When will fossil fuel useage peak a general discussion

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

There are 39M vehicles on the road which of course is a lot of stock to replace. However, it's those vehicles that are used for business that are travelling the most miles & therefore making a disproportionate contribution to CO2 emissions. The zero BIK rate is a massive incentive for those users to change to an EV. The saving for a higher rate taxpayer driving a typical £30,000 German repmobile will be £7500 pa. Expect to see all those 3 series, A4s & C Class being replaced with model 3s.

Even the government doesn't have infinite pockets

How many £7.5k pa do you think the state will put up with?
And for how long?

10,000?
100,000?

frozen_wastes

mmmmikey wrote: »

But I wonder how much more scope there is for reducing the amount of business travel through further use of videoconferencing, other forms of communications and just general awareness?

It used to be the case in my field of work that employees were sent out for weeks at a time to work abroad, primarily doing keyboard and mouse work, on particular projects. There's a lot of flying and residential property renting involved with this.

Then four years ago, it became policy that our workers were to be based entirely in the home office, and were to use Skype and other remote working facilities when doing this project work. It was instant savings for the project, but I have to say that our workers became somewhat marginalised and out of the loop so to speak.

Remote working has it's plusses, with massive savings on travel costs being one of them. But it has substantial minusses, the subtleties of developing working relationships just doesn't work well when you aren't face to face with the people you're dealing with.

It's hard to say how things will play out, but I've got a hunch that corporate travel will probably increase precisely because we have have more forms of digital communication. The nature of communication being easier is that it creates more business opportunities which in turn creates more travel requirements.

frozen_wastes

GreatApe wrote: »

Even the government doesn't have infinite pockets

How many £7.5k pa do you think the state will put up with?
And for how long?

In terms of "how long?"
It's 0% BIK for 2020/2021
1% for 2021/2022
2% for 2022/2023

Beyond that, who knows? Three years is probably enough to give the electric car industry a substantial boost.

GreatApe

mmmmikey wrote: »

Not disagreeing, but that surprises me - when did this peak, and how quickly is it falling?

Uk
2018 emmissions 394 million tons CO2
1991 emmissions 603 million tons CO2
1973 emmissions 718 million tons CO2 peak year

Down some 45% from peak

This was primarily because of a shift from a coal heavy energy infrastructure to a gas heavy infrastructure. Gas is more clean than coal plus it's 60% efficient in a gas fired stations Vs close closer to 30% so a double win. Nuclear (both domestic and French imports) also played a part. Plus going from maybe 25% efficient open coal fired to 90% efficient condensing boilers

Also, if a Chinese factory makes a 99p plastic item for selling in the UK, would you count the FF used in it's production as Chinese usage or UK usage? And on a similar vein, in the same example where do you count the FF used in shipping the goods - in China, in the country where the ship is registered or in the UK?

Again, not challenging your assertion about FF usage, just trying to understand it better....

There is always a tone of self hate and self doubt with the left what's up with that?

Re the ships, probably where they are fueled so I would guess roughly 40% in the UK 60% in China (retuning lighter so less fuel burnt)

Re the manufactured goods, where they are produced.
But I would argue we don't import more goods today than we did in 1973
In 1973 we imported more or less all the oil we use
Sure plastic toys from China were not a thing but how much energy do you think it took to produce pipe process that crude the literally 500 million barrel a year we imported?

GreatApe

frozen_wastes wrote: »

In terms of "how long?"
It's 0% BIK for 2020/2021
1% for 2021/2022
2% for 2022/2023

Beyond that, who knows? Three years is probably enough to give the electric car industry a substantial boost.

Sure but how many before the government pull the rug out

Plus why do you feel like this is a good idea?


An electric car saves very little emmissions but according to one poster is going to cost the government £7.5k a year in lost taxes? A car emmits something like 2 tons per year and the UK grid isn't fully clean so it's not a full 2 tons saving. But even at 2 tons saving for £7,500 lost tax??? That is ridiculous use of taxpayer money. Wind farms by comparison look like kids pocket change

1961Nick

GreatApe wrote: »

Sure but how many before the government pull the rug out

Plus why do you feel like this is a good idea?

It's a good idea because it'll give massive inertia to the change from ICE vehicles. Sure the tax rate will creep up year by year, but once EVs gain momentum there will be no going back.

You may be right about the exchequer getting a shock (pun intended) when it realises just how successful this initiative is!

As long as the increased demand for electricity is met by new wind/solar.....plus Mart's biogas, transport CO2 emissions will decrease. Air quality in many towns & cities will also benefit....and save the NHS £6b a year!;)

Martyn1981

frozen_wastes wrote: »

In terms of "how long?"
It's 0% BIK for 2020/2021
1% for 2021/2022
2% for 2022/2023

Beyond that, who knows? Three years is probably enough to give the electric car industry a substantial boost.

Yep, what we need now is a massive expansion in supply, as demand is already there (here!)

Obviously we need 'cheaper' base vehicles, but on costs Tesla have already proved BEV's, their luxury cars are a similar price to the competitors, but cost far, far less to run. In fact the TM3 (Tesla model 3) is probably cheaper than a similarly spec'd (but slower) BMW 3 series, but has much lower TCO (total cost of ownership.

So BEV's have already proved they are cheaper than ICEV's, but still require a large initial investment. But given they are already 'better', then the battle is won, we just need production to shift from ICEV to BEV, and that's starting now, the old guard can't drag their feet any longer, as pesky, ickle Tesla has proved 'the BEV'.


And just a note on FF's and energy. Not only will BEV's reduce air pollution, but they are far, far less carbon intensive than ICEV's. If half the leccy comes from FF's (but falling) at around 50% efficiency, v's the efficiency of an ICE at around 25%, then the improvement is massive. Plus in gross energy terms, the UK will see a significant frop in energy consumption as it's measured on energy in, not energy out. So we count the 100% of energy in the petrol burned, not the 25% that actually results in motive energy.

Martyn1981

1961Nick wrote: »

As long as the increased demand for electricity is met by new wind/solar.....plus Mart's biogas, transport CO2 emissions will decrease. Air quality in many towns & cities will also benefit....and save the NHS £6b a year!;)

Sadly not my gas, but the news on bio-gas, from excess RE leccy generation, just keeps on getting better and better. And of course any and all storage methods for excess RE generation will help to create a higher floor price for that generation, and improve the economics for the RE generation.

Renewable Hydrogen Launches Sneak Attack On Natural Gas

1961Nick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Sadly not my gas, but the news on bio-gas, from excess RE leccy generation, just keeps on getting better and better. And of course any and all storage methods for excess RE generation will help to create a higher floor price for that generation, and improve the economics for the RE generation.

Renewable Hydrogen Launches Sneak Attack On Natural Gas

Producing biogas using energy that would have otherwise been curtailed makes a lot of sense as long as storage isn't prohibitively expensive?? It could also be the answer to the frequency problem that we've just experienced.

frozen_wastes

GreatApe wrote: »

An electric car saves very little emmissions but according to one poster is going to cost the government £7.5k a year in lost taxes?

See here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/820843/Energy_Consumption_in_the_UK__ECUK__MASTER_COPY.pdf

In particular I draw your attention to the chart on page 1 which shows that transport is by far the largest consumer of energy in the UK.

The chart on page 9 is also interesting. It shows that road transportation accounts for by far the largest consumption of energy amongst the transport sector in the UK. Not only that, but energy consumption in the transportation sector is now rising again following a fall from 2006-2012.

So the final energy consumption from petroleum products accounts for 40% of the UK's final energy demand. Whilst overall energy demand has been falling, that cannot be said for the transport sector.

Electrifying ground transportation is therefore a key objective towards reducing emissions and therefore it's worth supporting as a national priority. That applies not only to cars, but also freight vehicles.

In terms of how quickly this is happening, the market penetration of plugin vehicles was around 2% of all car sales in the year 2018.
https://www.nextgreencar.com/electric-cars/statistics/
That's small, but the trend over preceeding years has been approximately exponential. If you extrapolate those trends on a sigmoid function (S-Curve) into the next decade then we'll be seeing about 30-40% of all car sales being electric by the year 2025.

So following these trends I reckon by the year 2030, there will still be plenty of existing petrol and diesel cars on the road, but very few new ICE cars will be offered for sale. It will become an increasingly niche market (long range lorries will probably be the last remaining road market for ICEs)