philba said:I sure hope this is a step along the way - an H2 economy would be a wonderous thing. especially if H2 was generated from green sources like PV and wind. As I understand it the storage and transport problems are the biggest ones.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/04/30/gm-could-have-mass-market-hydrogen-vehicle-for-sale-in-five-year/
philba said:I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that PV and wind won't scale up. Wind is, already, nearly cost competitive with coal fired electricity. PV costs are still high but should decline over time. CSP pencils out as cost competitive with coal but is at an early stage. All it will take is a new round of pollution controls/carbon taxes to tilt the equation the other way. Already a number of US states are requiring an increasing percentage of consumed electricity to be from green sources though I disagree with the mandate approach and favor tax based incentives to allow economic laws to work.
Vast stretches of the American west are prime real estate for both wind and solar. I could see them becoming very significant net exporters. There are many parts of the world that are suitable.
Yes, H2 is a storage medium but has the advantage of being an internal combustion fuel so it can be used for aviation as well as other sources.
Nukes? Maybe when there is a true energy crises will they start building them but the design/build cycle is incredibly long. PV and wind will be on much faster cycles and can meet the needs much more nimbly.
Tim_B said:I have taken a different concept on reducing my carbon emissions, in relation to that generated for my transport and that is to reduce the amount I use.
I'm just in the process of changing my car from a 50mpg model to a 75mpg model.
Another great solution is to also think twice, do I really need to make the journey?
Its impossible to provide the replace the fuel required to push those 15mpg tanks around but reduce the demand and while you will still have a need for fuel you can drop the amount needed to a more sensible amount
philba said:yeah, but I was listening to an NPR story on refineries and they said that the amount of down time due to maintenance this year was significantly above the average of previous years. hmmm... makes you wonder.
I don't disagree we should be conservative with our resources. Yeah, I know building new refineries is politically untenable but if I were in charge and could manipulate the price by increasing down time a little bit, it would be tempting. especially if I and my buddies running the other refineries were just "shootin the breeze" about all our maintenance "problems". Nothing like making better margins...
philba said:yeah, you are right, collusion never happens...
Sceadwian said:What's with zero carbon emissions? Nothing wrong with carbon, basis of all life on earth after all, we breath it out naturally it's what we do to exist as biological organism. It's what to do with it if there's too much of it. How about just coming up with some method of chemically converting that carbon into a 'stored' physical state instead of having it run around free in the environment. Something like the functions plants play in the environment...
How about large Algae farms which convert carbon into simple sugars? All they need is a little light and air.
How much scientific effort is used to study and understand new methods of producing energy and how much scientific effort is used to study and understand new methods for storing it? Could learn a lot from nature.
We as a species have spent virtually our entire history using and coming up with new ways of 'spending' energy. Using energy is NEVER a problem. Global climate change is a key sign of that. One way or another either from our alteration of nature (deforestation), or our direct carbon output we're disturbing the carbon cycle on earth, in the midst of a time when it appears earths carbon cycle is already on the change.
I like the idea of using simple organisms such as algae to store energy. The only problem that remains is creating dense controlled environments for them to exist in. Even the most polluting modern companies nowadays are using biological assists in their waste treatment. Entire genomes have been patented, they're on the verge of creating outright entirely new organisms, with a microscope and a needle to push things in the right place.
Anyone that thinks there is a plain and simple fix or one 'right' answer to this 'problem' is trying to push snake oil.
We're DAMN good at using hydrocarbons. Extracting them from the environment we've sent them too... Perhaps that's the next step.
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