Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

silverwhistle

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Some Carbon commentary extracts from this weeks newsletter:

*** This will probably become the most interesting/exciting part of the conversation going forward. Loads of tasty tidbits of news for greedy Marty!

What will happen when wind power systematically exceeds demand is that at least some of us will try and gain some benefit via demand and usage management. On Friday I'm having a smart meter put in and once it's commissioned I'll be on Octopus Agile tariff. At some stage I'd like to get an EV but even before then I can see benefits with a little commonsense: today for example unit rates between 8&9p until the 16.00 to 19.00 period when they leap into the 20s before falling back again.



So in the initial stages the growth in the number of EVs will help. With longer ranges people will be able to time their charging to reflect costs. Beyond that there must be lots of potential for interruptible processes: grain drying, storing process heat, etc, before moving on to the bigger investments and newer technology of hydrogen production and the like.

GreatApe

silverwhistle wrote: »

What will happen when wind power systematically exceeds demand is that at least some of us will try and gain some benefit via demand and usage management. On Friday I'm having a smart meter put in and once it's commissioned I'll be on Octopus Agile tariff. At some stage I'd like to get an EV but even before then I can see benefits with a little commonsense: today for example unit rates between 8&9p until the 16.00 to 19.00 period when they leap into the 20s before falling back again.

So in the initial stages the growth in the number of EVs will help. With longer ranges people will be able to time their charging to reflect costs. Beyond that there must be lots of potential for interruptible processes: grain drying, storing process heat, etc, before moving on to the bigger investments and newer technology of hydrogen production and the like.

The best technology because it's as close to free as you can get is smart heaters

People with gas boilers install a couple of smart heaters in their homes

When there is excess wind and prices are cheap the smart heaters turn on which effectively means the gas boiler will back off saving on natural gas

The process is more than 100% efficient (in that 1 unit of electricity saves More than 1 unit of natural gas) in converting electricity to natural gas and doesn't require huge investments in hydrogen facilities. It's also 100% clean while no chemicals industry is 100% clean

It can also be deployed overnight, literally in one single day you can buy a heater and a smart plug and away you go. While it would take how many years and billions to try and build a mass hydrogen or syn fuel industry??

The scale of the ability of dual fuel homes and businesses is also vast
Perhaps as big as 100GW in the UK alone
The real limit is how much the grid can handle and or how much we want to upgrade the grid to handle more power

GreatApe

pile-o-stone wrote: »

I guess the counter argument could be that we will never know if a nuclear accident could have occurred had they been left on?

Nuclear accidents don't cause much harm

The worst was Chernobyl but that didn't have containment
All German nukes do have containment
Worse that can happen is something like Fukushima
The radiation of Which killed.... virtually no one

However the cost of cleaning up the radiation which could be zero if you wish, won't be zero so there is a real cost in that regard

Anyway it's too late for the German nukes they are gone in 2-3 years time

Hexane

GreatApe wrote: »

Nuclear accidents don't cause much harm

I am sure you are right, but in the meantime General Bear AI has had to pull on his woolly underpants! https://duckduckgo.com/?q=AI+winter He is very upset that no-one has solved hearting yet.

pile-o-stone

GreatApe wrote: »

Nuclear accidents don't cause much harm

They're great for wildlife.

The 1000 square mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl became a wildlife haven after 350,000 people were evacuated from the area following the nuclear disaster.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/may/28/chernobyl-wildlife-haven-tour-belarus-created-nuclear-disaster-zone

Similaly, the 30 square mile exclusion zone around Fukishima hasbecome a wildlife haven after 156,000 people were evacuated from the area following the nuclear disaster

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7873865/Wildlife-flourishing-exclusion-zone-disabled-Fukushima-nuclear-reactor.html

Yet, while wildlife is flourishing in the absence of mankind, they are suffering from the ill effects of our man made disaster with issues such as cataracts, tumors and sterility.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/chernobyl-and-fukushima-radioactivity-has-seriously-harmed-wildlife/

Martyn1981

pile-o-stone wrote: »

They're great for wildlife.

Incredible that somebody could claim a lack of harm, and think it worth sharing on a green and ethical thread/board. Oh well.

I wonder how much RE generation capacity the $200bn clean up for Fukushima would buy, probably somewhere around 200GW?

Imagine that, the equivalent of the entire UK's RE needs pee'd up against the wall. Bit sad.

pile-o-stone

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Incredible that somebody could claim a lack of harm, and think it worth sharing on a green and ethical thread/board. Oh well.

I wonder how much RE generation capacity the $200bn clean up for Fukushima would buy, probably somewhere around 200GW?

Imagine that, the equivalent of the entire UK's RE needs pee'd up against the wall. Bit sad.

Perhaps the loss of 1000 square miles is a small price to pay for expensive energy? To put that into perspective, Greater London is 600 square miles. It's not just the loss of land and all other industry within that land, it's the cost of relocating people elsewhere and the pressure that would put on other regions to try and house so many people.

Martyn1981

RE generation in Europe last year was greater than FF gen and also greater than nuclear. Gas is doing comparably well v's coal too.

Renewables ‘dominate’ European energy mix in 2019

The company’s latest report on the EU power market found renewables generated 1029 terawatt hours (TWh) last year, compared with 941TWh generated by fossil fuels and 777TWh from nuclear plants.

In 2019, gas-fired plants produced 500.5TWh, up from 265.7TWh in 2015, versus 419.6TWh from coal/lignite (down from 617.6TWh in 2015).

Harreman added: “One of the major changes seen in Europe in recent years – and in 2019 in particular – has been the transition from coal and lignite sources to gas. This trend has been driven largely by low gas prices and the increase in carbon prices, which makes generation from so-called ‘dirty’ fuels less attractive.

GreatApe

pile-o-stone wrote: »

Perhaps the loss of 1000 square miles is a small price to pay for expensive energy? To put that into perspective, Greater London is 600 square miles. It's not just the loss of land and all other industry within that land, it's the cost of relocating people elsewhere and the pressure that would put on other regions to try and house so many people.

It's mostly fake news

https://youtu.be/ciStnd9Y2ak

Nuclear could play a big part but it's not at all likely

Nuclear expansion dream died when the world figured out that CCGTs cost 1/20th as much to build and staff as a nuke. Not to forget their amazing 63% efficiency operated as base load and the abundance of NG the world finds itself in

ed110220

A Finnish company is making food from air in a process I think is very exciting. They use electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen and then feed the hydrogen to bacteria. The bacteria use hydrogen to fix carbon and nitrogen from the air to synthesise proteins, carbohydrates etc.

Potentially this is a massive breakthrough as:-

Photosynthesis is a very inefficient process, capturing less than 0.5% of sunlight as food. Using solar PV to produce electricity > hydrogen > food is claimed to be efficient enough to reduce the footprint of food production by 90%.

Land of less nature conservation or agricultural value could be used, eg rooftops, arid areas etc.

Together this could massively increase food supplies and reduce the impact of agriculture on the natural world.

OK I spelled out the potential positives, New Scientist has a slightly more skeptical (in the true sense of the term ) article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2229761-can-we-really-save-the-planet-by-making-food-from-air-without-farms/