tingilinde

the power grid

A remarkable piece of work.  Some of the display choices leave something to be desired, but still 

a tip of the hat to Steve

 

 

 

 

changing times in france

French car ads must promote alternative forms of transportation.  

 

bbb and the energy landscape

How might the energy landscape change if Build Back Better passed

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

how early humans increased their energy budget

A new paper suggests we increased energy acquisition rather than by adapting to save energy. The paper is interesting, but paywalled.

 

Oddly familiar with what we do now.

 

 

the (huge) finger on the scale

Fossil fuel subsidies are enormous.

snip

...

The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.

Explicit subsidies that cut fuel prices accounted for 8% of the total and tax breaks another 6%. The biggest factors were failing to make polluters pay for the deaths and poor health caused by air pollution (42%) and for the heatwaves and other impacts of global heating (29%).

...

 

 

coal use goes up

Coal burning just keeps increasing.

 

on biomass

It isn't carbon neutral and is potentially quite bad.  Unfortunately some European countries have gone that route claiming to be green.  Not that many countries are doing well.

 

 

 

 

dirty hydrogen

Hydrogen has some appealing characteristics..  clean burning being the largest.  The problem is free hydrogen is very rare on Earth and has to be created by one of several process.  These have been given names.  Green hydrogen is produced entirely with renewable energy - usually electrolysis using solar energy to create the electricity.  Over 95% of hydrogen is produced by stream reforming of methane in natural gas.  It's known as grey hydrogen and of it is done by the oil and gas industry who have been principal cheerleaders.  It also happens to release a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmostphere. Blue hydrogen is essentially grey variety where the carbon is captured and stored.  The oil and gas industry has been heavily promoting it as the way forward and it gets a lot of Federal funding.  

 

Here's a webinar that takes down the notion that blue hydrogen is sensible. 

 

 

serious source of greenhouse gases and pollution in alberta

No surprises - fossil fuels need to be capped and then phased out.

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

 

battery tenders

Battery-electric train conversions?  Perhaps they'll make sense in the near future.