The government commitments coming through now mean huge changes indeed. I'm getting more optimistic about the practicalities of carbon neutral energy, but the social change isn't yet being faced up to.
For instance, wind and solar energy is getting cheaper every production cycle; excess generation will then be used to split water into hydrogen to be burned on still/cloudy days; high voltage DC grids able to transfer lossless power over long distances (from deserts to coasts, from windy to still places); remote locations can be self sufficient with decent energy storage technology.
Transport will adapt: current batteries are too rare earth reliant, but other storage tech (from seawater) will come through (although for cars, I wish people would wake up to the need for hot swap batteries rather than recharging: cars sitting around charging for 20 mins at a time en route is unsustainable: drive in, auto swap battetries, drive on, is the only way but needs lots of standardisation); rail will use leccy and hydrogen and will increasingly be about elective/leisure travel. Flying will be harder, and highlights some of the real difficulties, which will be social: flying will get expensive, & the preserve of the rich once more; fixing that will need ways of managing income inequality (like taxation) which is harder to generate change/acceptance in than technology. Its doable, but not palatable.
The ability for people to access low carbon living will also be key: e.g. working from home more and travelling less distance to flexible work spaces is fine if you have a suitable job. But for many jobs you need to be there and do that, and these jobs are going to be energy hungry; who will pay for that? Such jobs are often lower paid than more flexible ones. So the current model where workers pay for their travel won't be fair or supportable. Add to that automation of low skilled jobs and you have big income and life chances inequality getting magnified with each move towards energy sustainability: future shock.
In terms of environment, energy efficiency needs people to live in high density cities (apparently the whole world's population would fit in France if we all lived at the same density as Paris). But people are going to need to get out into nature and that raises a whole raft of issues over land ownership, greenspace planning, land distribution and use: should farmers be subsidised to produce food or to manage spaces where people go to let off steam? What does that do to biodiversity? (Arguably improves it alot: e.g. upland pasture for sheep and cattle that looks so lovely is actually a bit of a wildlife desert). There is some great cycling in the Yorkshire Dales: stony tracks amid miles of heather. But it's a managed, manicured landscape built on the economics of Grouse shooting and sheep grazing. If that landscape was given over to walking, cycling and bio diversity, it would be completely different (managed scrub and woodland with lots of tracks, less heather, more wildlife, drystone walls for aesthetics rather than sheep, fewer Grouse): we're going to have to face up to such choices.
Cycling will blossom, but pedalling will dwindle: the trend for people to strap their e bike to an e car and drive to a managed trail centre where they ride for a bit before driving home or to another hospitality venue will grow massivley (although hiring stuff is more sustainable than owning it and lugging it a round). But we'll need lots more of those places. And let's face it, that's not such a bad model: the alternative - people randomly encountering the countryside in large numbers - usually ends up in parking strife, lots of litter, and animals and other stuff getting broken.
