Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2021 9:28 am
It was BOAF that argued we should also worry about the hard case. I just thought that the hardness of it lay in a different place from him.bjn wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:32 pmMost people in the world aren’t in Poland. ... Stop worrying about the hard cases, there is plenty of low hanging fruit to be got at first.IvanV wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 8:49 pm... I thought you were going to talk about coal-dependent communities in the sense of Poland...Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 3:02 pmThey'll need to do something for coal-dependent communities, of course ... but there's no longer any technological or economic argument for not shutting down coal immediately.
You could reserve it for the next 5 mins, so all apps will show it as provisionally taken. That already happens with some hire bike companies in the netherlandsMartin Y wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 9:48 amSolving the charger problem by flooding the country with chargers will also solve unemployment by creating an army of people manufacturing, installing, regularly safety testing and repairing a hundred million chargers.
It does make me wonder about the economics of vastly widespread public charging points. Someone has to own and be responsible for the upkeep of each of these devices, getting used by any clumsy untrained idiot in any weather. At least petrol pumps have a responsible person in attendance on site, which these won't. Some will get used many times per day, presumably "subsidising" others which might only be used occasionally. I'm sure the tech exists to direct people not only to a charger but an available charger, but the problem may eventually shift to directing people to a charger which will dependably still be available by the time they get there. I'm sure clever people are years ahead thinking about this but it rather does my head in thinking what the bottlenecks will be.
I (internet random that I am) thoroughly expect to see that trend continue to decelerate and do so quite hard over the coming decade, just from the raw economics of it. Renewables and storage are going to get even cheaper, turning most existing and new coal generation into stranded assets.IvanV wrote: ↑Wed Aug 11, 2021 2:34 pmIt was BOAF that argued we should also worry about the hard case. I just thought that the hardness of it lay in a different place from him.
Yes, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit. The coal investment programs of China and India have very considerably slowed from what they were talking about only a short time ago. But the global trend for coal power is still expansion, not reduction. Poland is an extreme case. But cases like Britain which could quickly close quite a large coal sector isn't the normal case either.
Parts of China have though been facing electricity shortages.bjn wrote: ↑Wed Aug 11, 2021 10:35 pmI (internet random that I am) thoroughly expect to see that trend continue to decelerate and do so quite hard over the coming decade, just from the raw economics of it. Renewables and storage are going to get even cheaper, turning most existing and new coal generation into stranded assets.IvanV wrote: ↑Wed Aug 11, 2021 2:34 pmIt was BOAF that argued we should also worry about the hard case. I just thought that the hardness of it lay in a different place from him.
Yes, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit. The coal investment programs of China and India have very considerably slowed from what they were talking about only a short time ago. But the global trend for coal power is still expansion, not reduction. Poland is an extreme case. But cases like Britain which could quickly close quite a large coal sector isn't the normal case either.
China is a weird case, they are building coal plants that are completely unnecessary as their existing fleet runs at an average 50% capacity factor, or possibly even less since I last looked. In any sane country a huge chunk of their existing fleet would have been scrapped by now as uneconomic. That would also have been the most inefficient and therefore polluting parts of the fleet as well.
By the way, on the long motorway cruise from Italy to Slovakia, my 1998-model 2-seater convertible built in 2000 did better than 7l/100km, which is about 9 miles per litre. I didn't really check if there were charging points along my route which would have let me do the trip with a typical electric car, but long distance cruising is where electric vehicles are the least advantageous.IvanV wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 2:11 pmA typical consumption of an EV that replaces a typical car, (as opposed to "the average EV") is something like 3 miles per kWh. The equivalent modern fossil fuel car might do about 11 miles per litre, as they are a lot more efficient these days, unless you are buying some sporty version. So with petrol at about 135p/l, then electricity becomes more expensive than petrol at about about 37p/kWh for such a car. Maybe your chosen EV does 4 miles/kWh, but then the equivalent fossil fuel car might do 14 miles/litre, so similar figures there.
I've been doing my research today and I've concluded this is a key step. I want to recharge during a pub lunch, not waiting at a sh.t services for half an hour. Waiting at services has been putting me and my other half off. And I want to recharge at the B&B or campsite or hotel.bjn wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:32 pmWe had a week of in the cotswolds at an Airbnb. They had an electric car charger there. This is all going to happen. Especially as more BEVs appear, there will be a demand and BnBs will lose business if they don’t have chargers. There will be the odd kerfuffle as we transition, but nothing to pearl clutch about.lpm wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:53 pmOne forgotten factor for long journeys is you need to be able to recharge at your destination, not just en route.
If you arrive at your B&B for a long weekend in Snowdonia with 20% left, you can't just plug into your host's fast charger because they won't have one. You'll have to find an ultra-fast charger somewhere else before you can go on scenic drives.
Ars Technica wrote:In the new study, Robert Howarth and Mark Jacobson, the paper’s authors and two well-known climate scientists, assume a leakage rate of 3.5 percent of consumption. They arrived at that number by scouring 21 studies that surveyed the emissions of gas fields, pipelines, and storage facilities using satellites or airplanes. To see how their 3.5 percent rate affected the results, Howarth and Jacobson also ran their models assuming 1.54 percent, 2.54 percent, and 4.3 percent leakage. Those rates are based on EPA estimates at the low end and, at the high end, stable carbon isotope analysis that isolated emissions from shale gas production.
No matter which leakage rate they used, blue hydrogen production created more greenhouse gas equivalents than simply burning natural gas. And at the 3.5 percent leakage rate, blue hydrogen was worse for the climate than burning coal.
95% of people might be low mileage drivers, but that leaves 5% of people who are high mileage drivers and these "old-fashioned Ford Mondeo salesmen doing hundreds of pointless miles a day" may cover closer to 50% of the total vehicle miles than you think.lpm wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 4:28 pmRange anxiety is a dud IMO, invented by journalists with a view towards old-fashioned Ford Mondeo salesmen doing hundreds of pointless miles a day. 95% of people do long distances only a handful of times a year, for holidays and ferrying kids to/from university and visiting family a hundred miles away. I'm getting more into the efficiency detail instead - using Ivan's miles/kWh stats from his website link. Sounds as if winter driving can be a significant bit worse for efficiency than published figures. But Tesla and the Koreans (Hyundai and Kia which are actually the same company with the same batteries/engine) are noticeably the winners on efficiency.
This is in addition to the $1trillion infrastructure bill that's going to build a bunch of public transport infrastructure (inter alia).The climate measures are part of the Democratic $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, which is not legislation but would unlock a process, called budget reconciliation, that would allow Democrats to pass bills with a simple majority in the Senate. Republicans cannot filibuster the reconciliation legislation.
The centerpiece component of the climate part of the plan calls for the Senate Energy Committee to create a “clean electricity payment” program that would essentially pay utilities to generate a growing percentage of power from carbon-free sources. It would require the electric utility sector as a whole to generate 80% of its power from clean energy sources by 2030. That would keep pace with Biden’s goal, submitted as part of the Paris Climate Agreement, to cut U.S. emissions across the economy by 50% by the end of the decade.
Party leaders included other climate policies as part of the agreement that they are counting on to meet Biden’s goals, including clean energy tax credits and funding to create a Civilian Climate Corps, modeled off a New Deal-era program, to put people to work weatherizing homes, restoring coastlines, managing forests, and other climate-related projects.
Other measures would provide consumers rebates for electrifying homes, electrify the federal vehicle fleet, and impose fees on carbon-intensive products imported from abroad.
I saw something the other day which suggested that half of new cars sold in Switzerland at the moment were SUVs.nezumi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 10:10 amI'd like to see more regulation of the type of vehicle people are able to buy before EVs become the only thing you can have. Too many Chelsea tractors nobbing about. Do these youngish women own a farm? No? No landrover for you Mrs. I do hope banning internal combustionn engines will lead to more people driving sensible vehicles!
If you want an AWD car (and there's good reasons for having one in much of Switzerland) with some luggage capacity, there's a couple of VWs, Audis, Volvos and Mercs etc. estates at the expensive end of the market, or SUVs.shpalman wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 10:30 amI saw something the other day which suggested that half of new cars sold in Switzerland at the moment were SUVs.nezumi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 10:10 amI'd like to see more regulation of the type of vehicle people are able to buy before EVs become the only thing you can have. Too many Chelsea tractors nobbing about. Do these youngish women own a farm? No? No landrover for you Mrs. I do hope banning internal combustionn engines will lead to more people driving sensible vehicles!
Austria (a major investor in the Nord Stream 2) warns of "overambitious climate targets" which could result in "countries investing in nuclear energy"
Meanwhile, Austria will be dependent on those countries because it lacks sufficient power production to meet climate goals.
Quoting this here on this thread, as it's more about tech than legal/judicial instruments, and others here know more than me.IvanV wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 2:41 pmWhat everbody doesn't always get is the inadequacy of batteries/storage to solve this issue, even in combination with a mix of low carbon generation technologies. The scale of the issue is beyond us.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 2:17 amYes yes, obviously batteries/storage (and a mix of generation technologies) are necessary, not just a solar panel plugged directly into the telly. Everybody knows this already.
The largest storage device (rated total capacity in MWh, ie quantity of energy stored, not instantaneous output as is usually quote for batteries) in Britain is Dinorwig which is about 9100MWh. Cruachan is about 7000MWh. Ffestiniog and Foyers are the other two main examples, and a fair bit smaller. I haven't got their capacity, but probably the total of the four is in the vicinity of 20,000MWh or 20 GWh of pumped storage. Germany has something like about 5 times as much as us, because run-of-river hydro is relatively easy to convert to pumped storage. But they have several large rivers such as you can find on continents (Rhine, Danube, Elbe, Oder, Weser, etc) suitable for large run-of-river hydro stations, which in our case we have not got.
The largest battery in Europe recently started operation near Swindon. As usual with batteries, they are rather keener to tell you its maximum output, 100MW, and rather less keen to tell you its capacity. I think someone on this forum suggested its capacity is about 100MWh.
So the largest battery in Europe has about the capacity of 1% of a Dinorwig. But, recognising that a low carbon Britain will at least double its electricity consumption, we would need about 500 Dinorwigs, to store power for when people wanted it, if all our electricity was renewable. Or 50,000 of those largest-batteries-in-Europe.
The National Grid therefore sees getting to net zero to require substantial amounts of:
gas power stations with CCS, and
hydrogen storage, to feed hydrogen power stations.
This relies on two technologies not yet demonstrated at the scale required: CCS, and renewable hydrogen production. They are currently only demonstrated at small scale and implmenting them at anything like the scale required, not to mention an acceptable cost, remains a big problem
So far we have been able to build lots of wind and solar. It's "cheap". And if it fails to deliver the service you'd be willing to pay more money for, ie, electricity when you want it, we can get away with that because for the moment we have plenty of despatchable power (gas) and neighbours who can turn up their depatchable power (coal) when we need it.
Some, not Germans, would say that nuclear can be a valuable part of the solution, but falls a long way short of solving it.
I haven't had time to read it yet, but looks interesting.IvanV wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 12:46 amI strongly recommend National Grid Future Energy Scenarios as a very serious attempt to try and grapple with these problems from an engineering, not political, point of view. It is not the point of them, but you will see how inadequate is the political attempt to achieve these things when you read it. You can also download the data if you want to play with it.
Don't.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:41 pmLet's imagine the UK wants to double it's renewable energy capacity, from 33% to 66%, by 2030. How best to go about this, in terms of energy mix and batteries?
Nuclear is not the answer. Nuclear power plants have a lower availability than fossil fuel plants, are more expensive to build, and more expensive to decommission. In order to use nuclear for base load you need a lot of nuclear plants, which increases the cost as you lose any potential benefits and efficiencies from large scale operation.Millennie Al wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:04 amDon't.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:41 pmLet's imagine the UK wants to double it's renewable energy capacity, from 33% to 66%, by 2030. How best to go about this, in terms of energy mix and batteries?
Don't lose sight of the goal - to reduce emissions, not to increase renewables. Build more nuclear. But any solution is probably impossible because everything takes too long due to planning and wrangling.