Category: Climate change innovation

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Half of the world’s fossil fuel resources will be worthless by 2036

It is thought there are roughly £20 trillion fossil fuel resources left in the ground. Yet it is also recognised that in order to meet the temperature increase targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees c half of it needs to be left in the ground.

That means that £10 trillion of assets and resources owned by some of the most wealthy companies in the world cannot be extracted. Looking at it differently, worldwide companies will be desperately trying to sell 10 trillion pounds worth of useless products to get them off their books.

When you cut the bottom out of a market like that it can have devastating impacts. It is thought that the crash that this would cause would be bigger than that felt back in 2008.

Despite knowing that fossil fuel extraction is going to have to end soon, views on the safety of fossil-fuel Investments have not changed. Indeed, the UK, most local councils currently own fossil-fuel investments. 

Fossil-fuel Investments have been quite popular since they arrived. So long as the estimate of the amount of fossil fuels available is accurate, you will get your money back plus more – however if the fossil fuels you have invested in I left in the ground you are likely to lose almost all of your money.

The crash in oil prices during the epidemic is a very bold sign telling us what is going to happen. The big concern for oil companies is clear to see coming down the road. Oil demand did not disappear, it merely reduced as a few people were driving. Yet over the next 20 to 30 years, it is likely that virtually all of the world stock of fossil fuel cars will need to be replaced by electric ones. This will reduce fossil fuel demand by roughly 26%. This increases to 45% when you include air travel – and while currently we do not know how to replace all planes, the current crop of electric vehicles in the pipeline (particularly aircraft such as EasyJet single aisle 180 person plane run on batteries) are likely to reduce aviation fuel requirements by 50% or more. That increases the reduction in fossil fuel requirements to 35% at a minimum – this will occur in the next couple of decades.

Partnering this with a dramatically reducing use of fossil fuels to heat homes, we could easily see oil demand falling by more than half.

This will depress the price by so much that many different untapped resources will no longer be economically viable.

For economists and business analysts as well as those of us who are nearly amateur watches, the next few decades are going to be fascinating, building a market that moves away from a system they have used for hundreds of years is essential and must occur in perhaps as little as a decade.

What will the impact on large oil companies, when it becomes clear that resources that they have paid billions to exploit must be left alone? Will the companies even survive? Shares are likely to take a huge hit, and as each of these companies will see their core business lost, will there be anything to replace the huge profits that they have been used to over the last few hundred years?

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I wrote about blue hydrogen earlier this year, one current suggestion is to replace gas with hydrogen in heating – bad idea?

It is thought that when you add in all the unaccounted emissions, emissions from using hydrogen could be 20% higher than using gas itself.

We must make sure that current gas and oil producers are not able to move forward their idea of changing to blue hydrogen from gas. Green hydrogen – made by splitting water (if done with clean electricity) is completely clean. There is no point in ceasing to use oil and gas if we still need these things in order to create hydrogen.

Instead we must look to green hydrogen either using electricity, or indeed if progress continues, using catalysts.

There is no point in eradicating the use of fossil fuels if its replacement is worse.

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If the UK covered all south facing roofs with solar panels, this could provide all our electricity – but

Currently, the weight of solar panels mean that (along with the cost) it is rare that companies have the money to cover large roofs with solar panels.

A new product developed by a firm in Sunderland may change this. They have developed a light weight alternative which can be stuck in the same place panels would usually go. This method is much cheaper and at least as effective as many flexible panels.

They still have tests to run, but if they are a success, the company aims to start selling it 0.3mm thick solar film in the middle of 2022. This would also easily go on cars and lorries as well. Although the initial aim will be to cover large building, a lorry has roughly 20 square meters of flat roof space – even with relatively poor panels, this should make 20-30kwh a day easily. While an electric lorry will use more than this, over the year, a system like this could make as much as 6megawatt hours, which is certainly not to be sniffed at.

Could this new product move us faster towards gaining significant amounts of our power from solar? I would hope so.

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Vestas a wind turbine company has created a project which allows turbine blades to be fully recyclable

Given the huge number of wind turbines that are being created, and are eventually going to reach end of their life.

It is therefore odd that it has taken so long for people to start to make the blades recyclable. The thermoset composites are able to be split and then broken down into their initial component parts. These parts can then be reused as though they are raw materials just created. Indeed at the current time, the only part of a wind turbine that could not be recycled was the blades. As a result, wind turbines can become completely green after manufacture.

This destroys one of the few remaining arguments against wind turbines, and should make way for a significant worldwide increase in turbine deployment.

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Cop 26: successes and failures

There is much to be pleased about with how the cop26 conference went, unfortunately we are still not at a point where the promises made are going to meet the targets we know we need to hit. It seems that at least for now, the Climate change deniers have now been banned from the room – climate change ‘realists’ who basically claim nothing can be done and it is nothing to do with humans, are unfortunately still being listened to in some places.

Cop 26 brought together many of the world leaders

It is now recognised that while 2 degrees Celsius has been listed as a maximum increase target for some time, warming of this quantity will leave the world in a very poor place.

This is why for a long period, when these gatherings have occurred, the aim has been to reduce carbon emissions by enough to hit 1.5 degrees Celsius rise.

All of the current promises would get us to 1.8 degrees Celsius rise. Now it is encouraging to be that close, however clearly we have not succeeded yet.

There are other significant issues. Most countries promise to phase out the use of coal for electricity generation. This is because it is widely recognised that energy generation from coal is one of the most polluting. Unfortunately China, India, the US and Australia failed to join in this pledge. It should be remembered that Climate change is expected to cause the biggest financial burden on India US and Brazil, so it should be a self preservation move for these countries to help, but as yet this does not seem to be happening.

It should be noted that these countries do not deny the science they nearly aren’t willing to engage in a sensible solution.

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A trial of Silvopasture in Devon

I wrote about Silvopasture recently, there is now a trial going on down in Devon. A farmer is now planting huge numbers of trees sparsely across his land. Each row has trees roughly every 6m and each row is roughly 14m apart.

This will produce a patchwork of shade and sun.

Trees being planted are Oak Aspen and Alder – native British species.

Neighbours have suggested that he is mad, and concreting over his land would have the same benefit. Of course common sense would suggest that concreting over the land would leave far less grass than sparsely planted trees but there we are.

5600 trees will be planted across his 165 acre farm. He is taking part in a 12 year trail to see what benefit Silvopasture can have. The expectation is that the environment will benefit, but that there should also be increased productivity for the farmer.

If it can be shown that grazing sheep under sparse woodland increases yield, roughly 63% of agricultural land could have similar treatment. This could amount to hundreds of millions of trees across the country.

Studies elsewhere suggest benefits include reducing flooding increasing drought resilience, improving animal health and weight, as well as boosting biodiversity and sequestering vast quantities of carbon.

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Renewable energy could save more than $160 trillion in costs by 2050

There has been a constant argument that the cost of moving to renewable energy is too high. However, it is becoming clearer and clearer. Our descendants will quite rightly have a very low level of respect for us.

The idea of saving a small amount of investment now, and not worry about the trillions that this will cost in the future is quite disgusting. What is more foolish, is that while many of these clean technologies do cost now, they will save far more money in the future.

Throughout human history, the human race has fought to leave a better life for their children. Are we seriously saying that we are the first generation who is going to say we don’t care if we make life harder?

IRENA did the analysis, and the found that while global energy demands are likely to double by 2050, 86% of the 2050 demands could be met from renewable energy. The majority of this increase could be met through wind and solar. However, progress is not constant; Trumps foolish solar tariffs the USA lost 20,000 solar energy jobs – talk about America first!

The faster the transition, the greater the impact on the climate change fight. We dont just need to clean up our act, we are going to have to deal with all the damage from the last 2 centuries, and the quicker we make the change, the less clean up we will have to do.

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Placing small wind turbines on street lamps? interesting idea

Street lamps do not consume a great deal of electricity. Unfortunately, as there are many of them this rapidly builds up.

A new turbine that spins horizontally rather than vertically may make a big difference. Apart from anything, these turbines will be forced to turn as traffic passes, guaranteeing plenty of electricity each day. While these turbines are never going to make large amounts of power, given the large number of street lamps around the UK, it could generate a lot of power (it is estimated that it could create 6mw of power a day, enough to power a small village.

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A new disruptive airplane design?

The last time that I wrote about a potential Airline disrupter was back in late March. Interestingly, the source article was written back at this point but I didn’t find it for a few months.

In this case, the change is in design rather than in the fuel (the last article on planes was looking at using biofuels made from algae. I should note, that this is probably possible to power any aircraft, so both changes could team up.

In this case, rather than changing the fuel, the layout of the plane was changed. Rather than 1 relatively thick wing, they replaced it with 3 thin wings distributed along the body of the plane.

By having 3 sets of narrow wings, each part of the plane is supported.

One of the main advantages of this design, is that there is no natural rotating point. Generally the tail of the plan is required to keep the plane flying level (this tail is recognized as one of the most problematic parts of the plane in terms of efficiency).

Why is this design exciting? Well this plane would have a carbon footprint 70-80% lower than current aircraft. This means that it is incredibly cheap to run, and therefore cheaper for passengers to fly on. Also of interest is the fact that this design makes the aeroplane far safer. Due to its higher efficiency it can also fly an incredibly long way – 10,500 miles, far enough to easily fly London to Australia ( this would suggest that perhaps in the future, non stop flights to new Zealand are not too far off). Another advantage, is that due to its low drag coefficient, it would fly at 690 miles per hour (mach 0.9) – more than 100 miles an hour faster than normal passenger jets. In a similar way, London to Johannesburg would be a little over 8 hours.

So this plane would be cheaper to fuel, fly further and faster. It is predicted to be far cheaper to maintain, and to have a life span of twice current planes. It would have a wider body, so take more passengers than normal. It has a high lift coefficient, allowing it to take off from shorter runways, allowing it to access more of the world. Due to the how thing the wings are, they would not be able to store fuel anymore, so this would have to go in the proper body of the plane – current plans would be at the top of the plane over the passengers. As well as having a lifespan of roughly 50 years, it is thought that each plane will take half as long to build.

Whether we see an aircraft like this is anyone’s guess. Moving to one engine at the rear of the plane, probably rules out electric propulsion, though who knows. Of course with wings as slim as this it is unlikely to be able to accommodate dispersed power.

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