Carbon emissions reduction – Page 3

February 29, 2020May 13, 2020

What should the government do about hybrid cars

I believe hybrids should be banned alongside pure petrol and diesel engine vehicles: they generally only have a range of 20 or 30 miles at most before you need petrol or diesel and as such even on a standard commute usually they cannot run purely on electricity. Furthermore unless the buyer is a person who for instance is elderly and only used it to go to the shop once a week this setup means the majority of the use will be in a fossil fuel mode. Hybrids are away for fossil fuel cars to make themselves look cleaner. However, this requires you to have a full working fossil fuel engine and a fully working electrical propulsion which means the vehicle is more complicated and more likely to break down as well as not doing either job particularly well.

At the moment the plan is to ban hybrid as well which is good. A hybrid that does not allow more than 90 % of travel miles to be done on electricity is not good enough.

However other countries are being more ambitious on when they banned the sale of new new fossil fuel cars, and it is being suggested actually bringing this date forward further 2030 would save UK consumers a considerable amount of money. One of the reason that government set targets so far in the future is so that all the Industries involved can be sure of where they stand, the UK may have been one of the first countries to say that they were going to ban fossil fuel cars but their date was so on an ambitious that one year later they are already moving it 5 years sooner still, and there is a potential to need to move it soon as still- which would suggest that the government has failed miserably to to give a clear framework for what is going to happen in the future.

February 1, 2020May 13, 2020

P&O have ordered two new ferries which reduce carbon emissions by 40% being partially battery-powered

While some short distance Ferries have have already gone battery-powered these were across short strips of water. The British channel is a slightly different magnitude of issue. Although the crossing is only 20-30 miles wide (at its shortest) this is still an order of magnitude larger than on pure battery powered craft that have been used in the past.

December 21, 2019May 14, 2020

Adding seaweed to cattle diet 70% reduction methane!

Humans are aging co2 and other warming gases to the atmosphere at an increasing rate through our activities.

Much of these warming gases come from travel, though in the long-term this will be significantly reduced, by electrification.

Other activities appear harder to reduce emissions. One such area is farming. There are all sorts of issues in farming, but as far as emissions are concerned this issue, is methane, which comes from the animals (essentially cows breaking wind).

All sorts of solutions have been suggested, including fitting cows with a device to store the gases for use later (usually burnt for heating).

However, a recent study has suggested a novel solution. They found by adding a small amount of seaweed (around 2% of volume) into the cattle feed, can reduce the gas creation in their stomach by as much as 70%.

This would be a relatively cheap solution, that can cut farming emissions dramatically, and potentially adds an industry for coastal communities as well. It is also likely far simpler and cheaper than farmers trying to collect the gas for future use.