NOISE REDUCTION AND IMPROVED AIR QUALITY IN OUR CITY
Manningham Council had planned to develop and implement a green electric car program on Doncaster Hill to achieve 15% adoption of green electric vehicles – with the aim to have 1 in 3 households owning an electric car by 2025. It will be our most efficient way of reducing emissions while improving air quality and reducing traffic noise. But we are a long way from being prepared for the wave of electric cars that will soon arrive in Australia because we simply don’t have the infrastructure to support them.
More than one million electric vehicles were sold globally in 2017, mainly due to their cheap running costs and low impact on the environment. The greatest challenge, apart from creating the facilities, is to make them affordable. Currently there are 16 different electric vehicle models currently available for purchase in Australia and most of them are priced upwards of $60,000 — making them out of reach for the average driver.
Automobiles contribute about 30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Electricity production generates
the second largest share of greenhouse gas emissions, with Australia obtaining 84% of its power generation from the burning of fossil fuels, mostly coal and natural gas.
Producing the electricity to power electric vehicles will further generate emissions but those emissions levels are far lower than the pollution emitted by conventional vehicles, and could be even lower as the electric power sector itself cleans up its act over the next few decades by phasing out the use of fossil fuels. Electric cars don’t have exhaust systems and don’t need oil changes, maintenance costs are reduced. To maintain an electric car, just rotate your tires and keep properly inflated.
Though electric cars charged by coal-fired power stations may be cheaper to run — 30c a litre equivalent rather than $1.60 —they are more expensive to buy and will arguably result in only marginal benefit.
The manufacture of batteries have a heavy CO2 emissions footprint, which is decreasing. There are also significant waste and recycling issues to be resolved in the rush to a lithium-ion battery-powered world. This is insignificant compared to the CO2 emissions used in manufacture of petrol driven vehicles, which also have batteries, that spew dangerous gases that are undermining the health of city folk not to mention the noise from heavy traffic.
Health researchers say that long-term exposure to two common pollutants, nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter, from exhaust emissions are associated with dementia.
Other scientists have also linked air pollution and traffic noise to reduced brain matter and lower cognition, but this is the first study to investigate the connection between living near heavy traffic and the onset of major neurodegenerative diseases. The increase in population growth and urbanisation has placed many people close to heavy traffic, with widespread exposure to traffic noise, even a modest effect, can pose a large public health issues.
More research to understand this link is needed, particularly into the effects of different aspects of traffic, such as air pollutants and noise. Professor Michael Woodward, director of aged care research at Austin Health and a chief medical advisor to Alzheimer’s Australia, said dementia was already linked to lower socio-economic status, chronic stress and insomnia – factors that might be more common among people living near main roads.