Greenhouse gas emissions

Hi Coby  interesting question 

A long long long time ago in galaxy far far far away .......

There was a time when burning stuff was really great , really useful and embodied in pretty much most of our technology and engineering , it is arguable that the progress of mankind is actually corelated to the increased temperatures we attained by burning fuels , but thats a long story .

The 1990s level (as all countries have agreed to) is interesting , as it doesnt include the massive impact by China on global emissions , because in 1990 it was relatively low energy economy , however since 1990 the use of fossil fuels has risen , despite billions being poured into emissions reductions and in some cases rather wonk thinking , but hey wonk thinking is just a matter of friends agreeing but claiming to have no knowledge of wonkness , only 6 years ago I thought nuclear fission was the only option we had , and the wind turbine would never top 6MW output , and that turned out to be wrong didnt it .

The first lesson is perhaps this ,not everything is a greenhouse gas , water vapour could quite easily tip the whole thing into a self heating cascade ,however beacuse we have the poles this is unlikely , but even then as we are seeing other instabilities ocur which cause weather patterns to start to make all life and complex fauna have lives that are more precarious.

the second lesson is , is combustion still a good idea ??? mmm well there is a bit of battle of the wonks here , personally I dont think combustion is finished as a technology , in part because what is proposed to replace it can have problems , for example pretty much most Li On battery technology doesnt recycle well,,hence the new popular tech of old batteries being used , which isnt such a good idea because old batteries can go wrong/fail and in in quite spectacular ways that your local firebrigade will be unable to put out as its a chemical fire and self sustaining GULP, but aside from that in some examples such as power stations only combustion will give the large sorts of power outputs when its dark and no wind and given it takes a lot of energy to make Hydrogen  ,the hydrogen gas turbine isnt really the genius thing it seems to be , but some big engeering companies were all into it a while ago , nor i think is Hydrogen as a transport fuel , to put this into perspective , a diesel powered modern railway engine , when you do all the figures for green Hydrogen and its keeping , will transport more people for less CO2 than Hydrogen.

The third lesson is what if someone had invented a really cool way of doing high energy combustion ????  watch this space !!!!

If we should crack 'perpetual motion' I would predict a sudden increase in the suicide rate among theoretical physicists, therefore for now perhaps we should concentrate on making the battery bank last as long as we can eh?

Not sure that Nero had the right idea!

As an oldie I remember the CEGB and SSEB was heavily into majority coal /Nuclear generation. attending IET CPD talks on this topic gives an idea of how far we have moved, eg on gridwatch.co.uk, as i write this at night, 55% of  generation is from renewables, 22% Nuclear, 15% CCGT, 2% Hydro, 7% Biomass. Coal 0% and Oil 0% also 45 % of 55% renewables was Wind power. There is no such thing as a zero emissions car as mining materials, manufacturing all create emissions and I agree that batteries have their issues. However as York city are showing recharge is likely to move to overnight domestic / Park & Ride 8 hrs + and at work parking, with a variety of slow, normal and rapid charge points to cater for different requirements, Distribution companies are addressing the issues of upgrading supplies to areas without suitable capacity. The problem may be finding a petrol/diesel station in the future?

The recharging does take many times longer than filling a tank - some hours instead of 30 seconds to a few minutes often the longest wait is in the queue to pay.,  - The only way to do it that fast electrically, would be battery exchange, which is not being seriously considered for anything bigger than some electric motorbikes at the moment. - though as we can use regeneration for braking, there is less energy needed on a stop-start journey, as you only drain the batteries when you are accelerating and overcoming friction and air resistance. You still need motor power of some tens of KW and you do NOT  get back any that which is  used for prime moving, just the fraction that would have gone on heating brake pads, and wasted idling in traffic jams, but that can be half of it, so is very much  a saving worth having.

Mike,

I would appreciate being given more information on this 'electric engine' . The use of the motion of the front wheels and air flow for charging makes the whole thing sound like a perpetual motion machine. Charging power is surely always going to be a problem. The power transfer at a petrol pump works out at about 10 to 15MW, whereas a plug in system is maybe around one thousandth of that, so that the equivalent of filling a petrol tank takes 1000 times as long. I have been promised that my road is to be recabled  so that future demand from electric vehicle charging can be met. Not sure where the power will come from. We have burnt a lot of coal in the last couple of weeks.

The price of cells is currently falling.  That's why you can buy electric vehicles with longer ranges at lower prices than you used to be able to.


Before long, we may have UK battery factories using lithium from Cornwall.  Someone has realised that there's lithium in Cornish granite.  It's not a particularly high grade ore, but there's an awful lot granite in Cornwall.

Using electric power is, from and engineering standpoint, far superior. Right now the source of the electricity is the real challenge.  Lithium cells are not very energy dense I'm afraid. It needs 1000kg+ of cells to produce as much energy as 100kg of petrol or 5kg of hydrogen (not precise figures but you get the idea). My current car would need 1000kg of cells for a 350 mile range (big car). Whist the technology will improve it is never going to get to parity. The cost of cells is likely to rise as the raw materials become scarce and the batteries are already more than 35% of the total cost of à battery electric vehicle