Have an ecar and ebikes, solar panels on the roof to charge them.
I also Vote Green here in Australia to try and change things at the government policy level
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Ok, all personal efforts are good to take, but we will never emphasize enough that the energy transition is not and cannot work solely at individual or households level.
In our current world, we use oil to make fertilizer to grow food, we use extensive gas-powered machinery for everything in the fields and for cattles. Then we need gas-powered trucks to transport food to the supermarkets, themselves dependent on transportation of an army of low wages jobs: the ones who will struggle more with rising costs of transportations.
In winter, a lot of food is growed in greenhouses heated by burning gas.
Almost all of complex devices around us are heavily dependent on globlalization, so cheap transportation of goods thanks to oil.
Even after the war, damages on natural gas infra already made will have repercussions for years.
And even beyond that, we know that the conventional oil reserve worldwide is depleting, and non-conventional will get more and more expensive as the most accessible deposit will also deplete.
We urgently need ambitious public policies.
I agree, but that starts with the individual. If no one gives a shit, nothing changes. Give a shit, speak up, and others will feel more comfortable taking part alongside you.
Where I live the grid is 100% renewables and we have an EV, problem solved IG
I have an uh...single portable solar cell. So I guess my plan is to overheat my tablet for warmth during winter.
F
Already bike to commute, to groceries and to school to drop the kids but we have a decent infra.
When buying I sometimes choose organic products to cut on fertilizers, buy local products, and vote for people that encourage "green" policies as all others don't seems prone to look for alternatives.
Gonna build a nuclear powered windmill on top of my house. I have a little Thor action figure which I'll glue to it, so that's the Thorium part taken care of. And I need a fan blade from my desktop fan. Beyond that, I should be good to go!
Biking (e-bikes are great if you can afford one and greatly increase range and decrease effort in many environments)
Installing solar (I’m currently renting but my state is debating a new law which seems likely to pass modeled on the Utah law - and others which started in Europe - which allows small solar systems to be plugged directly into a home outlet to supplement energy needs with minimal cost)
Beyond the direct plug-in kind of solar. There's now solar generators. Basically a portable battery pack that accepts solar energy and has its own outlets, no change in laws needed.
Anker Solix is having a sale this weekend.
Absolutely. They do tend to be quite a bit more expensive per watt though. From my research you can get cheap panels and just plug them into a LiPo4 battery or even lead acid batteries as well. It’s just that batteries (even though they’ve gotten a lot cheaper) are still expensive enough to nearly double the cost of the system in many cases so the plug-in option with 400 watts of panels etc gives you the best bang for the buck for sure. But it’s not legal or possible in many US states (though that is changing fast)
I am stuck in Alabama-Stan. Our presumed next governor is a MAGAt. We bought an EV last year (used VW id4) to get my wife something to get the kids everywhere in. I have taken her old car (a 2006 VW Jetta TDI) and am using it as my commuter car for work, 60 miles a day. It has drastically lowered our footprint, as they replaced our primary family and commuter vehicle, my old Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. My wallet appreciates the lower costs of both cars to get around, CO2 per mile is substantially less, and even having our local utility company screwing us on rates, it’s still cheaper and greener.
If it makes you feel better, Pakistan's insanely corrupt utility companies run a scam tax for every kw you provide to the grid, so you only earn like 15% of the actual power's worth, and only after you pay an exorbitant fee to install a reversible meter.
So now everyone skips the meter and has started installing tons of batteries to completely bypass the grid lol. Like every house and even villages are wired for solar, but the crappy utility companies still do rolling blackouts to pretend there's a shortage of supply.
Even funnier, the batteries reach ROI in only 3 years, and they still fetch good money when you go to recycle them due to the precious metal value.
That sounds really similar to our setup. kWh rates for consumers are about 16.5 cents per kWh, but they’ll buy your excess at 3.94 cents per kWh. So 23.8% of what you pay them. Plus, the $5/kW fee for firm backup capacity I mentioned earlier.
The charlatans came out last summer and said we would start to have rolling blackouts if we didn’t all set our thermostats to 80 or 82 degrees (27.78 C), I can’t remember the exact amount, but the collective consensus was that if they’ll all set their thermostats in their boardrooms to 82, then we’d talk about it. You and I both know that wasn’t going to happen. They always talk about us having to be conservative on energy usage in the summers, but they don’t let us offset our loads with solar or anything else. And Alabama, as I’m fairly certain Pakistan probably does also, has an abundance of sunshine in the summer. And they’ve never curtailed my employer (a large manufacturing plant) or any of the local steel mills on energy consumption. And you can guarantee they won’t do the data centers either. It’s always you and I bearing the brunt of their poor decisions.
Six years of driving an EV
Haven’t thought about the cost of moving from A to B in 5 years, it’s a rounding error pretty much.
I've been getting rid of gasoline power tools, I have electric versions of all lawn and garden tools. I may trade a vehicle or two for an EV in the next few years.
Working from home more is my plan if it keeps getting worse.
I'm already practically speaking living free of fossil fuels -
- For transportation, I only really bike and take transit
- The heating in my apartment is district heating
- The electricity grid in Sweden is all but entirely free of fossil fuels
So there's not really that much more to be done.
You can always be an advocate and teacher about how you live, speak loudly and always share what you know to be true. There are many people who are completely ignorant to how successful and progressive Sweden's electricity is.
We've been leasing an EV for a few years and have saved quite a bit. Even better currently. The only problem I have with it is unsolicited opinions from others about how shit EVs are, like I haven't been driving petrol or diesel for 20 fucking years .
I like when others give their negative opinions about EVs, gives me something to laugh at.
It's like the Simpsons clip, 'brought to you by the oil companies of the US', where they intentionally rip on EVs. The number of idiots who miss the satire is staggering.
We have the answers. It's just getting the politicians all on board with it and shutting up the lobbyists for fossil fuels.
Hijacking this post to ask for some communities that focus on renewable energy & environment
Note to all, Harbor Freight sells solar panels. If they can make it profitable for them, I think telling yourself that it's just too expensive isn't exactly as valid anymore lol.
The panels are cheap. The interconnect isn’t too bad and the controller is another chunk, but it’s the install that keeps me from a cheap DIY. I really don’t want to mess up my roof.
No, I really don’t have plans this year, but
- This past year I replaced an air conditioner with heat pump in my addition. It is a great heat source for shoulder seasons, but gas is cheaper when it’s cold
- The year before I replaced gas range with induction
- The year before that I bought an EV and installed a level 2 charger
I fucking wish.
I live in the suburbs where if you need to get to the city(which you do, often) your only option is a highway with no sidewalk or bike lanes. Public Transit is a fucking joke that is also unreasonably priced.
I looked to buy an ev, but where I live EVs are still expensive and the second hand market is small, so I just couldn't find anything even near my price range.
At some point I decided that it is fucked up to have a 1000 kg piece of metal carrying a 70kg human ,as I drive alone 99% of the time. I decided to switch to a motorcycle for the environment and convenience. The motorcycle ev market is even less developed so literally nothing that I could find.
Honestly, the whole idea that we should all own cars is fucked up and unreasonable. Public transit + short range small vehicles(scooters, ebikes, etc) should be the default.
I was thinking to switch my hot water heater to run on biofuel. I've got quite a few annoying neighbours.
My electricity comes from hydro, wind, solar and nuclear. I do have a petrol engine car but luckily its a Peugeot so the engine is broken and I have no plans of fixing it. My city has excellent public transportation. I have a bicycle. Also my grocery shop is 2 minute walk away.
I'm pretty lucky.
I already have solar panels on the roof, but I’m waiting for plug-in panels to become legal and available. I have a lot of space in my west-facing backyard I can fill with panels. I’m also waiting for sub-30k EVs to become available in my area of the world.
Last I saw I think some lease-end used Ioniq 5s are ~25k with less than 30k miles
I did my part already. Solar panels, small battery storage and EV.
Even in my country there is not too much sun - 1kWp produces 1MWh per year, since end of Feb, it produces more electricity than my car consume
I guess I could build that gasifier that I downloaded plans for years ago.
My family rides bicycles.
I wish it made sense in my case:
- I'm too far north for solar to provide anywhere close to enough power for 5 months of the year, even if I have it overbuilt to x4 of what I need in the summer
- I'm in a low average wind speed area (less than 4 m/s) - making wind power about 3x more expensive than solar. Also local law effectively prevents me from settting it up (minimum distance from residential rule)
- no net metering available, net billing rules suck
- grid is at capacity, so getting new solar connected is problematic and even if you manage that it won't accept your output through most productive months of the year
- my car is a relatively new hybrid (but not a plug-in one) - I'm not replacing it until I run it into the ground
- tl;dr; my auto consumption will be low, grid won't accept extra power greatly extending the break even period
At least I'm using biomass for heating - wood or sunflower shell pellets.
Where do you live?
Ive already done most of the obvious things I can think of for my current living situation (I dont own a car for one thing, and I've quit using the gas kitchen appliances that came with my apartment in favor of an electric hotplate and toaster oven, which are big enough for my purpose, and Ive stopped eating meat, which isn't a direct reason to personally buy fossil fuels but given it's less efficient for the calories gained it'd use more fuel to make than plant's Id think).
The biggest use I have left is heat, that's gas in my current place, moving somewhere newer is probably out of my price range if I still want to be able to walk to work, and I cant exactly remodel a property I don't own to change the heating system. Ive looked into window unit heat pumps before, and they seemed too expensive for me to do easily at the time, but I suppose it has been a couple years so there's a chance cheaper ones have come to market.
I'd really love to try some of that balcony solar I've seen talked about recently, if weren't for the fact that I don't have a balcony to mount it on in the first place and that I've heard it poses some risk of overloading wiring, which given the age of my apartment I'm not sure I trust.
I'm a keep biking to work