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While these fuels power much of the creation of electricity around the world, as well as most transport and heating, they all need to either be left in the ground or 100% of their emissions. Below is a roundup of a group of articles of importance on these subjects.
Uk’s £22 billion carbon capture pledge follows surge in lobbying by fossil fuel industry, records show
Continue reading “Oil, Gas and coal roundup ( more in future)”
The car industry has done a great job over the last roughly 30 years, of confusing people. It was once the case, that there were 2 different states – the first cars were electric (so suggesting that modern electric cars are a new technology is ridiculous) and then we developed internal combustion engine vehicles. This meant that there were 2 different types of propulsion 1. fossil fuels (petrol, diesel) or 2. electric cars, charged from the mains.
Toyota developed the Prius back in 1997. At the time, a huge step forwards – it only had a battery of 1.3kwh, but this was enough to store energy recovered from braking and release it back, when the car was able to start moving again. This was the first mild hybrid as it is now called.
Continue reading “Motoring body saying “UK needs to ban full hybrid cars by 2030 or face net zero ‘catastrophe’ (only cars that can drive on pure electricity)”
Now the article (click here to read) goes on and on about this, talking about Musks previous perspective on Hydrogen, the roads being full of this future “stupid fuel” and how this might impact tesla future (suggesting dual fuel would be good – it did not help Toyota).
So, while this article came out in early November, the fact check that I have looked at came out in December (I am sure that there was an earlier one). Click here to read the fact-check but it is outlined below.
It is thought that the rumours came from various online videos and articles, with one specific piece frequently regularly cited. However, despite the fact-checkers tried to find this cited evidence, they were unable to find any about a Model H. Further more, large tech companies did not report this.
Given Elon Musk’s historic disgust on the use of Hydrogen in cars, it should take a lot of evidence to suggest that this was right. Furthermore, the suggestion that Tesla would have fully switched by 2025, rather than offering both is particularly ridiculous.
Is this false story good for Eldario24? Well, clearly it had a moment in the sun, but certainly I will not be bookmarking them. I believe that they should be punished for their behaviour.
So, when someone who is chairman of the car company which sells the most cars in the world says something, people listen. Toyota sold a total of 11.23 million cars in 2023, out of a market of around 92 million cars, or around 12% of global car sales. So perhaps he is right? Well a large number of people do not think so.
His arguments against electric cars include
Well, lets look at the statistics.
Continue reading “Toyota now claims just the electric car market will never be bigger than 30% – you have to be kidding”
This is a particularly odd behaviour. It is significantly cheaper to generate electricity by virtually any form of renewable electricity. We are making great progress in cutting our carbon emissions (in 2022 UK emissions fell by 3.5%, but this progress will be delayed for some time, and unable to drop as far as they need to) and these power stations will last for 20-30 years, which means that even on the low end, these power stations will be still running in 2050.
As can be seen from all of the renewable sources of electricity, their costs are declining fast. The cost of gas is already more expensive than wind, and that does not account for catching the carbon from it (which will hugely increase the cost per kilowatt hour. Likely making it more expensive even than nuclear power.Â
While Rishi Sunak has suggested that we need gas to power the UK, that is rubbish. We have 25 years. Furthermore, renewables are always cheaper over their lifetime, which means that by 2050 we will already have saved money overall. I am confused as to who wins – though given Sunak has included this in the conservative manifesto, suggesting that this is in some way a political move.
We can only hope (at least on this front) that the polls do not change, and Conservatives are pushed out of power. This is thought that in 2022 14% of carbon emissions came from the gas powered power stations we have. Whether Labour will do the right thing and reverse this decision, we will find out in the future.
Rhino are unable to sweat, which means that as temperatures increase, both black and white rhino are more and more reliant on finding shade, in order to keep their huge bodies within safe temperatures – will there come a time, where this is impossible? What other species might be at risk, even far from the poles.
The study that the article is based on comes from the university of Michigan, and is frankly badly, badly made. It is the quintessential study, where this is the answer, now how do we get there, sort of study.
So, what did they do? Well, they put gardens into 3 different categories
Your backyard garden has about as small a carbon footprint as it is possible to have, it is possible that fruit or veg from here actually has zero carbon footprint. Community gardens can be a bit different – you have a small area, so you might use more compost or fertilizer, and it is possibly further from where you live, so you might drive to it. However, this kind of place also has a low carbon footprint.
It is essentially just the Urban farms which are a problem here: growlights and watering and temperature controls all add up to large quantities of energy.
This video shows this is an easy way to understand.
Do not be put off! If you have an allotment or a vegetable patch in your garden, this is almost completely carbon free food, it does bring down your carbon footprint.
It is unfortunately the kind of study you can find in a newspaper like the Telegraph; I do not think it would be a surprise for any readers to hear, that this is not the place readers go to find out about the new scientific studies of this kind.
Exxon is like many other oil companies – they have buried their head in the sand, and have continued to deny the science.
What astounds me, is that, over the last 3 years, the price of Exxon shares has gone up 3 times over. This means that the majority of people who are investing in the market, believes either that there is a killing to be made from Exxon before it goes out of business, or climate change is wrong (it is true that investment in Exxon 3 years ago would have tripled, but a long-term investment is unlikely to be successful, as Exxon has to completely change its business model.
So, why is Exxon buying a shale giant?
Clearly, it thinks that there is money to be made, before the world transitions. The problem is that should Exxon be right, the world will suffer more global warming.
We already need to leave much of our known reserves of fossil fuels in the ground, Shale gas, is just more,
We need to be moving away from fossil fuels as fast as we can.
How is your family doing? As for us, we have bought a second had electric car, we have just installed our solar and thermal solar, and will in a couple of weeks, have a heat pump installed that will remove our last reliance on gas (these two moves, will have removed carbon from our travel and from our house running and heating – we also have zero carbon electricity). Obviously we still have a way to go, but we are making progress. Of course, from a finance point of view, it is a good move – it is true that our car was more expensive than anything we’ve had before, however, the purchase cost will only take 6-7 years to save back , and our house greening has a payback time of around 4 years- after that we should be several hundred pounds better off each month.
Exxon is still betting that there is more money to be made before the good times are over, however they are betting on our future.
It is foolish to invest in them, either they are right, and will make a fortune while the world suffers, or they are wrong, and this business venture will collapse.
In 2021, the year after Donald Trump left the white house, the USA emitted roughly 13.49% of the world emissions. To put that in context, it is over twice the emissions from the 27 members of the EU and the UK combined (this is despite the USA having a population of 330 million vs almost 500 million across these 28 countries). So, how could Donald Trump make that worse?
Well, in the first Trump term, he was largely finding his way, and by shunning anyone with experience, it took quite some time. This will not be the case during a second time.
So what has happened since he left the white house, and what can he do.
During the last 4 years, major climate legislation did a number of things. These include reversing a move to end a crackdown on governmental climate scientists (because you dont want expert advisors working for the government?) a frenzy of oil and gas drilling permets, and making sure that the Paris climate accords were not only dead, but buried.
So what is expected of Donald Trumps second term if he gets in?
Just to start:
He is also likely to undo all the good moves that have occurred under president Biden (perhaps of highest priority, getting rid of the Inflation reduction act, which cost 370 billion dollars and was there to support clean energy and electric cars – without a single republican vote, and looked on as the biggest defeat republicans have had.
The American first Policy Institute (pro trump) critisized Bidens “apocalyptic green fantasies” and said “Our nation needs a level regulatory playing field for all forms of energy to compete, Achieving this level playing field will require the repeal of the energy and environment provisions withint the Inflation Reduction Act”. The act has already been gutted by the house, which is currently controlled by the Republicans (this as republicans continue to turn up for ribbon cutting occasions paid for by the act in question). Thankfully, though, these projects are so popular, it would appear impossible to fully get rid of them.
The stupidity of this move – aiming to undo what little progress has been made, should mean Trump being elected would be impossible, though whether it will is another matter. Global warming will hit America hard, furthermore, Americans could each save thousands through taking on these new ideas.
It is also not true that there is a war on oil and gas production, with record levels reached under Biden last year.
It would be a clear shot in the foot, and would likely lead to the USA returning to being a Pariah on the world stage. Whether the American population will be able to hear and understand this is a different question.
The UK watchdog (amongst many other groups) have concluded that hydrogen boiler is a stupid idea. It is true that its only waste product is water and oxygen, but the cost of making the hydrogen is very high.
Should there be large quantities of hydrogen sitting around, then this might make sense – burning hydrogen is generally a very clean fuel. The problem is, that it is almost impossible to store or transport it without loosing much on route, and it is incredibly expensive to split water – the current form for the vast majority of the hydrogen on the planet. Fossil fuel companies are keen, because their old methods can extract and split hydrogen, but it will mean large carbon emissions as well, so is useless – there is a reason that it is called grey hydrogen. Green hydrogen is the only kind that will give us any profit as a world.
So why is the government supporting the switch (alongside gas focused industry). The department for energy security and net zero stated this week that the gas network ” will always be part of our energy system”. I am not sure why anyone would look at it, given an air-source heat pump is likely to be around price parity, and ground source heating even cheaper.
Installation, at the cheap end will be far cheaper than a heat-pump, but this will be more than made up for over the lifetime of the device. Furthermore, with the grants currently available, you are far better off going straight to a heat pump. This is a waste of time and money, and it would not be remotely surprising, if you had to remove it before the end of its life,as it would be costing too much
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