Energy Kilometres

By 2035, all the pandemic babies will be teenagers. Residents will be driving electric cars everywhere. Not dirty energy supplied electric cars, but rather a variety of clean energy supplies, like high-pressured saline steam-supplied energy. Electric vehicles are really the only ones available anymore. Fueling our machines are waste products and other renewables. Last generation people who pine for the days of oil consumption are snarkily replied to with “OK, Oil Consumer”. There’s a whole meme genre with this.

Driverless cars have started to appear in a few places. Mostly with delivery trucks that need to take long commutes. Delivery lorries become driverless. Drones are now a regular experience, in both sight and sound. People now believe they can get what they need very quickly, due to drone deliveries. This has changed all aspects of life, especially for people out in the islands, like the Outer Hebrides. Orders now have 1-day deliveries from the mainland. This is groundbreaking for things like medication and staple foods, but also faster deliveries have opened the door to ordering things people didn’t previously think were possible. Perishable items that couldn’t take slower shippings before. People can now get pretty much all they want, with little to no delay. One of the new innovations to come from this are sensor-linked, secure “Drony Doors” to accept drops whether people are home or not.

A farmer in East Lothian, with a specialty crop and a short growing season, can now regularly deliver their perishables directly to customers in Glasgow on the same day. These same-day deliveries are called “Drone Drops”. Closing up work for the day, Finlay, a Glasgow resident, orders a kilo of the East Lothian farmer’s specialty vegetables, which gets dropped off just in time for dinner preparations. Finlay and his family sit down regularly for vegan meals together. Especially now since more people are working from home and spending more time together.