Electric cars help mitigate climate change if you recharge them with green electricity and keep the air in our cities clean and healthy.

Electric vehicles (EV) will play a key role in decarbonising our economy. It's by encouraging their use that we can turn our backs on fossil fuels and escalating CO2 emissions. The UK government is right in encouraging the switch to electric cars and offering EV grants, but this incentive should be introduced immediately and not in 2011. It is important that we prepare for drastic emission cuts, and this includes switching to EVs, gradually but in sufficient numbers and with momentum.

Critics of EVs say that they are only 30% efficient in using the power stored in the battery, and if this electricity is generated by a non-clean source such as coal-fired power stations, then the carbon footprint is comparable to a fossil fuel propelled vehicle. There is some truth in this argument, but if we don't switch to EVs, then our dependence on fossil fuels will continue and we will never deal with climate change. What we must do is demand utility companies to turn to renewables and clean electricity. The effort to generate electricty in a clean way and our switch to EV should go in parallel and we don't have to wait for one to happen to start doing the other. Governments are already investing massive sums of money in CSS (which is still an untested technology, but if all goes according to plan, CSS will be the "holy grail" of climate change mitigation). There is a long way to go but there are an increasing number of green electricity providers available, and you can choose to recharge your EV from one of these.

The additional argument is one of heath and our immediate environment. Many people living in our cities have forgotten how clean air can be, and they can only get a taste of this by going to the countryside. This is the extent of how accustomed we have become to live breathing toxic fumes on a daily basis, and our cities are immersed in soot, dust and traffic emissions. The impact of this translates in poorer health and reduced longevity. What is the price of this? No amount of EV grants is too expensive to make our cities healthier places to live in.

Brunella