The world, the climate, the environment
Raptor Eye
Shipmate
I don’t get it, nothing seems to be joined up.
Seemingly we are going to spend money which would fill the black hole in our economy by ‘capturing carbon’ so that we can ‘reach net zero’.
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4301n3771o.
How is this going to help the climate in any way at all if there are bombs destroying whole areas of concrete every minute, and the greatest polluters are still spewing it out? Why doesn’t the export of arms count against ‘net zero’? There is only one Earth's atmosphere!
I get it that it would be a good thing for us to rely on our own energy supply rather than importing it, so why don’t we produce what we are importing: - steel, oil, gas etc for as long as we can rather than letting someone else pollute the atmosphere instead and saying how good we are because we don’t? Surely we are exacerbating the situation rather than improving it by adding the journey miles?
Why are we not manufacturing wind turbines ourselves, and why are they not able to be recycled? Isn’t the current system non-environment friendly?
Similarly with solar panels?
How does ‘trading carbon’ make any difference at all to the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere?
And why are electric vehicles supposedly better for the environment than petrol or diesel, when compulsory catalytic converters have reduced the pollution of the latter to next to nothing while electricity is still producing it?
I know we have some very knowledgable people here - please reassure me that we are not simply burning money and that some of this does actually make sense!
Seemingly we are going to spend money which would fill the black hole in our economy by ‘capturing carbon’ so that we can ‘reach net zero’.
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4301n3771o.
How is this going to help the climate in any way at all if there are bombs destroying whole areas of concrete every minute, and the greatest polluters are still spewing it out? Why doesn’t the export of arms count against ‘net zero’? There is only one Earth's atmosphere!
I get it that it would be a good thing for us to rely on our own energy supply rather than importing it, so why don’t we produce what we are importing: - steel, oil, gas etc for as long as we can rather than letting someone else pollute the atmosphere instead and saying how good we are because we don’t? Surely we are exacerbating the situation rather than improving it by adding the journey miles?
Why are we not manufacturing wind turbines ourselves, and why are they not able to be recycled? Isn’t the current system non-environment friendly?
Similarly with solar panels?
How does ‘trading carbon’ make any difference at all to the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere?
And why are electric vehicles supposedly better for the environment than petrol or diesel, when compulsory catalytic converters have reduced the pollution of the latter to next to nothing while electricity is still producing it?
I know we have some very knowledgable people here - please reassure me that we are not simply burning money and that some of this does actually make sense!
Comments
I work part time for a company that transports individuals to medical appointments. We got two electric vans this year and will likely get more in the years to come. One big need in our area is an intercity bus service that will aid in commuting between three towns. My company is in the process of applying for a grant to cover that starting sometime next year.
We have had several wind farms set up in the area, but those projects are not without resistance. There is one that is being planned just to the north of town, but the locals are concerned it will be an eyesore.
As far as recycling turbine blades go, that technology is still being developed. Here are a few projects that may be helpful.
The alleged Black Hole in the economy is £22bn a year.
Proposed spending on the Carbon Capture Scheme is £22bn over 25 years. The concept is that this money encourages much more private investment. I think during the General Election the total figure suggested to get to Net Zero was £150bn (over 25 years)
What is? Please unpack a little!
Over on the Railway thread in Heaven, we've mentioned a new locomotive (due to enter service in the UK next year) which is designed to haul heavy freight trains. It is a hybrid - it can run on electricity, or on diesel, and (so the promotional material says) sustainable fuels, though I'm not sure exactly what they are.
Surely this is a Good Thing? OK, the locomotives will need feeding with fuel of some sort or another, but they will reduce the amount of lorries on the roads, and the amount of carbon emissions from those lorries.
Yes, I suppose it all seems a bit piecemeal, but efforts (however small) to reduce emissions must be worthwhile in the long term (if there is one...).
Because we're not very good at investing in industry. Going back over a number of years.
Electric cars are better for the environment because electricity can be produced from renewable resources without CO2 emissions. Catalytic converters remove toxic chemicals but they do nothing about CO2 emissions. In fact, they reduce the car's efficiency so that about 10% more CO2 is produced compared to cars without catalytic converters.
Ah I see, thank you.
Is there any real possibility of sufficient electricity being produced 100% from renewable resources - even if everyone was driving electric vehicles?
What about the carbon emissions involved in producing the turbines and panels, and transporting them?
That’s a massive shift in 14 years - and frankly has somewhat increased my respect for the Con-Dem and following administrations.
There is a school of thought that everyone hates the 2010-24 regime so much that they simply don’t see that they did do some good things.
I also slightly upped my opinions of the Lib Dems, after we saw the unrestrained version of the Cons.
Sustainable fuels are generated from waste, typically plastics. You have to put a fair bit of energy in to rearrange the molecules, and it needs carbon capture - which again is energy. In itself unlikely to be a game changer.
For example. The British government has just decided to fund carbon capture projects. Tens of billions of £. As far as I can tell, none of these ideas have ever worked.
At the same time we are told that incinerating plastic is a good thing.
But surely the one thing we know about lots of types of plastic is that they do not degrade for thousands of years. And they are a fossil fuel in solid form. So if we wanted to prevent the greenhouse gases from plastics being released into the environment, wouldn't we store them in a protected place rather than burning them?
I don't know how much these carbon capture schemes are supposed to capture, but it wouldn't be a surprise to me to learn that it is of a similar scale to these kinds of emissions. Burning something in order to later capture it again. That's madness.
Thank you!
Yes, particularly as wind generation surplus peaks overnight, when most electric vehicles will be charging.
These exist and should not be forgotten, but are tiny (think 5-10%) of that involved in generating electricity from burning gas. They're not perfect but they are much, much better.
It would, of course, be far better to extract all our resources with the least impact on the local environment and people, and as close to the point of use as possible (as raw materials aren't always evenly distributed there may well not be suitable materials within any given nation so there may need to be some transport of these). And, to make goods close to point of use, so as to reduce transport costs to a minimum. But, to do that would almost certainly increase costs and cut into profits. And, someone has decreed that maximising profits is sacrosanct, and don't let the health of the environment, people or the rights of workers get in the way of that holy duty to make a killing and screw over everyone and everything.
See above re: manufacturing. But also, when these products were being developed in the 1970s and 80s most governments weren't interested in investing in their development. There were some exceptions, the Danes did well at making sure Danish businesses were at the forefront of wind turbine deployment (but, even then often with turbine construction out-sourced) and the Chinese were particularly prescient in cornering the market for many of the rare earth metals needed for PV panels and other components of our high-tech life.
Wind turbines can't be directly recycled, after 25-30 years they're quite literally worn out, and also newer turbines are more powerful and efficient (and, often won't even fit on the same tower - though sometimes can, it needs the same length of blades). But, like all electronic equipment they can be dismantled and raw materials recovered for use in new devices. The big plastic blades are just fibreglass and plastic, and that can be recycled into other uses (I've seen various seats and other stuff made from them). The question isn't "Why aren't they recyclable?" but "why aren't they recycled?" - which is the same question as many of our plastic bottles that get tossed into landfill or incinerator.
Very little, it's mostly a con along with offsetting (which is a form of carbon trading). A way to let people think they can continue polluting rather than change their ways. If it works then someone else pays the cost and there's no net increase in atmospheric CO2, but it rarely works as advertised - a tree will absorb a few tonnes of CO2 but that's over a lifetime of decades when the damage is done over a very much shorter time. I'm all for supporting people to adopt less damaging practices, but ideally not as a sop to greenwashing polluting practices.
Even if the electricity is produced from fossil fuels, an EV will have a smaller carbon footprint per km than petrol or diesel (including hybrids which are only marginally better), because burning petrol or diesel in a small engine is very inefficient compared to burning fossil fuels in a power station. The more renewables in the electricity supply the lower that carbon footprint is. First generation EVs have a higher carbon footprint from manufacture, mostly relating to mining and refining the lithium in the battery, but the lifetime carbon footprint is very much lower, for fully renewable electric charging the break even point is somewhere around 20,000km (exact point depends on EV model). EVs that will be produced in 10-20y onwards will have a much smaller production carbon footprint by recycling the batteries in the EVs currently being driven and produced.
Though, ideally we need to not just replace existing ICE with EV but look at how we travel completely - much more use of public transport, walking and bikes, and goods deliveries off the roads (onto rail, but more importantly more local production so we're not moving stuff half way around the world). The infrastructure needed to maintain the current number of cars and trucks, regardless of how they're powered, has substantial environmental and other costs.
Unfortunately, much of what governments and big business propose as "environmental policy" is little more than moving tax payers money into the pockets of business for little gain and makes no sense. Carbon capture and storage is a massive con and a total waste of money. Hydrogen as an alternative to diesel for transport or gas for heating is another waste of money (there are a few applications where electric isn't an option, but other than that there's no substantial role for hydrogen in our energy mix). Big business isn't interested in small communities installing a wind turbine or small hydro scheme to supply their needs, or local community car share schemes to take cars off the road.
And, most governments are still thinking they're doing good by tinkering around with the low hanging fruit of cutting carbon emissions, which includes electricity generation (there's no reason why existing renewable technology, possibly supplemented by technology like tidal turbines currently in demonstration schemes, can't supply all our electricity, it just takes the political will to install it). There's virtually no action by any government on the harder issues like carbon emissions from agriculture, land use which relates to ownership, marine protection (which shouldn't be difficult, but would require a change in fishing practice) etc.
This is indeed a problem. Take hydrogen.
Gas companies have networks of gas pipes that they have been spending a lot of money on recently upgrading. They have a financial interest in keeping them in use. Hence, their enthusiasm for the hydrogen economy where methane (natural gas) use is replaced by hydrogen.
There are many ways of producing the hydrogen and these are given colours to differentiate them: green, pink, blue, etc.
With green hydrogen, electrical energy that is generated by renewable means is used in electrolysers to split the hydrogen and oxygen in water. The drawback with this is the amount of water that is required. And water is already a scare resource.
Pink hydrogen is similar, except that the energy comes from nuclear reactors. In addition to the water issue, there is also nuclear waste to consider. Guess what? Westinghouse and Rolls-Royce see this as a way of continuing to produce nuclear reactors.
Blue hydrogen uses hydrocarbons as a feedstock and puts energy in to split off the hydrogen molecules. This generates CO2 which has to be captured and sent off for long term storage. This method is favoured by oil companies because it preserves the value of their hydrocarbon reserves. This is a really terrible idea with almost no environmental justification.
There may just be a limited use for hydrogen as a means of transporting energy from areas where production of energy is high, but demand is low. To do this, it's proposed to transform the hydrogen (H2 molecules) to ammonia (NH3) because its physical properties make the transportation easier, cheaper and safer. There are other schemes in development such as an undersea cable from Morocco (excess solar power) to the UK (excess demand) which would effectively undermine the hydrogen economy. However, undersea cables are vulnerable to attack from enemies, so there are security concerns about such things.
What to do then?
As @Alan Cresswell said build more renewable electricity generation, improve public transport and sort out agriculture.
but also
insulate homes properly to reduce energy usage (the last Conservative government eviscerated the building standards so that we are still constructing houses which are energy inefficient)
and eat less meat.
They may indeed like to pretend that can happen right until they claim a subsidy to upgrade their gas network. The reality is that legacy networks are generally unsuitable for transporting hydrogen as hydrogen molecules are much smaller than natural gas and therefore leak very easily. As a bonus they also have interesting effects on steel and steel alloys (causing them to become brittle).
But, full scale switch from natural gas to hydrogen requires more than just upgrading the pipes that transport the gas, it also requires a complete replacement of consumer equipment because hydrogen and natural gas burn differently (including hydrogen flames being invisible, which is a safety issue in it's own right). Imagine the work required to replace every gas fired boiler, gas oven and hob as well as replacing all the pipe work ... it's been hard enough getting people to switch to LED light bulbs. Personally, I just don't see that happening beyond a few demonstration schemes (eg: new build estate powered entirely by hydrogen rather than natural gas, where the heating and cooking equipment is pre-installed). What is much more likely to happen is you can mix hydrogen with natural gas, upto about 10%, and it will work on existing equipment.
Ultimately, we need to be building without a connection to mains gas at all. With proper insulation you don't need to heat homes or offices, and hence no central heating, so the remaining energy demands can be all electric without difficulty (hot water by small heat pump, electric oven and hobs).
Take EVs as an example. You will see memes and videos and statements saying that they're actually worse for the environment than petrol cars.
This is a classic lie which twists a small truth to sneak the nonsense through.
The argument is that when you include manufacturing and disposal, EVs create more CO2 than petrol cars.
It's not true.
It is true that the carbon cost of manufacturing an electric car is higher than a petrol one but not by much.
The best data I've seen says that once the Electric car goes over 8000 miles, the carbon footprint is less than the petrol equivalent.
I am concerned about heavy metals and battery production but that's a slightly different point.
Renewable fuels are another interesting one. In principle, petrol can be made from plants. This is carbon neutral as the CO2 is captured by the plants as they grow and then released by burning the fuel.* Fully synthetic fuels capture CO2 from the atmosphere and take hydrogen from water. Whether they actually are neutral or not depends on the energy use (and therefore how that is produced) in the production of the fuel. The other issue - globally - is growing crops for liquid fuel means not growing as much food. Although a lot of the biofuels are made from waste products, particularly biodiesel. Biodiesel from cooking oil is fairly well established.
Renewable liquid fuels are probably important. Not for quantity - they will always be a small part of the mix but for applications where liquid fuels are needed.
https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles/rafs-eco-friendly-fuel-takes-next-landmark-step/
I have personally flown this aircraft as it belongs to the club where I fly a flexwing microlight. Having spoken to the team involved, the fuel performance was excellent so if it was produced in sufficient quantities, it could fuel aircraft sustainably. How scalable the production is and how expensive it will be is the open question.
AFZ
*The whole problem with fossil fuels is time. Fossil fuels contain carbon that was removed from the atmosphere over millions of years. With the industrial revolution, we as a species, have put millions of years carbon back into the atmosphere in about 250 years.
I don't think we are building to that standard currently - or in terms of much existing housing stock. I also think there is a tendency to build as if we don't think the climate is changing - its lovely to be warm in the winter - but what I am supposed to do when my house is hitting 32% degrees and I can't cool it down in the summer (yes that's with the curtains closed and the windows shut.) I live in a mid terrace span house built in the sixties.
I've been advised that installing a heat pump is not possible without changing the entire heating system which - like many people - I can't afford.
Which isn't to say that they're worse than combustion cars, particular unnecessarily huge tanks. But simply replacing petrol for electric has meant that we haven't innovated in technology for things like tyres.
Again, I think it's about a lack of imagination and corporate interests limiting innovation.
It's a good point but it's not all bad.
I work at Birmingham Children's Hospital in the centre of the city. There is a clean air zone in Brum. It discourages the more polluting vehicles from the centre. I get the train to work when I'm not on call anyway. Which I think is ideal for me.*
But what about families coming to the children's hospital with cars that are subject to the charge?
Well, they get a blanket exemption. It's not a perfect scheme, I'll grant you but I like the idea that the need absolves the charge.
AFZ
*As it happens, my cars are clean enough to be exempt but that's beside the point here.
And as we totter in that vague direction, how do we manage the transition? What fuel will trucks, long distance coaches, run on? We'll need an order of magnitude more green electricity for our Shangri-La. How? When? If we don't rebuild England. Which must be cheaper than retrofitting, but off the economically feasible scale for centuries.
In the short term, there should be a needs assessment on licences for private jets / helicopters - they are hugely polluting and rarely justified.
To appropriately restrict private vehicles we need to improve and reinforce the public transport infrastructure, especially in rural areas. Otherwise we will end up with a lot of adverse unintended consequences.
I am not saying I’m some God’s gift to profession and therefore special - just that skill shortages may leave organisations having to recruit from distance and not doing that has other implications.
Who said anything about restrictions?
I said we need to drive less. I didn't say we had to bring in restrictions.
Oh I agree, but there are carrots as well as sticks (ie restrictions).
Making walking/cycling/public transport half as convenient as driving currently is would be a start. People go for what's convenient.
Right, and the particulate issue is both real but also pushed for factional reasons by the fossil fuel industry.
Yes, pound for pound an electric car will be heavier generally than an equivalent petrol/diesel vehicle, but the background is one where the car industry itself is selling larger and larger cars (the SUVisation of everything with only a few manufacturers left selling traditional saloons and hatchbacks) because they represent higher margin.
The reality is that a large majority of people could probably manage with a smaller car than they have, at least for a big proportion of the week (and we haven't even talked the balance of private vs public transport).
This is a key point.
There's so much around the environmental debate where facts get lost among honest differences of opinions, where experts who have carefully studied the evidence come to different conclusions. There is the much bigger problem of very well funded organisations pushing agendas and using partial facts to obscure the truth. (As I referenced above).
AFZ
All agreed. I think it doesn't help that the media regurgitate untrue statements about environmental problems because it makes a better narrative. For example the microplastic issues is often confused in the media with the "great pacific garbage patch" and illustrated with images of rubbish strewn beaches.
The thing is that these are all different issues. Coastal landfilling of plastic is certainly an issue, but it isn't the main source of microplastics which have been found almost everywhere. And the Pacific garbage patch is a) mostly waste from the fishing industry and b) arguably a "good" thing as some biologists say that it acts as a habitat for many sea species.
The microplastics are probably not caused by individuals littering. It's probably not caused by poor landfill practices, so why are these things being merged together?
Again I think this is about corporations and misdirection. It's easy for them to play consumers off each other, to get people fighting about flights and plastic bottles than to actually do anything which would make a substantive difference.
The fact is that there isn't much individuals can do.* Even if everyone did what the most "switched on" person was doing, it wouldn't be enough.
It's the corporations who caused this problem, and it is only regulation of corporations that will solve it.
* Which is absolutely not to say that these things shouldn't be done by individuals. Sometimes things are worth doing for other reasons than the actual difference it will make.
Given the current state of the technology, though, my wife and I will probably go to a hybrid plug in model. We still need to drive long distances in our part of the country. I have had hybrids in the past. I will go that way again===within the next couple of years.
This past year we did replace our gas stove top to an electric induction top. The gas stove top had become unrepairable. Within then next few years our gas water heater will go out and we will replace it with electric. Likewise, our gas clothes dryer will be replaced by an electric one. So, in fifteen years we will become more sustainable.
EVs are superbly suited to local driving, regular commuting, trips to shops and the like. But, where public charging infrastructure is poor they're not as convenient for longer journeys (where you may not know where chargers are, and where there may be few). In the UK the public charging network is adequate, and EVs work for longer journeys (those who prefer may wish to buy a newer model capable of ultra-rapid charging, but IME rapid charging with 45-60min stops to fully charge is only a problem at extremely busy times, and that just needs a bit of forward planning). I hear the network in other nations is not as well developed. Hybrid cars are barely more efficient than ICEs, plug-in hybrids tend to have limited range and most don't even have rapid charging capability (a colleague was lent a plug-in hybrid while insurance dealt with repairs to her car, and the battery range was barely 100 miles, not that she could use that as the hire company didn't include the "unnecessary cable", as the company described it, and she was filling up a couple of times a week because the petrol tank was so small). Other alternatives include an EV for local use, and hiring an ICE for the occasional longer trip (of course, depends on frequency of 200mile+ journeys) or joining a local community car share scheme, or if a two+ car household have one of those ICE/plug-in hybrid specifically for longer trips and use EV for most frequent local use. Ideally, local transport is good enough that you can take a bus, ride a bike or walk for most trips and you don't drive very much at all (in which case, community car shares become very attractive - having access to a car when needed, but not having a car sitting at home for weeks at a time because it's not needed daily).
https://www.theccc.org.uk
Catalytic converters do nothing about the CO2 produced. The purpose of the catalytic converter is to reduce/eliminate carbon monoxide, nitric oxide, and unburned hydrocarbons.
Even with a catalytic converter, car exhaust fumes aren't exactly pleasant.
You're right that an EV by itself doesn't make much difference to carbon dioxide production if your electricity all comes from burning fossil fuels, but:
1. There's actually a small win, even though you have electricity transmission losses, because power stations are quite a lot more efficient than car engines.
2. The more you switch your electricity generation to renewable sources, the more you gain.
"Not as convenient" includes quite a lot of "takes a lot longer", which is a problem for EV adoption.
Like most people, most of my journeys are relatively short. I could commute, shop, and drive kids around in an EV, charge it at home, and never have to think about it. It works great for that.
But there are several journeys I take on a fairly regular basis that involve driving 2 hours or so on a highway, spending all day doing some activity, and then driving home again. If the place I'm going doesn't have charging (and none of them do), then from the point of view of the car, that's a four hour drive, except that I don't want to stop for the bathroom / a coffee / whatever.
And at that point, it makes a big difference what kind of EV I get. I can get a long range, fast charging EV (one of the long-range Teslas, perhaps), and I can do most of those journeys either without charging, or with just a 10 minute top-up. Or I can buy a less expensive car, and suddenly my journey is half an hour or an hour longer, because the battery is smaller and the charging is slower.
That doesn't happen for petrol cars: you can buy a small efficient city car, or a massive urban tank, and they'll take the same time to complete whatever journeys you want to complete.
Using even electricity from burning coal to charge an EV produces less CO2 than burning petrol to run an equivalent car. ICEs are horribly inefficient.
Exactly, economies of scale mean that big power plants are more efficient than millions of small combustion powered engines. Even allowing for losses from distribution of electricity, it is still a more efficient way to use fossil fuels.
But more importantly, EVs don’t care where there electricity comes from. So even if currently it is all from fossil fuels, in the future they can run on rebewable generated electricity.
And in many places, the electricity mix is rapidly moving away from fossil fuels.
That said, there are countries struggling with blackouts and a broken electricity grid. So increased EV use isn’t likely help much with that.
Those materials tend to come from unstable places around the world. It’s not inconceivable that these places might be sources of conflict in the future as the demand for the raw materials increases.