The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

[Mav]

That final point is the one I’ve been making repeatedly. You say there’s a market for catalysed byproducts of methane and that the market will absorb any amount produced. But that is exactly the Redcycle problem. Once you divorce production levels from market demand for byproducts, you’ll have a Redcycle oversupply which can’t be sustained.

You also sing from the fossil fuel industry’s songbook: give us ironclad long-term contracts and subsidies to clean up coal, gas and oil and we’ll do it. They realise that investors will be looking at how they’ll compete against alternatives 5, 10, 20 years down the track and they know they won’t like what the future holds.

You moan over CFCL’s demise. But it shut up shop in Australia because the government wouldn’t compel energy companies to buy the product. At best, it was a transitional solution. It converted natural gas into energy. The draw card was that it would emit much less than coal-fired plants running on brown coal. But that’s like saying Carlton would do better than me on the list than Zac Williams in the coming year. Both involve setting a very low bar. And we can do better than “we’re better than the crappiest product”.

If that technology was a winner, wouldn’t it now be a major player? Oh yes, I forgot: the Deep State and powerful lobbyists have strangled it at birth.

[LP]

That final point is the one I’ve been making repeatedly. You say there’s a market for catalysed byproducts of methane and that the market will absorb any amount produced. But that is exactly the Redcycle problem. Once you divorce production levels from market demand for byproducts, you’ll have a Redcycle oversupply which can’t be sustained.

You're assuming no change in the market, Redcycle's problem is that it ploughed ahead too fast, before there was a market to sell to or infrastructure to handle the product. They collected 300x the waste they could convert, they became a patsy waste repository for all the green councils to dump the unwanted rubbish at and get a pat on the back for recycling, another con! Now the same councils and politicians are trying to blame Redcycle for failing, I bet they bury the lot or a good portion of it and blame Redcycle for that as well!

You ponder why they aren't doing it already, it's a chicken and egg question, at the moment there are no hydrogen consuming resources to sell to, we already produce more hydrogen than we can store or use so it just floats out of the atmosphere. At the moment it's considered a waste just like some of the methane from certain mining operations, and that designation is a crime. It can be fertilizer, it can be pharmaceuticals, in fact it will be because if we ban / close much of the natural gas mining then those industries will be forced to look for the methane they use now from other sources.

Many of the leaks are coming from capped wells, not capped because they want to stop it leaching in the environment, capped because it has an intrinsic value, the capped mines are storage units not the waste repositories, it's a future resource and they know it. Another crime is that they are not required to do anything with it, they get richer everyday it stays in the ground, they get richer for doing nothing!

Hydrogen won't be a by-product, it'll be "the product."

CFCL wasn't just about natural gas, that is the marketing blurb, they had already developed stacks that used methane and hydrogen, when they folded they were developing a stack to capture and convert some harmful toxic gases. Natural gas was just the thing investors could understand, the place residential houses could get energy from by pipeline or bottle. A large chunk of the northern hemisphere industrial installations of the technology run on methane by-product from the dairy industry, as I have already mentioned. There were several sites using captured methane from geothermal processes, but I know that has a longevity issue due to sulphurous contaminants so they might no longer be running.

[LP]

Interesting to read some debate around micro-nuclear, these are sub-100MW reactors being developed by several countries, designed to power a suburb not a city. R&D is happening in the USA, Japan, UK, France and Sth Korea, it may well be under way in China as well somewhere. These are the systems some refer to as "nuclear batteries", they can be small enough to be transported by crane or plane and fit on a suburban block or in a building basement, and delivery energies like 9MW at that scale, that's on average enough to feed 3ooo homes.

One of the big arguments against this micro-nuclear was the rising costs, the opponents claim the increased costs of materials has pushed the unit energy cost from $50 to $80 per Megawatt. The primary factor was the rising cost of copper, which up about 40% at the moment, and even higher increases in Europe. The they go on to claim SolarPV and Wind is getting cheaper, the price per Megawatt falling all the time! :o

What I'm really interested in is this, what are those magic and cheap materials that SolarPV and Wind have found to replace copper so they can achieve this fall in costs while competitor energy sources suffer increases?

As far as I know, Wind is the energy industries biggest user of copper, those turbines are basically 300T of CP(Commercially Pure) copper on a 80m high stick. Even the cables and cooling system use specially formulated copper alloys to get the energy out with minimal loss.

Even SolarPV uses a lot of copper, SolarPV generates DC not AC, the high voltage DC has to be converted to AC. High voltage DC needs heavier cables than AC, the invertor process uses copper, etc., etc., there is even copper in the heat stinks and panels!

So if you haven't worked it out yet, the claims that rising costs (primarily copper) are driving up the unit energy cost of micro-nuclear making it not viable versus SolarPV or Wind are bogus!

If they are going to oppose something then oppose it, it's all good that is how things get better by being challenged, but don't make up bullsh1t just to justify a political position.

[ElwoodBlues1]

The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries Zero and Low Emission Report 2022 appeared in my inbox and it has some interesting facts and statistics that may confuse or amuse depending on your take.
Petrol and Diesel sales make up 86% of the market which in total cars sold numbers was 1,081,429.....for those still discussing the merits of hydrogen the Aus public decided 15 Hydrogen powered cars was all they could muster so I think its going to be a very long time if at all before Hydrogen powered vehicles gain any traction in the land down under.
Of course there has to be infrastructure to make it happen but with no sales its a bit of a what comes first in terms of the chicken and the egg scenario. With only three filling stations based in the ACT, Sydney and Melbourne its going to be difficult to get people interested and you have to wonder how green that hydrogen they are supplying is as well, probably from a 3rd party steam/methane dirty variety source..
The EV vehicle market is owned by Tesla Model 3 and Model Y...other manufacturers sales are off a cliff in comparison to Elon Musk's offerings, next best are BYD Atto and Polestar so you are buying an experiment if you buy one of those new brands...

Toyota own the Hybrid market.......its a no contest approx 76k for Toyota and the next best being Lexus(Toyota) with about 3k.
I wonder what affect these fuel saving Atkinson effect engines which usually come with these Hybrids is having on overall total fuel savings?
Plug in Hybrid sales are poor, seems no one wants to know about them even though they would be my preferred option.

One interesting stat is the Governments takeup of EV's....which includes Federal, State and local....488 Fully EV vehicles only bought by those in charge who want the public to Green up but dont seem that interested themselves...thats a pathetic amount considering the pressure on the average joe to do his bit for the environment as well as corporates.

[LP]

[member=57]ElwoodBlues1[/member]‍ it's all about infrastructure.

For the moment EVs are being purchase by the green elite and / or casual road users, the problem is recharge times. Most only have single phase at home so a fast charger is not an option unless you they out $20k for a big battery and have access to a large area for north facing solar. They are OK if you potter about each day and can slow charge overnight, never approaching the range limit. Of course some do not care about recovering the costs so they do it as a community benefit project, but a lot of people cannot afford that option.

If you are lucky you might have an employer who has setup charging in the carpark, but they are few and far between.

Public slow charging is available but still in trivial quantities. When I attended a conference in the CBD a couple of weeks back and made note of the charging options, they had 34 chargers available, when you look at a wall of these things it seems a lot but the carpark has just under 2000 spots. If each car charges in 30mins you can only charge 68 per day, maybe they charge in 20mins so that's 102!

I've a mate in the UK who was an early adopter of the Tesla, he raved on and one about it, and how he'd recharge for free at the supercharge station while getting a coffee, they have them on the freeways. But just last week he was complaining that it's getting harder to get the free fast charge, many of the popular / convenient sites now require you to book a time slot. and at some in peak hour you now have to pay a peak demand fee like the way Uber apply surcharges! As an early adopter he paid nearly $250K for the Tesla 100D and is eligible for free for life recharging, but the free part is becoming untenable, he feels conned and is seriously thinking of going back to a hybrid!

My mate joked with me about a Green politician in the UK that is pushing for EV Ambulance, when they did the sums it's would only reach 27% duty cycle due to the constant need for recharging ( The average is about 60% but don't ask me how this is measured ). They worked out that fast charging helped, but that slashes the battery life and the fancy battery is many times the cost of one used in a car.

In the short term I doubt hydrogen is a viable option for cars, at least not until residential hydrogen generation becomes available but it's still in it's development phase. However, hydrogen is a very serious option for commercial or public transport, perhaps even agriculture, where you can have your own depo / refilling stations.

[northernblue]

EB, I think that will turn as the dinosaurs move through the political/public service system.
Government has a duty to provide practical support.

[LP]

Hopefully one day somebody will be able to explain to me this little curiosity.

If EVs are about saving the environment, and in EV land efficiency and range is king, why the feck do they cover these things in LEDs like they are a mobile Christmas tree?

They are so glitter they are almost as offensive as Liberace on viagra overload, not a pretty sight!

[LP]

Quite a nice rant, built on an error, a bit lengthy, bit verbose, but well worth a listen if you are interested in the reality of the CO2 emissions scenario.

He covers the vehicle operation and part of the origination, but doesn't include emissions for solar panels or home batteries. And he doesn't account for the early demise of the combustion vehicle well before it's origination overhead is exhausted.

I screwed up about EVs - big time | Auto Expert John Cadogan - YouTube

We need nuclear now, in fact we needed nuclear yesterday, but everyday we delay things get worse.

[ElwoodBlues1]

Germany have closed their last nuclear reactor and essentially have gone back to coal to fill the energy gap.
Wonder if Greta will pay them a visit...?

[LP]

Germany have closed their last nuclear reactor and essentially have gone back to coal to fill the energy gap.
Wonder if Greta will pay them a visit...?

This is a tragedy happening before our eyes, although you might note that Germany takes a big chunk of it's energy off France, France is basically 100% nuclear. However, the war has made for slim pickings in the energy market and the capacity is being stretched to the limit, there are serious possibilities of people freezing to death in the next European winter.

So much for the affluent west!