Environmentalist award for Loreto College TY team

Aibhe Gillic, Katie Tyrrell and Jane Maxwell won in the Senior Energy Category TY Young Environmentalist Award with their project ‘Comparing Early Adopters vs Late Adopters of Electric Vehicles’.

The Loreto College students researched why certain people buy electric vehicles and others do not.

Pointing out that the adoption of EVs can help reduce pollution, they wanted to understand the reasons some people embraced the technology early on and others have been sitting on the fence.

In a statement to the Westmeath Examiner, the students said: “We found from our survey that only 5.6% of respondents drive an EV. From that 5.6%, 22% were early adopters (EA) and 78% were late adopters (LA).

“EAs were clearly interested in battery range at the time of their purchase, followed by lower levels of interest with running costs and purchase price.

“LAs appeared to have four areas of relatively similar interest levels, namely battery range, purchase price, running cost and time to recharge. One respondent called out reliability and reviews as key in their decision making.

“In summary, EAs appeared to have a different mind-set to LAs in their decision making, which probably meant they took more risks (needed less data) and made decisions faster.

In contrast, LAs needed more data (and time) to compare several features backed up by reviews before purchasing (i.e. were more risk averse).”

About the award

ECO-UNESCO’s Young Environmentalist Awards (YEA) is an all-Ireland programme that rewards and recognises young people aged between 10 and 18 years old who take environmental action.

TY Young Environmentalist students represented Loreto College at the event on May 8 at the National Convention Centre in Dublin. The team have a passion to care for the environment and are great ambassadors for their school, their families and communities.