Renewable energy sources - the good, the bad and the ugly

Best sustainable energy source? Carbon Dioxide. Very few people are aware that it can be converted into a liquid fuel that can be used to power jet aircraft, old school diesel engines, even steam engines...The emissions can even be recycled.

Getting Snotters (for clarity, I'm NOT referring to anyone on here!) to understand that though is impossible!

 

For the thick amongst us, not referring to any one here, I think you need to explain.

 

What appears to be happening these days is every thing seems to be turning into a Hollywood blockbuster.
The covid thing was a great example with the scientists coming up with a vaccine just as the world population was about to be wiped out.
The short time that we have left to save the planet after pumping co2 into the atmosphere for a few hundred years we now have 10yrs to turn it all around.
Every thing is a competition these days, even gardening programmes are a race against time to get the job done by a certain time.

I think some people spend too much time watching films and quiz shows.

 

My son was telling me about this sometime ago. Porsche have been researching and investing into synthetic fuels for internal combustion vehicles. They are hoping to run the Porsche 911 GT3 motorsport series events on synthetic fuel’s by as early as 2022.

Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup at the Monaco GP will debut new 911 GT3 Cup race car, renewable bio-based fuel - paultan.org

Porsche researching synthetic fuels for internal combustion vehicles; first usage in motorsport fleet - paultan.org

I think the factory is based in Chile, they hope to be producing 550 million litres of the fuel by 2026.

 

I see the fuel is made from waste wood products?
As we won't be cutting down many trees in the future the amount of waste wood products will be dwindling.
Will they be enough to go round I'm thinking.

I seem to remember something like, you can't create or destroy any thing, you can only change it.

We have finite resources.

I think the very thing, the weather, which we are hoping to stop change of,holds the key to endless energy.

 

I was getting to the point of mentioning that use of wind,wave and solar are still going to impact the planet, but in different ways to fossil fuel.
Just thinking that if the weather is going to become more extreme then we need to harness that extra power, don't ask me how though.

I still think that all the time we keep over populating, we are on a collision course with nature.
And I think nature will win, but let them fiddle around thinking they're overcoming the problem.

 

CO2 is collected from the atmosphere. Electrolysis converts it to a liquid fuel. This fuel is a drop in replacement for the fossil based fuel currently being used in jet aircraft. Tests have shown Life Cycle Emissions to be between 80 and 90% lower than current fossil based fuels.

The same fuel can be used on older, non-electronic diesel engines if a simple "valve" is added.

 

Just watched the Panorama programme "The green energy scandal exposed" Drax

Panorama have proof that drax bids for primary forests out bidding lumber companies in British Columbia. Virtually all the trees are felled and turned into pellets. Yet Drax proclaim they only use sawdust, disease and rotten wood for pelleting.

BBC One - Panorama, The Green Energy Scandal Exposed

 

I've never understood how wood fired power stations can be considered 'renewable'. It's just a massive scam and I can't understand how or why people believe it.

Sure, when you burn wood, the co2 that comes off is the same as it absorbed while growing. Great, carbon neutral. Except for....

The wood doesn't magically just grow as fast as it can be burned. I've had bonfires. It takes minutes to burn something that took at least a year to grow.

The wood doesn't magically grow into fuel pellets. Some machinery has to be used to turn it into pellets.

I don't suppose the fuel pellets transport themselves to the power station.

There's a wood fired power station near me. They collect up all the old recycled timber from building renovation and demolition. Timber that when I was a kid would have been scrounged for DIY projects, fence repairs, allotment projects etc, and that wood isn't clean, it's invariably treated and or painted, raising the question of what else, apart from co2, is being released into the atmosphere.

Even if the fuel has been grown commercially specifically for fuel, there's the question of how much prime growing land is used for that purpose, as opposed to growing food or raising livestock, meaning food has to be imported to cover the shortfall, with all the co2 emissions that go with that.

To me, 'renewable' depends on the geography and local climate. In the UK that is primarily off shore wind, with a bit of solar, and maybe some pumped hydroelectric. In Spain and north Africa it might be primarily solar, and in Iceland it might be geothermal.

I also think we're missing a trick though. Everyone is pinning their hopes on some magical green energy revolution. Few are thinking about how we can adopt our way of life to use less energy. Our energy use just keeps going up. Some argue that our way of life is better now than a few years ago, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

 

Totally agree, but governments don't look at it that way. They are only interested in meeting net zero emissions nationally, importing and exporting does not count towards meeting zero emissions, it's classed as bunker fuel.

France are cutting down on domestic flights where the same journey can be done by train in under 2.5hrs, to reduce carbon emissions. This counts to meeting zero emissions, which is a step in the right direction. However, if international flights increase, this does not count as France the UK and most other countries don't take this into account in their net zero calculations.

The UK will not be bothered where wood pellets are shipped from, as like international flights this calculation is not taken into account.

 

I think that if there were a way for each home to be powered through it's own solar/wind power and only rely on the grid during long periods of neither sun nor wind, it would be a good thing.

I also think that rather than choosing a totally electric vehicle, the hybrids that also recharge their own batteries would be a good choice. Doesn't eliminate fossil fuel totally but diminishes the need and also makes for a more reliable mode of transport.

 

Solar, maybe. But wind is a non starter at a household level. Smaller turbines won't generate enough power to cover the energy used in their manufacturing and installation.

With wind turbines, size matters. It comes down to the formula pi r squared, the area of a circle given its radius. As you scale up, the effective catchment area grows way faster than the materials used so if you had two turbines, one twice the size of the other, the bigger one would of course use more materials, but it's efficiency would be a lot more than twice that of the smaller one.

The end result is small turbines might be useful for off grid scenarios, but they're not an eco solution. Huge turbines are the way, and this is why off shore wind is a winner, partly because it's almost always windy at see, but mostly because you can get max efficiency by building them absolutely huge, limited only by our engineering capabilities.