Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

zeupater

michaels said:

zeupater said:

Grumpy_chap said:

They are an odd batch of announcements, seemingly coming from nowhere and not obviously vote winners.

Considering the additional 5-years for ICE cars, the market may well make that moot if the proportion of ICE cars falls far enough fast enough, the motive to continue marketing ICE cars may be very low by 2030.  For the long term, one would have though the Government would seek to drive the country to the forefront of new technology and ensure we are the leaders, as opposed to preserving the legacy of an industry that will cease however you look at it.  Maybe, come 2050, we will have the few specialist ICE mechanics remaining in the very small global market.

Hi

The issue being missed is that the tipping point has effectively been reached .... anyone remember the eco doom-mongers reaction to the UK withdrawing subsidies for EV purchases, "woe is me, the end is nigh & damn the Tories, they're all in cahoots with the oil barons" comes to mind. What was the effect on EV demand, well, it continued to increase - exponentially at that, but is that what the BBC article says or shows in their selected charts? - no, it effective shows linear growth in the automotive fleet over ~30 years, so multiple generations of fleet replacement with little effect on overall emissions which, logic would conclude, effectively means that current levels of EV penetration in the automotive market has been used as a constant, not an evolving position ....

Consumers aren't fools, the more EVs that they see on the road, the longer they've been there and the cheaper those vehicles become, the more the level of acceptance .... effectively anything like an additional 5 years extension to the 2030 ICE new sales cutoff makes little difference when it's already looking like the rate of growth will result in near-total penetration before 2030 anyway ... if the German or any other EU auto-makers have been (and continue to be) slow to react to change then they'll probably further prove Darwin's theory on evolution as others will survive them ....

Think about the situation .... VW & Toyota are the two largest vehicle manufacturing groups, building a combined ~20million units/year, yet are both well behind the curve on EVs on many levels, including build volume, technology and build costs. They both are loosing global market share as competitors grow EV production ... in contrast, Tesla alone have a long standing plan to build annual capacity to ~20million vehicles by 2030 and has, to date, met their growth milestones, despite 'experts' opinions decrying the possibility numerous times, over numerous years ... to achieve this level of sales, guess where Tesla's EV volume is coming from - who'll be the winner & who will seriously suffer? ... currently it's an existential crisis position that can't be ignored by the major automotive players - they thought that they could steer & control the market as has been the case for decades and have played 'Ostrich' for far too long, it's now becoming obvious to them that the strategy was wrong and they're in serious trouble ..... so, is this really the time that they, and the rest of the ICE industry, would consider doing anything but reverse past mistakes & grow their annual EV build share by at least as much as the annual EV% market penetration growth?? ... doesn't that depend on whether they're prepared to invest heavily in the (now) short term, or have a strategy to accept the fate they find themselves in and restructure/retreat into very much smaller niche segments?

In summary, whatever change the government announces, the transport sector alone would negate the quantified predictions made by the BBC, especially the included government 'Net Zero' chart .... 'storm in a teacup' being whipped up on political grounds by factions with alternate political interests comes to mind! 

HTH - Z (Context is key to understanding! -  )  

Is that chart only about road transport emissions?  Perhaps EV savings are being offset but an expected massive increase in aviation?

Hi

No, but road transport does account for around 100million tonnes CO2e, which if mitigated would represent a serious reduction not shown in the chart's 'Current path of future emissions' line, which, in itself, should raise questions as to the quality of information being represented. Furthermore, considering that the chart claims to represent the situation & forecasts based on a position including historical data for 2020, 2021 along with provisional data for 2022, then why on earth does the published chart's theoretical 'Path to target' line start at a 2020 point around 65million tonnes CO2e above established past emission data ... any excuse involving the line being established prior to uncertainty related to the pandemic can easily be countered by recognising that the predicted path increases emissions in line with the pandemic timescales, logically meaning that the existence & timeline of the pandemic would have needed to be predicted in advance ... very odd, odd enough to either discount the thought completely or open some seriously important conversations! 

On the aviation front, related emissions are approximately 1/6 of those attributable to road transport, so that would describe a huge unmitigated increase in the sector to negate EV savings to the extent represented in the chart, something which, due to manufacturing capacity and timescales involved, would be impossible ...

HTH - Z

Netexporter

With aviation it isn't just the CO2 emissions that matter. The water vapour deposited at high altitude (contrails) has a greater greenhouse effect than the CO2 emissions.

zeupater

Netexporter said:

With aviation it isn't just the CO2 emissions that matter. The water vapour deposited at high altitude (contrails) has a greater greenhouse effect than the CO2 emissions.

Hi

That's why other emission impacts are assessed relative to CO2 and the data published as CO2e (CO2equivalence) ... for example, methane is considered to have a multiplication factor of 29.8 relative to carbon-dioxide using the standard 100yr GWP basis ... interestingly, although some short term consideration is given (by some) to aircraft engine combustion related water vapour in the upper atmosphere (typically calculated in a range bracketing 2-2.7x calculated CO2e), it's almost universally considered to not persist beyond timescales measured in days/weeks rather than GWP's 100year timescales. As commercial aircraft typically operate in the same altitude range as cirrus clouds exist (20,000-40,000 feet), their water vapour con-trails have little consolidated effect on the overall water content at these levels, and, being inherently heavier than the surrounding air, gradually migrates to lower altitudes, combining with vapour available to form lower altitude clouds and eventually falling somewhere as some form of precipitation .... 

HTH - Z     

Heedtheadvice

".....and eventually falling somewhere as some form of precipitation .... ".

Usually on me!!

To me it all smacks of politics and those who do not understand presenting as if they do.....

Netexporter

zeupater said:

Netexporter said:

With aviation it isn't just the CO2 emissions that matter. The water vapour deposited at high altitude (contrails) has a greater greenhouse effect than the CO2 emissions.

Hi

That's why other emission impacts are assessed relative to CO2 and the data published as CO2e (CO2equivalence) ... for example, methane is considered to have a multiplication factor of 29.8 relative to carbon-dioxide using the standard 100yr GWP basis ... interestingly, although some short term consideration is given (by some) to aircraft engine combustion related water vapour in the upper atmosphere (typically calculated in a range bracketing 2-2.7x calculated CO2e), it's almost universally considered to not persist beyond timescales measured in days/weeks rather than GWP's 100year timescales. As commercial aircraft typically operate in the same altitude range as cirrus clouds exist (20,000-40,000 feet), their water vapour con-trails have little consolidated effect on the overall water content at these levels, and, being inherently heavier than the surrounding air, gradually migrates to lower altitudes, combining with vapour available to form lower altitude clouds and eventually falling somewhere as some form of precipitation .... 

HTH - Z     

Water vapour may not be persistent compared to some other greenhouse gases but if it is constantly replenished is is, effectively, persistent. Remember how the sky changed colour when the Iceland volcano grounded civil aviation for a few weeks?

As we saw during the pandemic, 80% of aviation is unnecessary.

zeupater

Netexporter said:

...

Water vapour may not be persistent compared to some other greenhouse gases but if it is constantly replenished is is, effectively, persistent. Remember how the sky changed colour when the Iceland volcano grounded civil aviation for a few weeks?

As we saw during the pandemic, 80% of aviation is unnecessary.

Hi

The issue that people miss is that climate change is based on long term change and the ability to perform short term mitigation is what people tend to focus on ... the buzz phrase at the moment seems to be 'net zero', but that's not the solution as when that target is reached, the perception must be to drive a net-negative policy to reverse historical environmental damage ... effectively it'll never stop, until someone finally realises that the eco-system that we're currently talking about is also extremely fragile if CO2 concentrations are low ... it also needs to be considered that a CO2 swing based on 0.01% (100ppm) of atmospheric mix makes a huge difference to the way plant-life performs, so as we're talking about huge CO2 mass and decades to make any difference, everyone needs to be sure that the brakes on the tanker they're looking to stop aren't applied too rigorously, else the term 'aegrescit medendo' could well apply .... in curing the disease, take care not to kill the patient!

HTH - Z

michaels

So at 15:15 today, solar and wind were generating 22.86GW.  Don't know if this is a renewables record but appears to beat the highest wind only generation set in January when presumably there wasn't much solar.

Martyn1981

I appreciate that the 'energy crisis' is far from over, and whilst wholesale and retail energy costs are coming down slowly, we still have a few years to go ....... but, this BBC article has some good news. At the very least, things aren't as negative as they were a year ago.

I picked out a few positive comments, that may be of interest to the G&E folk on here.

Blackouts less likely this winter says National Grid

There is a lower risk of electricity blackouts this winter compared to last, according to National Grid, thanks to increased generation and the ability to manage demand.

This year the UK was "in a different position", it said in a report.

Chances of the lights going out were almost back to where they were before the energy crisis, it said.

But a scheme to pay people for cutting electricity use at peak times will still be used to help manage demand.

An increase in industrial-scale battery storage would also make a difference, helping to smooth demand-supply imbalances, he said.

Only one coal-fired power station will be kept on standby this winter, it said. Over last winter it had five available.

He said there was still a scenario in which gas supplies became strained amid sharply colder weather in both Europe and the UK. However, National Gas would be ready to take "action" and there was "no threat whatsoever to domestic gas supplies", he added.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

I appreciate that the 'energy crisis' is far from over, and whilst wholesale and retail energy costs are coming down slowly, we still have a few years to go ....... but, this BBC article has some good news. At the very least, things aren't as negative as they were a year ago.

I picked out a few positive comments, that may be of interest to the G&E folk on here.

Blackouts less likely this winter says National Grid

There is a lower risk of electricity blackouts this winter compared to last, according to National Grid, thanks to increased generation and the ability to manage demand.

This year the UK was "in a different position", it said in a report.

Chances of the lights going out were almost back to where they were before the energy crisis, it said.

But a scheme to pay people for cutting electricity use at peak times will still be used to help manage demand.

An increase in industrial-scale battery storage would also make a difference, helping to smooth demand-supply imbalances, he said.

Only one coal-fired power station will be kept on standby this winter, it said. Over last winter it had five available.

He said there was still a scenario in which gas supplies became strained amid sharply colder weather in both Europe and the UK. However, National Gas would be ready to take "action" and there was "no threat whatsoever to domestic gas supplies", he added.

All that despite there being 250k+ new EVs on the road since last winter that people seem convinced will 'break' the grid/generation....

michaels

The Netherlands just launched a mega 1.5 GW offshore wind farm (electrek.co)

A subsidy free windfarm - interesting that the level of risk did not impact on the ability to get financing.