89 replies to this topic

[MikeTekRacing]

if you have the cars electric - any improvement to the grid's distribution of green energy will have an effect on car pollution.
It's easier to improve in time.

[404KF2]

Even hydro power has a massive carbon footprint, mainly during construction (concrete, drowning forests etc unless it's run-of-river).

[MikeTekRacing]

everything has a cost upfront. The more you use that, the less of a real marginal impact there is per generated kwh

[404KF2]

Of course, and the environmental footprint has to be adjusted to account for capital replacement over life cycles. Basically, anything humans do with technology cannot be carbon neutral.

[gruntguru]

Not sure I agree with that. If all our energy comes from zero carbon sources eg renewables and nuclear (fission or fusion) the human race will be zero carbon.

[404KF2]

Well, for just one factor of production of nuclear: concrete has a huge carbon footprint. Utterly massive.

[Greg Locock]

You mean like the concrete they use for the foundations of the 20 year lifetime windmills?

 

[Greg Locock]

That's a small one by the way

[404KF2]

You bet!

[Greg Locock]

For the same amount of electricity produced, windmills require 50 times more steel and 60 times more concrete than nuclear reactors.

 

Oh.

[404KF2]

Good factoid there.

[MikeTekRacing]

 

For the same amount of electricity produced, windmills require 50 times more steel and 60 times more concrete than nuclear reactors.

 

Oh.

 

and space, and they are clearly more unreliable.

I think the anti-nuclear movement got it very very wrong. But nuclear has some real drawbacks too, the risk is quite a few times bigger for the same amount of electricity produced than windmills

[Greg Locock]

Good factoid there.

OK, where's YOUR calculation to disprove it? Crickets, no doubt. Admittedly that was using 2 MW windmills

[404KF2]

I was agreeing with you!

 

good grief....

[Greg Locock]

factoid (n) an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.

 

Thus endeth the English lesson for today.

 

 

So I think you can see why I didn't think you were agreeing. No harm no foul.

Edited by Greg Locock, 24 July 2024 - 06:00.

[djr900]

For the same amount of electricity produced, windmills require 50 times more steel and 60 times more concrete than nuclear reactors.

Oh.

That may well be true, but windmills have some good points - they can be dismantled, removed & recycled the day after they come to their end of life.

If a windmill goes wrong , there doesn't need to be an exclusion zone around it for a 1000 years

How many windmills could be built with the steel & concrete that has been used to enclose Chernobyl ?

[404KF2]

factoid (n) an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.

Thus endeth the English lesson for today.


So I think you can see why I didn't think you were agreeing. No harm no foul.

My Oxford Dictionary says factoid is a brief or trivial item of information. Anyway….

[kikiturbo2]

and space, and they are clearly more unreliable.

I think the anti-nuclear movement got it very very wrong. But nuclear has some real drawbacks too, the risk is quite a few times bigger for the same amount of electricity produced than windmills

no, not really...  it is about the same... actually less for nuclear..

 

https://ourworldinda...duction-per-twh

[kikiturbo2]

That may well be true, but windmills have some good points - they can be dismantled, removed & recycled the day after they come to their end of life.

If a windmill goes wrong , there doesn't need to be an exclusion zone around it for a 1000 years

How many windmills could be built with the steel & concrete that has been used to enclose Chernobyl ?

I have never understood the need to dismantle Nuclear powerplants... they occupy such small area that you could really just remove the fuel rods, lock everything up and forget about them for the next 200 years..

[jcbc3]

As a complete aside, here is a web page that very easily understood tells how a nuclear plant in Sweden is dismantled.

 

https://www.uniper.e...antle-barseback

[Nathan]

Even hydro power has a massive carbon footprint, mainly during construction (concrete, drowning forests etc unless it's run-of-river).

 

I mean, is it massive relative to the alternative?

 

1 cubic yard of concrete creates 400lbs of C02. Hoover Dam, for an example, required 4.4 million yards.  So CO2 contribution is 800,000 metric tonnes. 

 

But every year Hoover produces around 4 billion kwh every year.  Avg C02 emittance for a kwh in the U.S. is 0.86 pounds. 1.563 million tonnes of C02.

 

That dam has been operating for 90 years now, saving something like 140,000,000 tonnes of C02 - a 99.4% reduction. That 800k isn't so massive anymore and 99.4% is certainly close enough to carbon neutral to not discount it?

[MikeTekRacing]

no, not really...  it is about the same... actually less for nuclear..

 

https://ourworldinda...duction-per-twh

statistics are dangerous That's a death statistic, not a risk one. I'd be interested to see how wind kills people

 

We can probably find data that bullets and swords killed more people than nuclear bombs too - but that doesn't  mean the risk is similar. 

[MikeTekRacing]

I mean, is it massive relative to the alternative?

 

1 cubic yard of concrete creates 400lbs of C02. Hoover Dam, for an example, required 4.4 million yards.  So CO2 contribution is 800,000 metric tonnes. 

 

But every year Hoover produces around 4 billion kwh every year.  Avg C02 emittance for a kwh in the U.S. is 0.86 pounds. 1.563 million tonnes of C02.

 

That dam has been operating for 90 years now, saving something like 140,000,000 tonnes of C02 - a 99.4% reduction. That 800k isn't so massive anymore and 99.4% is certainly close enough to carbon neutral to not discount it?

it is even better than that, because you didn't account for the CO2 generated building/transporting the other sources. 

 

A lot of people in their numbers assume fuel grows directly in their tank - while for electrical they take all the pipeline into consideration

[gruntguru]

Life cycle carbon footprint of various generation technologies. https://en.wikipedia..._energy_sources

 

Coal about 100 times nuclear and wind. And yes it does include the concrete.

[Nathan]

Startling... https://en.m.wikiped...reenhouse_gases

[MikeTekRacing]

I think that's a big problem warm seas and oceans have too...the surface is quite a bit larger than reservoirs

[404KF2]

That dam has been operating for 90 years now, saving something like 140,000,000 tonnes of C02 - a 99.4% reduction. That 800k isn't so massive anymore and 99.4% is certainly close enough to carbon neutral to not discount it?

 

Yeah it is, but the point is that anything we do with tech has a carbon footprint. Some more, some less. I was not saying hydro's not massively cleaner than thermal lignite plants, natural gas plants and so on!

[Secretariat]

 

Toyota joins with Coca-Cola and Air Liquide for heavy duty hydrogen fuel cell truck test programme

 

"Air Liquide, a leader in the production and distribution of low-carbon and renewable hydrogen, supplies hydrogen from renewable origin for this project. This collaboration highlights the significance of concurrent development of both vehicles and infrastructure to foster a more sustainable society.

Through these hydrogen truck projects, Toyota intends to support the decarbonisation of heavy duty road transport, which accounts for a quarter of European freight transport based on tonne-kilometres performed. Commercial trucks’ usage patterns and their demand for large volumes of hydrogen position them as key contributors in developing sustainable hydrogen infrastructures."

 

https://hydrogen-cen...test-programme/

 

What are the advantages and disadvantages of this as opposed to EV freight truck development?

[MikeTekRacing]

advantage could be quicker fill time. 

Disadvantage:

- complexity

- infrastructure

- efficiency per energy used. 

[cbo]

What are the advantages and disadvantages of this as opposed to EV freight truck development?

Longer time between stops, faster refuelling.
If current research into megawatt-charging products some practical solutions, then we might see truck chargers of 1000-3000 kw, being able to charge a battery truck in, say, 30 minutes or less.

The hydrogen truck is still an EV-truck, by the way. It just gets its electric energy from a hydrogen fuel cell instead of a battery.

[Secretariat]

advantage could be quicker fill time. 

Disadvantage:

- complexity

- infrastructure

- efficiency per energy used. 

 

Based on the article, what are you thoughts regarding the infrastructure disadvantage given that infrastructure is part of the solution proposed in this venture.

 

Longer time between stops, faster refuelling.
If current research into megawatt-charging products some practical solutions, then we might see truck chargers of 1000-3000 kw, being able to charge a battery truck in, say, 30 minutes or less.

The hydrogen truck is still an EV-truck, by the way. It just gets its electric energy from a hydrogen fuel cell instead of a battery.

 

I could have been more clear. When I say EV freight truck development, I am thinking battery based solutions like what Freightliner discusses vs hydrogen fuel cells: 

 

https://www.freightl...-the-batteries/
 

Also curious to your thoughts as well regarding the infrastructure variable. It would seem that this test program has synergies that can gauge the practical application of hydrogen fuel cells in heavy industries.

[MikeTekRacing]

I think heavy industries are doable - thanks for sharing super interesting. The inefficiency is still an issue, and with larger consumptions come larger numbers. Industrial purchases are way more cost driven then personal ones (which are a lot more emotional) so it's an interesting area to keep an eye on.

I view hydrogen as a more of a storage/alternative to large batteries than a solution to cars. Convert the excess power (or cheaper power) to hydrogen and deploy it when needed 

[Greg Locock]

Green hydrogen is a research project -usually paid for by the lucky taxpayer. I know a couple of people working in that space, there's no sign of a process that is economically feasible as of now. It looks like something like 10-30 times the cost of nuclear per kWh is where it'll sit using current tech, from memory. Many politicians have been talked into believing in it, hence the grants.

[MikeTekRacing]

Green hydrogen is a research project -usually paid for by the lucky taxpayer. I know a couple of people working in that space, there's no sign of a process that is economically feasible as of now. It looks like something like 10-30 times the cost of nuclear per kWh is where it'll sit using current tech, from memory. Many politicians have been talked into believing in it, hence the grants.

yes, the efficiency for producing it is terrible

[cbo]

Based on the article, what are you thoughts regarding the infrastructure disadvantage given that infrastructure is part of the solution proposed in this venture.


I could have been more clear. When I say EV freight truck development, I am thinking battery based solutions like what Freightliner discusses vs hydrogen fuel cells:

https://www.freightl...-the-batteries/

Also curious to your thoughts as well regarding the infrastructure variable. It would seem that this test program has synergies that can gauge the practical application of hydrogen fuel cells in heavy industries.

I used to think hydrogen fuel cells (FC) would be a necessity for larger trucks, but I doubt that is the case today.

Battery-powered trucks are already on the road and in use for shorter range movement of goods and the potential for longer ranges is definately there. At least in northern and central Europe, which is what I'm looking at.

Currently, the electricity production in the EU has a higher percentage of wind and solar power than oil, coal and gas and nuclear energy production is increasing. So it makes sense to use BEV-trucks. Charging infrastructure is not a real problem - EV chargers already abound in north and central Europe and Europe needs to upgrade is electric infrastructure anyway.

As for hydrogen production, it only makes economic sense if you can get the electricity for free. I.e. if you can fire up production when wind and solar are producing in excess of requirement on the grid.

[kikiturbo2]

Another option for getting Hydrogen is in high temp nuclear reactors, by electrolisys, thermochemical reaction or a hybrid of those two...

 

having said that, the transport and use of hydrogen in vehicless is a mess and further processing into some sythetic fuel might be a better option..

[PJGD]

https://www.autonews...-term-advantage

[P.Dron]

The expression "Saving the planet" is bullshit. The planet is fine. It will recover in a short time after the extinction of homo sapiens, a million years or perhaps less.  

[GreenMachine]

Green hydrogen is a research project -usually paid for by the lucky taxpayer. I know a couple of people working in that space, there's no sign of a process that is economically feasible as of now. It looks like something like 10-30 times the cost of nuclear per kWh is where it'll sit using current tech, from memory. Many politicians have been talked into believing in it, hence the grants.

 

I knew someone involved in 'Carbon Capture and Storage' (CSIRO), and get exactly the same vibes.  Twiggy's recent signal from his pullback/slowdown/whatever is I think the cold shower we have been waiting for on green hydrogen/ammonia.

[cbo]

The expression "Saving the planet" is bullshit. The planet is fine. It will recover in a short time after the extinction of homo sapiens, a million years or perhaps less.

Good point. Perhaps it should be "Saving our planet" i.e. the keeping the planet alive but subservient to the needs of homo sapiens.