What is the final outcome of green energy?

[eugenedakin]

@npalardy

Are we talking “new crude” captured from decomposing waste ?
Or recycled oil from landfill operations ?
GFL, afaik, only mentions the second type (which is different than your claim)

I am not sure what you mean by new-crude? Crude oil is created by decomposing organics - which include plastic, wood, paper, household garbage, and industrial solids. Liquids such as water, oil, and liquid waste are not allowed in most landfills. Does this help?

[eugenedakin]

@npalardy

And carefully contained heaps, land fills, & barns etc can emit methane gas which can be captured
However, the amount they capture is quite low
Its why me neighbour, who raise dogs, stopped
It just wasn’t economically viable because the volume even from hundred of hogs + manure & effluent wasnt adequate to do hardly anything. Certainly couldn’t heat a barn with it in the winter.

When I did work with the City of Edmonton, landfill gas is used to generate electricity for about 4,600 homes per year. Landfill Gas Recovery | City of Edmonton.

[SteveW]

@npalardy

And carefully contained heaps, land fills, & barns etc can emit methane gas which can be captured
However, the amount they capture is quite low

It’s not the gas local framers are making use of, it’s the heat generated by the composting process.

[npalardy]

So the crude collected ISNT the landfill contents itself being converted into crude from that waste ?

its not decomposing and tuning into crude oil

correct ?

[npalardy]

Yes - bio fuels
They might be a VERY tiny bit greener than burning existing fossil fuels
But they dont contribute to reducing global CO2 levels

I’m not a huge fan of this path

[bgrommes]

@npalardy

Yes - bio fuels
They might be a VERY tiny bit greener than burning existing fossil fuels

That’s being charitable. Biofuels tend to have a huge carbon footprint to grow, harvest and process, and from what I’ve read, often are a net negative as a result.

[eugenedakin]

@npalardy

So the crude collected ISNT the landfill contents itself being converted into crude from that waste ?

its not decomposing and tuning into crude oil

correct ?

Yes, the crude oil is created and collected from direct decomposition (microorganisms eating garbage) and converting long-chain hydrocarbons into liquid hydrocarbons.

Example: Microorganisms will ‘eat’ a wooden table and convert it to crude oil.

[npalardy]

Yes
There’s some of that around here as well
Not much

@eugenedakin

When I did work with the City of Edmonton, landfill gas is used to generate electricity for about 4,600 homes per year. Landfill Gas Recovery | City of Edmonton.

This doesnt serve to invalidate or even address what I said
According to the 2019 census 4600 homes in Edmonton is less than 1% of all dwellings in Edmonton
Scale that way back to a single pig barn with a few hundred hogs and you have exactly what I said

@npalardy

It just wasn’t economically viable because the volume even from hundred of hogs + manure & effluent wasnt adequate to do hardly anything. Certainly couldn’t heat a barn with it in the winter.

[npalardy]

GFL, the local waste management company, makes no mention of any such operations
I checked the last 4 quarters of the financials for ANY mention of “oil” & “crude” and found none
Not a single word about this other process or revenues from it
So I’m skeptical of your claim that landfills are generating any meaningful amounts or oil or revenue from it

The ONLY tech I knew of that purported to do this on an industrial scale came from Changing World Technologies which appears to have gone bankrupt

[dalu]

@eugenedakin

and getting into the political realm makes this discussion even more messy and corrupt.
…
I am not judging right or wrong, just trying to understand your position

but you just did lol “messy an corrupt”

@eugenedakin

What will humankind’s energy use look like at the end?

you work in energy field, and you are asking what is energy ? don’t you know ?

[dalu]

@eugenedakin

We (humans) are made of oils and carbon. When animals and plants come to the end of their life, then our bodies decay and become food for plants. Its part of the cycle.

waou it’s an orwellian rethoric
“war is peace, oil is green”

[dalu]

@eugenedakin

nd downright lies about green energy.

instead of daydreaming in a future nobody knows, listen to ingeneers at exon

'So they knew': Ocasio-Cortez questions Exxon scientist on climate crisis denial

[eugenedakin]

@dalu

you work in energy field, and you are asking what is energy ? don’t you know ?

Yep… Energy can be in many forms. My hope is that a greener type of energy will be created. I am open to suggestions - not sure if there will be a new type of energy… and just hoping its better than our current options

[npalardy]

New types of generation sure

Solar & wind are already here so arent “new”
Energy storage will make them more useful overall.
TBH this is where, if I were in the energy business, I’d be investing.
Oil & gas arent a growth industry and are quite finite. Thats been well known for many years and new deposits are increasingly expensive to find & develop. THIS I know you know.

Hydrogen - which already exists and can be generated using solar & wind
And there are vehicles that already exist that are hydrogen powered (Ballard Power systems in BC has had a bus running on hydrogen for ages)
The BIGGEST problem is there is no infrastructure for this although some existing stuff can be reused (pipelines for instance)
Had hydrogen been figured out before petroleum product we’d probably never have developed using oil & gas (I’m not kidding here)
Energy density is probably one big drawback to hydrogen. Petroleum products do very well here.

Fusion - maybe one day but I think thats way too far off to even be seriously considered a viable option in our lives or even our kids lifetimes
But its along way before we have a Mr Fusion powering our cars & such

Oil & gas will be with us for some time. Thats a given.
We cant instantly switch those off & use electricity overnight
But the change to greener energy sources IS happening

[bgrommes]

@npalardy

The BIGGEST problem is there is no infrastructure for this although some existing stuff can be reused (pipelines for instance)

Storage and transportation is a HUGE problem. One reason there’s no infrastructure is that hydrogen leaks at pipe joints almost no matter what you do. I’ve seen novel ideas such as embedding hydrogen in some kind of beads but approaches like that would require the whole industry to standardize on a delivery mechanism and we all remember the whole Sony vs BetaMax thing. I don’t think hydrogen has legs as a mainstream solution, at least not on any rapid timescale that would help matters. Building out a decent EV charging network is way less daunting. There are smart people working on battery tech that doesn’t require the mining and extraction of exotic materials and there’s more than one alternative being developed.

[SteveW]

@npalardy

They might be a VERY tiny bit greener than burning existing fossil fuels
But they dont contribute to reducing global CO2 levels

CO2 is food for algae.

[npalardy]

But I dont want to BURN bio fuels any more than I want to burn oil & gas
For many of the same reasons
CO2 isnt the only emission from that
Just one that seems to have garnered the most publicity
CO, NO2, and others are also issues
Remember acid rain ?

So while feeding algae CO2 might work, be relatively carbon neutral (?), and greener than burning oil & gas* burning fuels isnt ideal because of everything else involved in combustion

Its why burning straw & other waste products from agriculture isnt a great energy source either

*I say “greener” since its not releasing CO2 that has been sequestered in oil, gas and coal deposits for millions of years

[npalardy]

Hydrogen might work as a storage fuel
Basically as the “battery” for storing energy on high production dates & as the fuel for backing store like pumped water storage esp in areas where there isnt a vast water reserve to tap into (ie no local large river etc)

Thats more likely to work than trying to pipe it cross country like we do with petroleum products

However, the energy storage issue is one that needs to probably be dealt with in many different ways depending on locale, available materials for storage (abandoned wells, large valleys that can be dammed for hydro storage etc)

[dalu]

@eugenedakin

There has been a large amount of discussion which includes good information and downright lies about green energy.

In your opinion, what does the final outcome of green energy look like?

I think you were ask to post on social media ton engage conversation about fossil fuels

" downright lies about green energy."

it’s fascinating
you were ask to engage convseration about the future of energy, it can drag attention
everybody likes to give opinon
but you come with some things that are biased and manipulative in the shadow of knowledge
you were told to engage conversation with question what do you think, while expressing strongly worded opinion.
dude dis ain’t scientific approach

i think that after the imagine part, where people daydream like you did mentionning back to the future, you’re point is, but for know we burn gas/fossil fuels because we have no other solution yet, until science finds something to replace.
you started the first thread by mentionning the state of fossil fuels stocks, there was no problem:)
so you your company wants to continue do what they did for decades, it that it ?

[dalu]

@eugenedakin

Oil is part of the carbon life cycle. We (humans) are made of oils and carbon. When animals and plants come to the end of their life, then our bodies decay and become food for plants. Its part of the cycle.

didn’t read all posts, but sometimes feels like in a dystopian society
nobody denies that CO2, oil exist