Your Carbon Footprint

Tenson - efficiency. A power station is more thermally efficient than an internal combustion engine (ie a greater %age of the energy in the fuel is extracted as useful output), and an electric motor is extremely efficient (95%+), so the resulting efficiency is higher than an internal combustion engine. Also, I haven't seen many coal-powered cars (although apparently some merc diesels will run on coal dust).

 

Isaac - I'm not sure how true that is. Apparently a typical remote power station is only about 50% efficient in terms of the power that ultimately reaches the consumer. Vast amounts of energy are lost in the form of heat.

I was also intrigued to hear that the process of building the Three Gorges Dam in China will apprantly output the equivalent of 50% of the CO2 which would have been output by coal fired power stations in order to produce the same quantity of electricity simply in the production of the necessary concrete used. I'm not sure over what period of time this is evaluated though, but it makes you think.

The vast majority of total energy use a car is responsible for during its life is used in the manufacture of it. The benefits of fuel efficiency seem a little bit meaningless really. I expect CO2 output is relative to this too.

Heard some interesting proposals recently about localised power generation - eg. homes using the waste heat output from a new generation of condensing boiler to generate electricity and return it into a local grid spur (sail with me on this as I'm just repeating a rough recollection of something I heard on Radio 4).

The thinking goes that with localised schemes (housing estates and regeneration with this technology as part of the plan); possibly a greater number of small/local power stations; greater use of solar panels and small wind turbines there could even be an energy surplus where homes/housing estates could actually end up financially in credit as then sell their own power into the local grid surplus to their own needs.

There are also some additional benefits regards how power needs are managed and more flexibly responded to which the current national grid struggles with. This area of thinking is supposed to be quite well considered and very much here and now in technology terms, it just needs some serious attention from Government. The gas price issues we are seeing this winter should be seen as a spur to get this stuff into action.

 

I work in the energy business - consensus is that electric cars run from fossil fuel power stations wont save anything. The whole thing only works if we go nuclear or perfect fusion. You also have to consider the implications of battery manufacture and disposal, as well as transmission losses on the grid getting to your charger (which are considerable).

It might be better to use nuclear of some discription to create hydrogen fuel using electrolysis at the power station then distribute.

Hydro power also releases Co2 and methane from the submerged rotting vegatation - it is perhaps the most environmentally damaging form of power in many ways.

 

There isn't any. It's just Ecobabble. The electricity for a pure electric car has as you say to come from a conventional power station, (unless you have a windfarm or solar panel farm etc in your garden!!). These of course are some of the biggest polluters of the lot. Hybrids on the other hand do make some sense as they "self generate" the electricity for the battery. Talking of batteries, one has yet to be made of materials that aren't poisonous to the environment.

Anyway, it's all nonsense. Ultimately nuclear is going to be the source of the majority of our power requirements. There just isn't any other viable alternative. Unless you want to cover the entire surface of the oceans and landmasses with wave and wind generators. We are just going to have to accept that as humans we are going to affect the environment we live in and adapt to deal with it. As for the whole we're "killing" the planet argument. Well that is nothing but arrogant egotistical nonsense of the highest order. species come and go, that is the natural order of things. Every species on the planet is contributing to the death of some other species in some way. Even if we were to drop all the nukes we have in one go we couldn't kill the planet. we would eradicate ourselves and many other species but some will survive and continue to evolve just like has always happened. Historically there have already been several extinction events and there probably isn't more than 1 or 2% of the species left on the planet than existed 200million years ago anyway, yet we managed to evolve to the level we did dispite all that. If we make the world uninhabitable for ourselves and a few other hundred species some other species will come to dominance and eventually take our place.


GTM

 

5 for two of us, but mainly because of hydro power and many miles by cycle, but unavoidable air travel on business. We thought of acquiring fear of flying and to try to claim a boat trip on travel expenses, but I don't think the company'd wear it for USA or Japan

 

Nuclear is cool anyway - just look at godzilla!

 

Or Dounray and Chernobal :yikes: I have little faith in BNFL

 

The deaths from both are dwarfed by deaths due to other forms of power or the consequencies of global warming. Nuclear is the only option - fusion could have been perfected 20 years ago if only money had been sunk into it rather than america trying to scupper the whole thing due to pressure from the oil lobby.

Plus real estate sprices will go down in all major cities due to occasional devastation by giant mutants spawned by radioactiuve byproducts!

 

3 tonnes - not bad for a house with no insulation or double glazing (cheers landlords!) and 3 people.

Mind you, none of us drive...

 

The deaths, statistically may be less from fission so far, but only because huge amounts of effort and cost are made to avoid it. Without any form of waste disposal plan, nuclear is an obscenity.

I too am sure nuclear is inevitable, because going back to lower energy use or pop size simply wont happen. As for fusion, I think you are talking out your hat. There is no physics that says you will get more energy out than you put in, unless you have 'free' compression by gravity. Fusion research like much esoteric science is [IM not so humble O] a nice gravy train for overqualified academia funding.

 

I think Hydrogen fuel cells seem promising. They only produce water and heat as by-products don't they? We just need some decent cash put into making them work.

 

Nonsense - if global warming occurs billions of people may die - even if 10000 nulcear power plants blew up the damage would be less severe. Nuclear neurosis.

Fusion has been funded at a very low level - it could have been completed years ago but the US energy lobby did everything to oppose it. As for talking out of my hat I have a PhD in theoretical physics and now work in the energy business. Fusion is now making leaps and bounds and the most recent work indicates that things are much less complicated than originally thought in temrs of the nonlinear MHD behaviour of the plasma. If the same will exisited that produced the first atomic bomb or put a man on the moon it could have been with us years ago. Fusion research is hardly esoteric science - m-brane theory is esoteric science.

 

So the rest of you can all shut up!!! :SLEEP:

 

It is esoteric if it is still part of theoretical physics. If Chartered Engineers could design them in bulk at a reasonable cost then they could save our sorry asses. I agree the atomic bomb and manned spaceflight are excellent examples of what can be achieved by expending vast amounts of energy for little practical return.
Its hardly elegant design to consider the effort required to contain that which doesnt want to stay there - plasma. Tidal power [as opposed to wave energy] was being used in the middle ages in the UK [eg Dover - Domesday book]. Britain has first rate sites, were it not for the vista of rich pigs, who would block any proposal under the umbrella of 'the environment'. If you think there is a conspiracy against fusion, look into the history of Severn estuary tidal power. It is a scandal that this power is continuously wasted with achievable technology.

IMO the best way to plug the increasing energy gap would be a male contraceptive pill. Let's hope that arrives soon.

 

a male contraceptive pill would spell the end of the human race far more quickly than any nuclear shenanigans.
i still reckon big mirrors in space focussing sunlight onto collectors whcih convert the sunlight to microwave energy which is then transmitted to earth is the way to go. all the stuff that could potentially pollute is stuck out in space which against some mad environazis beliefs - has no environment for us to fcuk up.
yes you'd need some damn good safety interlocks to stop the satelite irradiating the surrounding area if things went wrong but then we walk arround all day with mobiles clamped to the sides of out heads or nuking our balls (hey maybe that's the male contraceptive right there)

 

It is cutting edge engineering and physics - not esoteric as it is already being translated into practical application. Dountless one day they will be mass produced. Just because currently it does not give net energy it does not mean it will never do this.

You might argue that the atmoic bomb achieved little practical return whatever that is but history argues otherwise even though you might not like it. The spaceflight programme has brought untold benefits - satelite communications for a start. Lets pick the human genome project as a better example

 

9 here, but I couldn't answer the insulation ones as we are a cob cottage, trust me three foot walls are good insulators. Also we heat with a wood burner which is probably bad, but that was not in.

Also I find it a bit ironic that a company until recently didn't give a flying f**K what it did to smaller countries eco systems, and who last year made £9b clear profit is trying to make its self out as holier than thou. Anyone care to remember the oil spill after oil spill not so long ago?

 

Good idea but to some it may sound a bit too much like a directed energy weapon, just think one small adjustment in the mirror alignment and Goodnight Vienna.

Devices like the Pebble Bed Reactor are starting to feature in peoples thinking as ways need to be found to bridge the future energy gap. What we need are open minds not minds wraped in dogma from previous generation of thinkers who often connect nuclear reactor design and nuclear energy production with the likes of Three Mile Island & Chernobyl.

 

BP has been developing alternative energy strategies for the past decade. Find out more about there environmental concerns here Isn't it a good thing that they are listening to concerns rather than ignoring them completely?