simple. Visitors to its site can contribute as little as $25 for loans after vetting hundreds of potential borrowers. Kiva, meanwhile, coordinates with almost 300 various partners to vet those in need of loans. Lenders receive updates and can view those loans being paid incrementally to his or her Kiva account. At the end of the loan cycle, the lender will receive his or her money back, or can opt to let that amount be loaned to another borrower.

To mark this year’s International Women’s Day, Kiva recently set a goal to procure $1 million in total loans for women entrepreneurs. The campaign has been so successful that the total reached well over $1.3 million at press time. So, Kiva has extended the campaign to midnight tonight with a goal of $2 million.

For Kiva, the decision to focus on women is a simple one to make. According to the International Labor Office, at least 70 percent of the world’s poor are women. Yet because many of them make up what is often called the “informal economy,” they often lack access to financial services, including access to credit.

A quick summary of Kiva’s demographics show how this organization is trying to meet those demands in the world of social enterprise. Women are in search of loans on Kiva’s site by men by over a ratio of 2 to 1. And the vast majority of those seeking loans work within the food and agriculture sectors. The needs, however, run all over the map, from a woman in Lebanon seeking a loan to pay for her children’s education, to a collective in Paraguay that employs women who support their families through work on sewing projects.

Kiva’s track record of accomplishments is in part due to the fact that its business model is flexible and it has demonstrated a willingness to work with various partners around the world to introduce women to the world of finance.

The NGO partnered with Fair Trade USA to establish a micro-loan program for coffee farmers, which has allowed them to borrow funds for projects including farm maintenance, renovation or to purchase fertilizer. Kiva has also partnered with Intuit in order to fund small business loan opportunities here in the U.S. and abroad.

For those of us who are more fortunate and are interested in impact investing, but have no idea where to start, NGOs such as Kiva are a way to get those toes wet.

Image credit: Kiva

Boxed wines are on the come-up. Their convenience, lower cost and acceptable – if not award-winning – taste are making them a mainstream option throughout more of the U.S. So, leading marketers are trying to further distinguish their offerings with sustainable packaging that appeals to discriminating buyers.

The race is on for leading boxed-wine marketers to build market share, because it’s still a relatively wide open field: An estimated 6 out of every 10 wine consumers have yet to even try a premium boxed wine, said Mark Koppen, vice president of brands at Delicato Family Vineyards in Manteca, California, which sells Bota Box wines.

Bota Box and Black Box, of Madera, California, are among the leading and most creative marketers. Together, they control about 80 percent of the market, according to Koppen, and have survived intermittent industry shakeouts.

If you’ve never tried a boxed wine, it’s an education when you parse companies' claims on how truly sustainable they are. We’re talking about packages that are fully recyclable, require far less energy to manufacture and transport, and produce about half the carbon emissions of bottled wines. Much of these gains are on a volume basis when considering that typical 3-liter boxes contain the same amount of wine found in three traditionally-sized bottles.

If the wine is this good tasting, and that’s always a subjective call, what’s keeping this industry segment from growing? Part of the answer, from interviews with several avid wine drinkers, is the expectation that a good wine cannot come in a box.

Note how both Bota Box and Black Box say they sell “premium,” or even “super premium, appellation-specific, vintage-dated” wines. Black Box says it has 27 “Best Buys” from Wine Enthusiast and 50 “Gold Medals” from wine tasting competition.

Some relevant background: Wines in boxes actually come in a bag inside the box (BIB). They’ve been found somewhere in the world for almost 50 years. It was in 1967 when when Australian inventor Charles Malpas and Penfolds Wines patented a plastic, air-tight, tap and welded it to a metallized bladder, or bag, for storing wines in a box.

Only since the early 2000s have boxed wines made significant inroads in the U.S. In fact, the $19.99 price-point for a 3-liter box is a threshold many vintners apparently dare not go above.

But expectations about wines in a box may be shifting, especially among millennials.

In its marketing, Bota invites consumers to “take us along on their everyday life’s adventures” with the tagline, “Here’s to Your Next Adventure.” To grow its appeal and credibility of sustainability and other claims, Bota recruits photos of wherever consumers are enjoying its wines.

“We’re seeing the premium [boxed wine] segment grow four-to-five times the overall growth of the wine category,” Koppen said.

“The take-along and freshness aspects of the package appeal to a broad range of ages,” Koppen said. He asserted baby boomers are discovering that very good wine can stay fresh and come in a box. “Millennials are very open to new types of wine packaging, based on convenience, ease of opening and usage occasion.”

Consumers who buy boxed wines also buy premium bottled wines and “use the different packages based on the occasion,” Koppen added. Consumers “not only appreciate quality wine at a great price, but they live every day as an adventure and treat the earth with respect."

For wine drinkers who don’t want the equivalent of three bottles of wine, Bota is trying to appeal to 1.5-liter glass buyers with a Bota “Brick” box at that size.

What about BIB wines served in restaurants? Koppen said the focus is on offering BIB options as “house wines” both to meet a certain expectation and prevent spoilage which can be an issue with bottled wines. “On-premise business is small now, but we have seen growth the past three years,” Koppen said.

He was quick to outline the rest of the company’s sustainability value proposition:

• Bag-In-Box wines create 85 percent less landfill waste than traditional glass bottles.


• Boxes are printed on recycled paper containing 90 percent post-consumer fiber.


• Graphics are printed directly on Kraft paper which doesn’t need to be bleached as white paper does


• Paper layers are bonded together with cornstarch instead of glue.


• Bota’s 3L boxes result in a smaller carbon footprint compared to glass: 35 percent lighter on average and 44 percent smaller in size than a four-glass (750 ml) bottle.


• Bota’s Mini 500 ml “Tetra Paks” are made from wood fiber sourced from “responsibly managed forests” certified to the highest standards currently set by the Forest Stewardship Council.


• The wine bag is BPA-free; both it and the spout are Category 7 recyclables.

Image courtesy of the author

By Daphne Stanford

What does it mean to travel sustainably?  Beyond government and civic initiatives such as the Paris Agreement and tax rebates for green retrofitting, how can we, as individuals, give back to the planet while traveling — an activity that is reserved for the privileged, developed world? The “three pillars” of sustainability — environmental, economic and social — are commonly referenced when discussing sustainable travel.  So, that’s a start.

However, today’s climate crisis has necessitated a solution beyond the 1970s vision of sustainability that “involved things such as organic farming and solar panels on homes. That still might be how many people picture sustainability today.  But those solutions are no longer enough,” futurist Alex Steffen told Fast Company. 

Instead, Fast Co.Exist staffer Adele Peters suggests one solution may eventually involve the abandonment of the personal car model that we all adopted as a carryover of a 1950s American vision that is outdated and utopian in nature. Because if we all keep driving our own vehicles around, the environment may not have a chance to recover from the brink.

So, without further ado, here are three ideas on how to support sustainability through travel.

1. Demonstrate sustainable values and behave respectfully while traveling

As such, you should act as if you are a guest in somebody’s home: You should make an effort to observe their customs and traditions, and you should be respectful of local customs and taboos.  In order to accomplish this camouflage-effect, it will probably help to do some research on the specific location you plan to visit in order to more fully understand the ins and outs of the culture.  

Moreover, once you’re on the ground, make an effort to get out of your hotel or hostel room and get to know the neighborhood where you’re staying.  Don’t fall prey to the temptation of staying in and ordering room service.  Mingling with the locals will give you a chance to practice your language skills, and it also shows that you regard the people who live in that location as human beings and individuals, rather than anonymous subjects to be photographed and shared via social media.  Making an effort to ditch the guidebooks, at least for a day, will make for a more spontaneous and exciting adventure.  You may also make some new friends, in the process.

2. Seek out sustainable travel destinations and activities

It may be surprising to realize that your financial support can really make an impact in contributing to the economy and well-being of the people in certain regions who rely on income from tourism to support their livelihood.  Matador Network compiled a list of 10 ethical travel spots for 2016, and the Global Sustainable Tourism Council offers a a map of sustainable destinations that have made commitments to work toward implementing the GSTC Criteria for Destinations.

Some of the criteria include using only renewable resources for energy, holding high standards for local political and civil rights, protecting natural lands and classifying them as national parks, defending basic human rights, and working politically to fight climate change and animal extinction.  There are some truly impressive countries among these lists, including Uruguay, which is sourcing an amazing 90 percent of its energy from renewable sources, and Samoa, which plans to fully rely on renewable energy sources by next year.

3. Contribute to sustainable tourism by joining the industry

Of course, there are potential caveats to living in the tropics or abroad in Africa, Asia or Europe, including homesickness and potential health risks — which come standard with any travel to foreign countries.  However, if you’re up for an adventure, and you can handle being away from your family and friends for extended periods of time, it’s a career worthy of your consideration.  Realistically speaking, tourism is one of the only sources of income for many developing countries.  Because of this, we all have a responsibility to help ensure travel-related development is undertaken as responsibly and sustainably as possible.

To that end, there have been impressive developments in carbon-neutral lodging, from simple to resort-style, that make ecologically-responsible accommodations relatively easy to find in many tourist destinations — especially those located where there is an abundance of sun.  This last factor facilitates the use of solar energy, which explains the numerous countries in the Southern hemisphere with neutral carbon footprints.  The latter factor certainly makes sustainable tourism a not-at-all-unappealing industry to enter into, should you be in search of a career path.

The future of green technology is here now, so we should take advantage of the many opportunities it offers us by seeking out places where it is alive and well, being utilized to facilitate one of the only stable industries out there: the travel industry.  Because people aren’t going to cease needing to escape to a faraway land of beaches and tropical fruit trees, anytime soon — so we may as well help facilitate ways to help them escape, ethically!  What a pleasant way to save the planet, eh?

Image credit: Flickr/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Daphne Stanford ​writes poetry & nonfiction, and she believes in the power of ​art, education, and community ​radio to change the world.  S​ince 2012, she's​ been the host of​ “The Poetry Show!” Sundays at 5 p.m.​ on Radio Boise.  F​ollow​ her on Twitter @daphne_stanford.

To coincide with International Women’s Day, Primark is announcing a six-year extension of the Primark Sustainable Cotton Programme. The initiative is a partnership with CottonConnect and the Self-Employed Women’s Association, a joint effort to support women in the traditionally male-dominated farming communities in Gujarat, India.

Through the Programme, sustainable farming methods are introduced, improving cotton yields and increasing incomes. The initial three-year pilot effort trained 1,251 women smallholders, resulting in an average profit increase of 211%, due to a yield increase of 12.6%. Over the next six years, a projected 10,000 female farmers will be enrolled in the programme.

A number of studies have revealed that agricultural programmes which effectively involve women can significantly increase cotton production and trigger transformative societal benefits. Increased profits are usually used to improve household welfare and to invest in education for children.

The United Nations estimates that closing the gender gap in agriculture globally would generate significant gains for the agriculture sector and for society. If women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 per cent. A study by the Global Development Institute in 2013 found that with higher incomes, women are more likely than men to support household welfare and children’s education.

https://www.primark.com/en-us/our-ethics

www cottonconnect.org.

www.sewa.org

“With the extended entry deadline of March 18 just days away, the National CSR Awards (NCSRA) are heading for a record number of entries,” reports NCSRA CEO Karen Sutton. “The web site is recording over 300 site visits per day, and over 75 companies having registered their interest or already entered—a 200% increase on the inaugural Awards last year.”

From the 24 categories available, four categories are open to international entries: Overall Excellence, Sustainable Community, Conservation and Sustainable Transport. Interest is coming in from 80 countries.

NCSRA have recently signed up as a sponsor Nottingham University Business School (NUBS) which offers the UK’s first MBA qualification in CSR. NUBS, along with several other Supporting Partners including WWF, Ethical Performance, 3BL Media, ICRS and IBE, are helping to drive entries to specific categories in their area of expertise.

CEO of NCSRA Karen Sutton says, “We have just released the first draft agenda of the Sustainability Conference that will take place during the day (12 May) and our experienced speaker line up should ensure we secure a sell-out. Our venue, The Crystal in Docklands, is 100% sustainable, the most sustainable event space in the world, so when guests arrive, they can leave their carbon footprint at the door!”

Any organisation wishing to enter the Awards should register here or email apply@nationalCSRawards.co.uk for more information; the deadline for entries is 18 March. The Sustainability Conference is now open for bookings and tickets can be booked here.

The video from the 2015 Awards, put together by Media Partners Let Them Talk and local media students from Brooklands College, Weybridge, can be viewed at http://nationalcsrawards.co.uk/2015-event-media-2/.

Contact

Karen Sutton

+44 1932 35590

apply@nationalCSRawards.co.uk

About three and a half years ago, I attended an EV symposium hosted by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, in Palo Alto, California. It was a meeting-of-the-minds for leaders across the electric vehicle “ecosystem,” assembled to predict the future of EVs.

At the time -- September 2012 -- sales of the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf were practically the only real-world benchmarks to go on. The Tesla Model S was just released that quarter, while the luxury plug-in hybrid, the Fisker Karma, only briefly flaunted its athletic form and would ultimately prove to be a flop. The future of the EV was certainly not assured.

One notable prediction made at that symposium came from Schneider Electric. Company representative Mike Calise said of electric vehicles, “the game will be won or lost in the next nine years,” suggesting we wouldn't know how the EV market would play out until at least around 2020. As I write, we’re still only four or five years through this period.

But, in a report published by Bloomberg New Energy Finance on Feb. 25, Calise’s predicted time-frame appears to be about on track. And the indications are that EVs might indeed be winning the so-called game during the 2020s.

Specifically, the Bloomberg report predicts that the total-cost-of-ownership of electric vehicles compared with gasoline powered cars is set to change radically in the 2020s, with battery electric vehicles (BEVs) becoming cheaper on an un-subsidized basis than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by the middle of the decade. Furthermore, this price-competitiveness will lead to EVs comprising 35 percent of global new car sales by 2040, or around 41 million units in that year.

Now, some may consider this a bullish prediction. After all, gas is back down to around $1.30 a gallon in some parts of the country while crude is trading at around $34 a barrel, so who cares about electric vehicles at these prices?

Indeed, the Associated Press just wrote last week that the auto industry made healthy sales gains in February, with gas-guzzlers fairing ridiculously well. Year-on-year, sales of Cadillac’s $73,000 full-size Escalade SUV are up 22 percent, while sales of Lexus’s luxury LX SUV have doubled. With such cheap gas, no wonder we are seeing a myopic resumption in the popularity of these so-called “light-trucks.” Yet, who wants to bet oil prices will remain predictably low five years from now?

Not the authors of the Bloomberg New Energy Finance report, that's for sure. But even so, they don't suggest oil needs to get anywhere near its late 2000s peak of $147 per barrel for EVs to win the long-game on lower total cost of ownership.

In fact, the central forecast of the report is that EVs will achieve this status by the mid 2020s, with oil recovering to a modest $50 per barrel and then trending back up to $70 per barrel by 2040. This price forecast seems entirely reasonable, if not even a little conservative; the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects “the short-term energy outlook” price of crude will be back above $50 a barrel as soon as mid 2017.

But to a degree, the cost of oil is a minor element. The real key to EV price-competitiveness has to do with dramatic reductions in battery costs, as measured in dollars per kilowatt hour (kWh).

Bloomberg states that battery prices have already dropped 65 percent since 2010, reaching $350 per kWh last year. This is pretty impressive compared with some prior forecasts. For example, back in 2010, the Boston Consulting Group published a paper saying battery costs would fall by 65 percent between 2009 and 2020 -- or to put it another way, that 65 percent price reduction happened about five years sooner than the Boston Consulting Group predicted.

And significant price reductions will continue. Bloomberg expects EV battery prices will plunge to below $130 per kWh by 2030 and fall further still as new battery chemistries come in. This seems a reasonable prediction, too: A McKinsey study predicts batteries will achieve $200 per kWh by 2020.  But at $130 per kWh, Bloomberg says EVs will still have the cost advantage even if oil falls to $20 a barrel and stays there; such low-cost oil would only delay mass adoption of EVs until the early 2030s, Bloomberg's analysts predict.

Such battery cost improvements allow Bloomberg to assume cars fitted with 60 kWh batteries will be capable of going 200 miles between charges. This is probably an important performance benchmark to allay fears of the dreaded “range-anxiety.” In November 2013, I reported on a survey conducted by PlugInsights which polled over 3,000 EV drivers and revealed the mean desirable EV range to be 186 miles. With the Chevy Bolt going on sale as a 2017 model, and promising a 200-mile range at around $30,000, it’s not difficult to suppose this projection is also conservative.

So, if the the EV game were to be won or lost over a nine-year period, starting in 2011, as Schneider Electric predicted, even with the cheap gas that consumers are enjoying now, based on predictions in Bloomberg's report, it seems pretty likely that no one will kill the electric car again and instead, the internal combustion engine will have to look out.

Image courtesy of the author

TriplePundit is tracking the ongoing drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Follow our coverage here. 

By now, most have heard of the Michigan Emergency Manager law, Gov. Rick Snyder's use of it and the big part it played in the fiasco in Flint -- where a series of poor decisions, followed by negligence on the part of state and federal agencies, resulted in the poisoning of an entire town. (Review a full timeline here.)

But there were other conditions in Michigan years in the making that helped lead to the perfect storm that facilitated the Flint water crisis.