Electric cars

andrewf75

Strider590 wrote: »

Here's what people hate about fossil fuels..... the images the media feed us..... But did you know that all that "smoke" is coming from the cooling towers and is actually just water/steam?

Nothing to do with any images the media feeds us, more to do with the undisputed scientific evidence that they are damaging the planet! The image of a power station is a symbol of that, regardless of whether it is smoke or steam in the picture!
What is viable as a replacement I don't know, but it is very clear we have to move away from fossil fuels

Strider590

andrewf75 wrote: »

Nothing to do with any images the media feeds us, more to do with the undisputed scientific evidence that they are damaging the planet! The image of a power station is a symbol of that, regardless of whether it is smoke or steam in the picture!
What is viable as a replacement I don't know, but it is very clear we have to move away from fossil fuels

I would argue that continuing to rape the planets resources at an exponential rate, is far more harmful. Yet in the interests of being "green" we're told to go out and buy even more junk just because it's got an ECO sticker.

Nothing in human history has ramped up consumerism as much as this stuff about carbon emissions.

We need to stop buying more stuff we don't need and stop using the environment as an excuse.

andrewf75

Strider590 wrote: »

I would argue that continuing to rape the planets resources at an exponential rate, is far more harmful. Yet in the interests of being "green" we're told to go out and buy even more junk just because it's got an ECO sticker.

Nothing in human history has ramped up consumerism as much as this stuff about carbon emissions.

We need to stop buying more stuff we don't need and stop using the environment as an excuse.

Totally with you there. Which is why back to the original subject I have no interest in an electric car. If you want to be “green” (which I do) the best thing you can do is keep your old car whatever it is.

But I think long term moving away from fossil fuel surely makes sense

iolanthe07

We've had a cold couple of weeks here in the south west, though comparatively mild compared with some other parts of the UK. The wind turbines have stood here motionless because of the lack of wind owing to high pressure associated with winter cold. I can't help thinking that they are great idle monuments to our folly.

Even when they are working and chopping up birds, do they actually make up for the enormous amount of environmentally very unfriendly concrete used to anchor them?

AdrianC

iolanthe07 wrote: »

The wind turbines have stood here motionless because of the lack of wind owing to high pressure associated with winter cold. I can't help thinking that they are great idle monuments to our folly.

...and yet, there they are, nearly 10% of our electrickery right now... 60% of nuclear's current output...

Martyn1981

Strider590 wrote: »

It's pointless because it's not economically viable, the net costs grossly outweigh the benefits, yet we're still wasting time and resources on it.

That's odd as onshore wind and solar are the cheapest forms of generation now in the UK.

I've already posted most of the numbers already, but perhaps you would like to post some £/MWh figures and we can compare.

Don't forget to include the CO2 costs and the health costs. The last calculations for the health costs of coal generation in the UK was approx £60/MWh (NHS / shortened lives costs). With PV and wind approaching £60/MWh all in, it's hard to see how FF will beat that.

BTW, please don't try to pretend that coal is clean, because the cooling towers emit steam. I'm 90% against nuclear, but compared to coal generation it's "as fresh as the bright blue sky." GnR.

Strider590 wrote: »

Of course, but do you think the emissions are anywhere near what they were 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago? They've got all sorts of filtration systems, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if they filtered the emissions through water, producing carbon rich water (and carbon is the building block of every life on this planet).

Yes, the scrubbers catch about 90% of the pollution. Unfortunately the remaining 10% (plus the CO2, NOx, SOx etc) is still a staggering amount.

Nobody thinks coal is clean, well ..... apart from the Mango-In-Chief.

AdrianC

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Nobody thinks coal is clean, well ..... apart from the Mango-In-Chief.

Make 'murica gray again!

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

...and yet, there they are, nearly 10% of our electrickery right now... 60% of nuclear's current output...

Hiya Adrian. If you are interested in the trends, then this link is probably the simplest and gives a good idea how things have changed this decade.

British Electricity Generation (Balancing Mechanism) Fuel Mix
GWh per year

PV isn't centrally metered, so it shows up as demand reduction (not supply generation), but was approx 10,000GWh in 2016.

Poor weather last year meant a small drop in wind generation to approx 11.5% of UK leccy. However the trend is pretty obvious. There's currently about 5GW of off-shore wind in the pipeline by 2020, which with capacity factors of 40-50% should (alone) increase annual generation by around 20,000GWhs.

Martyn1981

neilmcl wrote: »

No, but it means that bans are at least in the pipeline, yet not one city in the UK is proposing this for consumer diesel cars at the present time.

Not a ban, but from today's news:

Westminster council to become first to charge extra to park diesel cars

Westminster city council says the extra money raised through the trial of the “polluter pays” parking scheme will be spent on boosting sustainable transport. If the scheme succeeds in changing people’s behaviour it could be rolled out to other parts of the borough, the council said.

This week Hackney council announced it would be banning parking of any non-electric cars from several streets bordering the City financial district, again as part of efforts to tackle air pollution. The council will spend £1m, provided by the mayor’s office and TfL’s pro-electric cars fund, on installing vehicle charging points on the streets.

neilmcl

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Not a ban, but from today's news:

Westminster council to become first to charge extra to park diesel cars

Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Increased parking charge for diesel cars which wont actually prevent diesels from running up and down the area itself. If anything it'll add to pollution because drivers will now have to search around the area for cheaper parking.

If local councils really want to reduce pollution then hit the biggest culprits in cities - public transport and delivery vehicles.