Lindsay Andrews's Letter

Dear My Future Self,

Postcard from 2030 (here are my hopes for the future in a currently changing and despairing world)

Well, who would have thought an invitation to our MP to our Eco Fair in 2022, could have such an impact!

Having lobbied him on the Local Electricity Bill, and copied in all the people I knew who felt the same way as me, our Government was bombarded with requests to allow local energy grids to power local communities! Result! All businesses with flat roofs now have solar cells to supply their own energy, and store excess in batteries. All these businesses are linked in a grid, so that people can share, and pay each other for their power if they can’t generate enough for their use.

We don’t own our own car any more! Every community has a communal car park area (all covered in solar cells to power the council buildings and the cars) and if you need one, you just call it up and send it back when you don’t need it any more – all driverless of course!

People are loving growing their own fruit and veg, and have taken over the old car parks, broken up the tarmac, replenished the soil, and the crops are amazing – it’s such fun growing your own food again, and working alongside other people – and you know that no chemicals have been used. We’re all so much fitter and healthier too! We eat mostly plant based food now, and there are some brilliant new super-foods from plantains and old variety of beans that went out of fashion, and because we live close to the sea, the edible seaweeds are delicious cooked with herbs from the garden!

Our house, like all other new ones for the past 6 years, have been built to Passivhaus standards – so brilliantly insulated that you hardly need any extra heat – it’s just a constant temperature summer and winter. When we do need heat, we use our ground source heat pump – don’t ask me how it works, but it’s amazing! All our other energy needs are provided by our Solar panels – and we’ve been using the new saltwater batteries to store our excess energy, as we were so worried about plundering the planet for lithium. We can also share and sell our power back to our own local grid.

Another innovation that we incorporated along with others, is our ridge tile wind turbines – why waste all those windy days? We save all the rainwater too – our bath/shower water goes straight into a tank, which we use to water the garden

All the older houses around us have been given grants to up their insulation, and their energy bills have halved.

I do still work in the office two days a week, but thanks to the latest technology, even when I work at home, I can connect with my work mates, and it’s just like we’re all in the room together.

I still live in the country, with no buses or trains, but because there are so few cars, it’s safe to use my electric bike to get around and hitch up to the cargo trailer if I have to carry anything heavy. Bike lanes, really are bike lanes now and take priority over the cars – even buses in the town have to give way to us!

I can’t give up my long haul flight to see our son in Australia, but they’re really improving on the hydrogen fuel now, so it’s not nearly so heavy on the carbon footprint! And we’re really enjoying travelling to our holiday destination by trains – we’ve even been on the sleeper overnight up to Scotland and across Europe although I prefer the views during the day time

All in all, we’re all so much happier and healthier now – coming together in our communities, spending more time outside, eating healthier foods – no air pollution and all our day to day costs are so much lower – Looking forward to the next decade with hope!