Ben Lockwood (broadly defined)
Ati@benlockwood Yes it is a huge step forward. That said the latter is deeply stucked in chinese supply chain / dependency on rare earth minerals. Making it independent of dictatorships (mainly China) and Dunkelflaute proof at the same time ... would take a lot of time, money and effort ... that nobody really seems to be making at the moment.
@benlockwood I'm not being pedantic as issues I'm referring to are major. Renewables have their own problems, they ain't 1:1 substitute for big oil yet, and wouldn't be for a long time as everyone's busy hyping how cheap chinese solar panels are but almost nobody's busy building biogas plant every second village to survive that Dunkerflaute without that Hormuz stucked tanker really 💁♂️ So great renewable solutions science gave us, pity nobody's building holistic working system really. 🫣
MatthewToadAgain@ati1 @benlockwood Look at the proportion of electricity coming from fossil fuels in various countries.
Over the last year, only 28% of UK electricity came from fossil fuels, and another 7.5% from biomass.
Some other European nations use even less fossil fuels already.
Studies suggest that getting to 95%+ is feasible with only renewables and short term storage.
Sure, there's a problem with the last 5%. There are a number of solutions, all of them have problems.
But biomass isn't a viable answer. You get *hundreds* of times more usable energy from a field of solar panels than from a field of energy crops.
And solar panels don't have to compete with food; they can be put onto buildings, they can be combined with animal shelters, some crops, etc, and they can be put on low grade land. But even if they did, using biofuels will use **WAY** more land.
And, sadly, it already does, thanks to the use of biofuels in transport and (occasionally) electricity.
"Holistic solutions", sure. For electricity that means a mixture of renewable sources, grid interconnectors, dynamic demand, storage etc.
And it means being sensible about demand - gigawatts of datacenters to support a bubble that is bound to burst soon and is already losing money make no sense.
But energy crops are a non-starter. Genuine agricultural waste can only provide a tiny fraction of total energy demand.
That of course means we need to stop flying. It means heat pumps instead of gas boilers for home heating. And so on. Decarbonising electricity is arguably the easy bit.
@ati1 @benlockwood And yes, as far as transport goes, I know there are problems with EVs. In particular, they make up approximately half of the total mining needed for a "green growth" energy transition. And they are heavier so emit more human-hazardous particulate pollution.
And charging costs way more for people who can't charge overnight at home. Replacing every petrol/diesel car with an EV will take longer than we have.
The answer to that is degrowth. Fewer cars and more public transport.
Electric buses weigh the same as hybrid or diesel buses, are quieter, and lower cost to run.
Most shipping could go electric too, depending on the price of batteries.
What isn't practical is flying.
Dźwiedziu@MatthewToadAgain
> And they are heavier so emit more human-hazardous particulate pollution.
As we're in a field of pedantry, I'm going to ask for citation about that.
Can be with division per fuel type.
Also transport can go electric without batteries and rubber wheels with rails.
@dzwiedziu @MatthewToadAgain @benlockwood That again might be compliated. If most of our supposedly planet - saving EVs are not electric rail cars, not bikes/cargo bikes, not Twizzies, and not even Corsas but 500bhp chinese made Teslas ... driven in a "whooooah my Tesla does 0-100kph in 2,9s" all the time then, well 💁♂️ 😂 Just look at tires topic on any EV forum. They re full of "how can my tire set possibly be gone in 15kkm" XD. All I am doing is accelerating 0-100 in 3s with a 2 tonnes Tesla XD
@ati1
Still “plural of «anecdote» is not «data»”
And data would be needed to regulate if f.e. such cars don't need a enforced eco mode by default.
Or to regulate mid- and heavy individualised transport in favour of light individual transport and mass transit.
(I'm not going as far as to ask if there is still time for that, I had enough blackpills lately already.)
@dzwiedziu @MatthewToadAgain @benlockwood Sure, you re right, any decisions have to be made on data. For tires use per fuel type / car type we would need to scrutinise every set of tires bought and/or recycled and connect those with number plates. That would give us close to real data. Because if we do some normalised test that doesn't involve how people use their cars we would land with crap on the input crap on the output. Like official data saying hybrid compact uses 1,7L petrol/100km or so 🤣
@ati1
I would rather leave that to proper researchers, as you're right there is a need for proper methodology and statistically sound results.
I will remain silent on the “official” fuel/energy usage statistics not to get myself angry too much.
I will just say that they're the opposite of the above.
Maybe I'll add that the supposed reason for the gear up light in manual transmission cars is to keep the fuel use nearer the theoretical number.
@dzwiedziu @ati1 @benlockwood As far as tyre wear pollution goes, the early figures looked implausible, but more recent studies confirm that most particulate pollution comes from tyres and braking.
Braking is increasingly a non-issue because of regenerative braking (even on some petrol cars).
But tyre pollution is on the order of half of all road particulate pollution. Road abrasion is another quarter (Imperial College London study):
More recently it looks like the two largest sources of microplastics pollution overall are tyre wear and clothing.
However, we have barely scratched the surface on what can be done with better tyres. While the problem can't be solved it can be improved.
More to the point, it's yet another reason for fewer cars and more bikes, active travel, buses and trains.
@dzwiedziu @ati1 @benlockwood And yes, there isn't time to replace every petrol car with an EV.
Nor is there the economic incentive since the bottom end of the market are 1) capital sensitive and 2) pay much more for charging because they can't charge overnight at home if they don't have a garage/driveway.
And in fact even if we did the sheer amount of mining needed would be a serious ecological problem - though not as bad as continuing to extract fossil fuels, which already creates sacrifice zones, killing people and ecosystems alike, let alone the impact of burning the end product.
But again the answer to "we can't replace every car quickly enough" is straightforward: more public transport, more active travel, and replace the remaining cars (and other road vehicles) with electrics.