The Environment Thread :-)
2 lurkers |
59 watchers
Jul 2020
2:14pm, 6 Jul 2020
10,550 posts
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rf_fozzy
RF - my personal feeling is that for pretty much everyone these days, zero impact is impossible - because there are just so many people now. Even if something is sustainable now, if everyone adopts it, then it becomes unsustainable/has a huge environmental impact - take for example Palm oil - inherently there's nothing wrong with it and the actual product isn't *too* bad for the environment. But the way it's expanded by clearing rainforest *is* most definitely an issue. So I see it as a battle to get more people to reduce their impact by as much as possible, rather than a few people having zero impact. As I see that as having a bigger overall effect. |
Jul 2020
2:17pm, 6 Jul 2020
35,507 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
I can't see that it would ever be less than 50p a ride, but I get the idea Fozzy. If there's no human driver to pay, and the device is designed and run to be very efficient, it could be as low cost as buses but personalised to individuals. So lowest cost might be same as a bus ride e.g. £1-2 short, £5 mid and £10-20 for long journey? That would be pretty brilliant.  G
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Jul 2020
2:21pm, 6 Jul 2020
7,776 posts
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jda
No obvious reason why it would need to be more than about 20p per mile at current prices. Insurance, depreciation, fuel should all be massively down on personal car costs.
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Jul 2020
2:27pm, 6 Jul 2020
35,508 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
There's the cost of running the autonomous service - unless gov't has subsidized some infrastructure. What does everyone think the future of long haul will be? If we accept that human beings want to be able to settle anywhere on the planet, then families may be, like today, on opposite sides of the world, and legitimately want to see each other. Add on top tourism, if it's permitted and viable. How would we best ship people around long distances? G
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Jul 2020
2:45pm, 6 Jul 2020
60 posts
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unsliced
The government subsidises everything at some level, whether it's building the roads, writing the transport contracts or deciding what we're allowed to buy - ultimately they create the money and decide how much to leave us to spend by not clawing back through tax. Long term I suspect hydrogen is the way forward, at least for transport, with AV uptake being as much driven by the insurance companies as the big car manufacturers. (Driving yourself will become a leisure activity, much like horse riding, something that only the rich will actively choose, but which the insurers will price out of every day existence.) Governments might get involved, but that will be driven as much by lobby pressure as anything technical. There is a reason why KSA, RUS and similar are actively involved in first world elections ... |
Jul 2020
3:21pm, 6 Jul 2020
4,253 posts
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run free
Just got wind that govt providing some money to help local towns improve / create cycle highways.
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Jul 2020
3:49pm, 6 Jul 2020
10,551 posts
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rf_fozzy
Hydrogen, Hydrogen, Hydrogen. Just not going to work. For the mainstream. Here's why: - To make H2, you have to take water, use electricity to split it. - then cool it/compress it/store it - Then you have to take the H2 you've made and move it to somewhere it's needed. - Then you "fill up," the car - The car then uses the H2 to make electricity by converting the H2 back to water. - The electricity drives the car. Here's what happens in an EV: - Generate electricity from renewable source - Put electricity into the battery - The electricity drives the car. Think of each step of having an efficiency - 0 to 100% - in both cases neither are 100% at each step, but the H2 process is much less efficient. And bear in mind that steps 1 & 3 for an EV are also present in the H2 process, so it's the putting electricity into the car step that's the important one. But compare that to splitting+compression+moving the H2 (using H2)+filling+conversion. Some of these steps are very energy wasteful. The process is therefore far too lossy compared to an EV (which of course has issues too) And I'm not getting into the technical issues of storing H2 in your car - because it's a small molecule, containing it isn't easy - for example we can't just use the current NG pipeline network to move H2 around because it can leak from the pipelines. It's possible that you could fill up on H2 and then come back to your car a few weeks later and it'd be empty due to losses.... The advantages of the H2 process is that it almost exactly mirrors the oil/petrol process (which is why it has many proponents, but not only why - more on that in a moment) - but this is also a massively wasteful process (won't go into this now) and only works because the EROI for oil is huge. Hydrogen *will* have uses - particularly in big heavy equipment (e.g. diggers) where the battery weights would be prohibitive. And for use in polar and sub-polar enviroments where battery performance (on current chemistries) is like to be too poor. The other reason that H2 gets so much press is that it can be generated from natural gas (methane), so the FF people see it as a way of extending their profits. Why is this bad? Because to go from Methane -> H2 creates CO2.... |
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Jul 2020
3:54pm, 6 Jul 2020
10,552 posts
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rf_fozzy
Re: Geopolitics - yes. But. The market penetration of EVs is now such that it's already disrupting the oil based economy. There is a reason why KSA wants to produce as much oil as possible quickly - 1. it puts the tar sands and frackers out of business (they need oil > $50/barrel *at least* - probably closer to 100) and 2. They don't care if it drives the price down, as they want to sell as much of it as they can as fast as they can, as otherwise it'll be a stranded asset (and they already know this). But EVs are now around 2.5-5% market share, and are about to kick into the fast growth phase (already happening in Norway). All geopolitics can do now is slow the transition and I'm now sceptical as to how much that's possible too. |
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Jul 2020
7:45pm, 6 Jul 2020
10,557 posts
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rf_fozzy
That Cleantechnica article I posted earlier about ending the natural gas "bridge" is actually pretty interesting. A number of utilities in the US are closing Coal power plants and replacing them in totality with Wind+Solar+Batteries. No NG backup as one or two utilities have done. I'd argue the same is being seen in the UK - there are now only 4 coal power stations in the UK. The original plan was to replace some of the closed coal with gas. Yet in the past 10 years only 7 have been built (out of a total of 32) and the last one was 2016. Looking at this article from 2018 from Carbon Brief, BEIS projected needing only 6GW capacity of new gas (current total NG capacity 32GW). Half of this would be the one just announced at Drax. That might be the last Gas power station built in the UK and much like Hinckley C will be a white elephant. |
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Jul 2020
7:46pm, 6 Jul 2020
10,558 posts
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rf_fozzy
Sorry missed the carbon brief link: carbonbrief.org
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Useful Links
FE accepts no responsibility for external links. Or anything, really.- why Kodak completely missed the boat when it came to digital cameras
- rf_fozzy: This is quite a good article about how disruptive technology work
- run free's Grand Designs example Ben Laws is a man who built his dream
- Carbon Commentary carboncommentary.com
- UK ombudsman for problems with electricity or gas
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