Slow burn? The long road to a zero-emissions UK
by Robin McKie, Observer science editor from on (#4DK3M)
Extinction Rebellion protesters want a carbon-free UK by 2025. But can the financial and political hurdles be overcome?
It is the near future. You wake in a house warmed by a heat pump that extracts energy from deep below the ground and delivers it to your home. (Your gas boiler was outlawed years ago.) You rise and make yourself a cup of tea - from water boiled on a hydrogen-burning kitchen stove. Then you head to work - in a robot-driven electric car directed by central control network to avoid traffic jams.
At midday, you pause for lunch: a sandwich made of meat grown in a laboratory. At the end of the day, you are taken home by a robot car - through countryside festooned with solar panels and turbines.
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