Following this thread with great interest, I may add that the cleanest (primary) energy source is the energy we do not consume (I know that in a thermodynamic sense energy cannot be consumed but you get what I mean) is the cleanest energy. If humanity wants to survive on the long run, we must also think about our use of energy and how it can be cut down.
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Thanks for the comments everyone. I am quite busy at work and will hopefully return sometime this coming week to continue the great discussion.
Warm regards.
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Yes but looking in many states on this planet we can see that Energy consumption is too high. Heating in Winter, used electricity in households, used energy in industries. Industrial nations need their industries. So they may further do that consumption. Conversation in green energy should be / could be a way to prevent further climbing. But every fossile energy consumption - oil, gas, cole - is a problem. We should not wait until it is too late.
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When I was a young man if you drove your car through country lanes in England by the end of your trip the nose of your car would be plastered with greenfly. These days you get very little bug splatter on your car.
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The UK has wind, tide, oil, gas, coal and it’s the country that first split the atom yet our energy security is pitiful. It’s also an arable island surrounded by fish but our food security is just as bad.
And as you have alluded to for Canada, HMG has delegated a lot of the dirty stuff to third countries so it can pretend the UK has lowered its emissions.
Maybe Small Modular Reactors will be the answer so it may be time to buy shares in Rolls-Royce.
We just need to take care of operational security and nuclear waste disposal. Some radionuclides have impressive halve-lives.
The nuclear power plants are not the best way gaining electrical energy. Using natural energy from wind and sun would be the best way. But there is the storage problem. If we would use hydrogen production we could store it. As hydrogen or - after processing - as methane which can be stored in all of our natural gas storages. That would be a politic I could understand. And that is something what needs to be done. First all roofs with Solar panels. Second all possible places with Wind-Generators. Producing in this wise would produce more than we need. But it will cost much more money than stupid Cole or gas burning. That makes the problem. Or that IS the problem. What ever. We need to change that immediately.
You’re correct. The OP is also right in the sense that fossil fuels are needed to produce and service renewables.
In point of fact, oil is not 100% converted into fuel. A significant part of it becomes asphalt and plastics and so forth. I don’t recall the exact number but IIRC, something like a third of petroleum distillates don’t even contribute to our energy consumption demands.
For the whole consumer economy to function, it must ever increase consumption, and the net energy produced by fossil fuels and green sources has to increase as well. But that’s not doable.
I read an excellent thought piece on this with a clickbait title like “we need to stop fighting climate change”. What this person meant is that climate change is just a consequence of various actions. You can’t “fight” it, you can only change the actions that produce it. And what has to change, at bottom, to stop climate change is: consumption. A near halt to transatlantic flights and use of personal vehicles, for example. Without that, as fossil fuels and certain other raw materials (rare earth minerals for batteries and solar panels etc) become scarcer and less economically feasible to extract and distribute, we have an unsustainable situation and the whole system collapses.
So in the end we will massively reset our lifestyles and standards of living, willingly or not.
I predict it will happen unwillingly. There’s a great cartoon I saw where a politician asks an assembled crowd, “How many want change?” And everyone enthusiastically raises their hands. Then he asks a slightly different question: “How many want to change?” And no one raises their hand.
That’s the situation we’re in.
I have a couple of small, yet ridiculously expensive batteries with an inverter that can run AC equipment from the battery. Mostly I use the batteries to capture energy at night when it’s cheaper, to use during the day. If we have an extended power outage, a can keep a few critical things going … probably the refrigerator and a few lights and keep the phones charged – at least until the outages become too frequent and long – which, eventually, they will.
The larger is 1,000 watt-hours. It can power my whole office for about a day and a half, or alternatively the electrical side of my gas water heater plus my internet connectivity for a similar period, or the refrigerator for probably about 18 hours. But it takes about 5 hours to charge from empty from the AC, and probably longer than that, even on a sunny day, to charge off the extra portable 3 solar panels I have in the cellar for emergency purposes (my roof panels are a closed system that I can’t directly tap into).
This has demonstrated to me how extravagantly I use electricity. I’d have to spend probably upwards of $20K for enough batteries to keep the house going through nighttime and storms and keep a day’s extra reserve, even though on an overall basis my rooftop solar is sized to provide 106% of my projected energy needs. And now that I have an EV, my requirements are even higher (fortunately I put only about 3500 miles a year on my vehicle).
To the lifestyle changes: my heating is wood from own forest, nothing else. Warm water for towering and bathtubs: wood. My electricity: we have a 10 acre solar field installed. My mobility is the only thing I need to have Diesel. Why not electricity? While I need more than 200 kilometers range with my Trailer. And with Tesla, Auti, BMW or Mercedes E-Cars I have only around 180 kilometers with my VW T5 I have around 790 and with my VW Caddy around 850. With Trailer. When they change the range for this use case: I will change my cars. Not before while it is not usable at ll. Driving to Hamburg (we tested with Tesla X) was with a range of 189 kilometers ending up with a rest range of 10 kilometers. And charging needed 40 minutes. I needed two times to charge. With the Diesel Cars I had only to drive …both directions.
Back to the needed change: we live as neutral as possible. Most off the wood I am burning is needed to take out of the forest for protect the rest of the plants so it is no chance to leave it there. And I had no problems until now that it was not warm enough. So I guess it is in my case not really needed to change. As we needed last year 450 liters Diesel for private and company driving I can say we save as much as we can.
Even my Production I was changing. 90% of the plastic parts I am using are 3D printed parts made from natural materials also called green plastics. Since we produce all parts by self we do it from materials which can be recycelt, even Labeling and marking and also coloring we take care of green materials.
That has to be changed by the people.
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but not so much of green companies 
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No we also take care that we aRE NOT PAYING TO GREEN COMPANIES FROM AUSTIN
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I have a 2021 Hyundai Ioniq (not the new design, the older one) with a range of about 290 km (180 mi) which is on the low side over here in the US. That drops to about 217 km (135 mi) in the dead of winter with snow tires on though. I don’t konw why those vehicles have such a small range … different design in Europe or something?
The 2022 Ioniq will get you 295 miles or 475 kilometers range for the 2 wheel drive version.
To be honest I am waiting for a small SUV with at least a 400 mile range; 750 would be ideal. I would not try to drive my current vehicle from, say, NY to California, it would require too many stops. I think that range will be obtainable by 2030 if not sooner since there are many battery technologies that just have to get to production (solid state, liquid sodium, etc), but right now, I consider my EV a regional vehicle, not for cross-country use.
Exactly. Now hang on a mobile home and your range will fall down 50%. It is not enough at all. That is my problem with electrical vehicles. It is a too low range. Not usable for my use case at least.
To put that into a picture:
Imagine I throw a tiny lead ball at you. Are you afraid?
Now imagine I use a gun to shoot that lead ball at you - THAT is Climate Change.
If you understand the difference SPEED makes, then you start to understand the threat climate change makes.
But it still won’t change “your circumstances”. Have you considered changing your circumstances?
Ah, I see. Yes that is the weakness of EVs, just a different tread pattern on the tire or extra passengers or leaving the windows down can impact range, much less towing anything. I can watch the projected remaining range drop instantly in real time just turning on the heat or air conditioning, or fiddling with the fan speed. Weirdly the seat heaters, radio, lights, don’t seem to matter.
We have done it so: we installed Insulation, Windows and Sun protectors for the Summer. So we have called environment in Summer while opening the windows over night and closing them after Sun is coming up. No Clima System needed no energy needed.
Just a little longer… Providing it lives up to its claims. I’m hoping to test drive one this year.
They’re being sold by Luxgen (here in Taiwan).
https://www.luxgen-motor.com.tw/EventSite/n7
One my main reasons for NOT going EV is range. If I drive like a grandma, my Subie will do 800 km on a single tank of gas. That’s enough to go pick-up my father-in-law from t’other end of island and return home, with some still to spare.
The other main reason is charging. With a EV I might be able to make it all the way to my father-in-laws apartment (~350 km), but there’s no fast charger anywhere, if I have to park on the street (my sister-in-laws likes to store her car at his place), there’s no charging at all.
The reason we have a Subaru is because of our lifestyle and I want an everyday car that can and will get us to safety if there is a need for it. I’m typing this as there is a Typhoon tickling us right now.
Without oil, there will be no. fertiliser. The slight increase on CO2 has made for a slightly warmer planet and an increase in plant amount equivalent to the size of the USA, The Southern share is no longer a desert. All the evidence I have read indicates that CO2 is not a problem, and that climate change is more likely mediated by the planet’s orientation and rotation around the sun. Globally, trillions of dollars have been spent on ‘fixing climate change’, and it has achieved nothing apart from helping to destroy economies. Anyone remember. King Canute?
Respectfully, there seems to be plenty you have not read.
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