climate fuels
stoat | January 10, 2008Clean coal - as in burning and capturing the CO2 - is an idea being floated. There are obvious problems (apart from anything else, the capture and storage costs extra energy and so burns even more coal...), and AFAIK only a few pilot schemes exist. So the story that a commercial-scale plant was being built was interesting. Desmogblog commented on it under the heading "The Expensive Myth of Clean Coal" (and just in case youre not inclined to follow the link, there's an extra bonus of a gratuitous tart-in-a-bikini awaiting you). It looks to be a coal-industry boondoggle: for a $1.8B plant there…
stoat | January 5, 2008A mind-bogglingly stupid article in the Times came my way. Someone has built a small aeroplane powered by batteries. So far nothing exciting. But then to report the claim Ms Lavrand said that the fuel cost per hour of the Electra was â¬1 (70p) compared with about â¬60 for an equivalent petrol-driven machine. The motor and batteries will cost between â¬10,000 and â¬15,000, about the same as existing small petrol engines. I don't believe that a 25 hp engine would be anything like â¬10,000, nor that the fuel price disparity could be a factor of 60 - it should be the same as for electric/petrol…
stoat | November 15, 2007OK, who knows how electric car emissions compare to, say, diesel in terms of CO2/km? I mean pure battery electric, not hybrid. Obviously you have to assume some generating mix to produce the electricity, and the answer might vary for where you live: if you take France's 70% nuclear electric then you get a different answer to our coal/oil/gas/electric mix.
But are there any decent numbers up anywhere?
[Update: the first commenter seems to have found the best ref, thanks. The answer is that EVs are a bit better but it does depend on what you're burning to make lectric.
Note: the Times on friday…
stoat | November 5, 2007Inel points us to a report by the IPPR, WWF and RSPB claiming that we can cut our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. My immeadiate reaction is doubt. Comparing their numbers with what I had from a previous post, I don't see any reason to change my mind.
Inel, rather naughtily to my mind, simply posts the report without offering any comment, which is a cop-out.
So where do these people get their numbers? Fig 4 (p 14) shows that by 2050 electricity will be more than half gas CCS (carbon capture and storage), and most of the rest a mixture of wind and biofuels. Their estimates for wind are high…
stoat | October 9, 2007Via GBM I find Statkrafts plans for osmosis power plants. An interesting idea and entirely new to me.
Statkraft are a bit coy about the costs. This chap says its too expensive now (I don't know if thats true, its only there for balance).
stoat | October 4, 2007Another study weighing in against biofuels, this time by Nobel Prize winning Paul Crutzen. Yes, I said that just to wind up Maribo - read his take. I've long been skeptical (septical?) of the biofuels stuff, especially corn-based ethanol, which looks more like pork for farmers than a sensible policy. On the conventional view, CBE is at best marginally useful in reducing CO2 emissions (but in which case the same money would be far better off spent elsewhere) or actually harmful. In a sense, this doesn't matter, because its driven by pork barrel politics not science, but I suppose we can hope…
stoat | June 14, 2007 World oil supplies are set to run out faster than expected, warn scientists but this turns out to be the usual suspects. Its in response to BP: BP's Statistical Review of World Energy, published yesterday, appears to show that the world still has enough "proven" reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates. The assessment, based on officially reported figures, has once again pushed back the estimate of when the world will run dry.
But the Peak Oil folk (well, Colin Campbell) say it's quite a simple theory and one that any beer drinker understands. The glass starts full and…
stoat | January 24, 2007Having been rather negative about bio-fuels, I'll be positive and mention The ethanol program in Brazil. And the abstract is: The number of automobiles in the world has been growing fast and today requires one quarter of the global petroleum consumption. This problem requires adequate solutions, one of which Brazil has achieved with the Sugarcane Ethanol Program. This paper presents the history of this program, from its launch in the 1970s to the today's condition of full competitiveness in a free market. It also shows how it can be replicated to other countries, in order to replace 10 per…