Ford Transit Gloria Detroiti?

[Moo]

Ok, I do have a solution, .... devotion of effort towards renewable energy production and energy conservation ...

Just in case anyone missed this bit .....

 

[Flyfisher]

That's a fair, though qualitative, point. Surely a practical solution has to be quantitative? Of course it must be 'a good thing' to develop our renewable energy resources in much the same way as it must be 'a good thing' to reduce our energy consumption, but such statements don't easily convert into practical solutions without some numbers by which we can determine if our efforts are of any consequence. Faced with a burning building it's clearly 'a good thing' to throw water at it, but if we only have a cup then the effort involved is futile whereas a high volume pump and a nearby river would be a different matter altogether.

Biff's graph showing the 'thin red line' of renewable energy in comparision with overall consumption of, largely, fossil fuels gives that sense of scale - and it's rather alarming. The other graphs within that article are also alarming, particularly the trends of per capita energy consumption.

But the really alarming thing is that the world, in general, doesn't seem to be particularly alarmed. Certainly not alarmed enough to move itself onto a "war footing" and really focus on tacking these issues in a manner that could have some quantitative effect. It's very difficult to understand how the world might become alarmed enough to take drastic action, especially when the actual effects of climate change and oil depletion operate so slowly.

 

[AMc]

I find it undeniable that we need to concentrate on meeting our energy needs from non destructive sources, its a shame that we are still collectively not pushing this hard enough. Feed in tarrifs and microgeneration are window dressing the problem. We need serious investment (in the UK) in tidal, wave and wind generation both implementation and research.

A sobering thought to me at least was in in this article in the Guardian where Richard Dawkins talked to David Attenborough, Attenborough said this...

What problem do you hope scientists will have solved by the end of the century?
DA: The production of energy without any deleterious effects. The problem is then we'd be so powerful, there'd be no restraint and we'd continue wrecking everything. Solar energy would be preferable to nuclear. If you could harness it to produce desalination, you could make the Sahara bloom.

Using the solar energy at the sahara to power Europe and feed Africa would be an extraordinary project...it would take the global arms budget to achieve it though

 

[biffvernon]

Thanks, Flyfisher. That last post of yours was really good. The problems are bad, the solutions hard to find, perhaps impossibly hard to find, but while there's life there's hope (as Dan Dare used to say).

Ok, here's one practical step. I would have mentioned it a few posts ago but it was embargoed till today. My friend David Fleming, who died in November, was to have presented his new publication on Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) to Parliament at a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil on the 18th of January. It will now be presented by his co-author, Shaun Chamberlain, supported by Caroline Lucas MP, Jeremy Leggett and John Hemmings MP. The report, edited by Beth Stratford, one time classmate of my daughter, has been published today and is downloadable as a free pdf from http://teqs.net/report/ Please grab yourself a copy and pass it on as widely as possible. This document could be the basis for a really powerful solution to much of the problem facing humanity.

The rest of the solution lies in Lean Logic, the book that David Fleming has been working on for the last thirty years. It was finished, give or take some minor editorial work, just before he died and we're busy getting it ready for posthumous publication. Somewhat of a door-stopper, weighing in at over 650 pages but big problems can't be solved with a pamphlet. Watch this space later in the year.

Edit: Sorry the TEQs report is not available as a free download until 18th January. Meanwhile you can buy a paper copy for £9.50 from
THE LEAN ECONOMY CONNECTION
P.O. Box 52449
London NW3 9AN

 

[Flyfisher]

Using the solar energy at the sahara to power Europe and feed Africa would be an extraordinary project...it would take the global arms budget to achieve it though

Yes, that's the sort of thing. It may not be very PC to mention this, but I've long been amazed at how a continent with such incredible mineral and other resources can remain, essentially, such a poor area of the world. Perhaps this will change as the Chinese seem to be moving in, presumably to secure natural resources for their own expansion plans.

Alternatively, perhaps the Arabian countries will become motivated to develop solar power for export to Europe; after all, they'll be at the forefront of the effects of peak oil. It's not as if they've got much more than deserts anyway, so why not cover them with solar generators and export the captured energy?

 

[Flyfisher]

Thanks, Flyfisher. That last post of yours was really good.

Just the last one? :lol: :wink:

Sorry to hear about your friend, though it sounds like he's left a fair bit of reading. I'll look forward to it.

 

[Moo]

Just to bring this thread down to earth with a resounding thump, here's what happened to me yesterday:

A parcel delivery - my very own slow cooker, from Amazon**.
First there was the large cardboard box to open.
Inside was a much smaller cardboard box, padded out with lots and lots of crushed brown paper.
Inside that (a tight fit) was the white box that contained the slow cooker, together with protective moulded polystyrene and other bits of plastic and cardboard.

It was a bit like one of those Russian dolls....



** All the local shops had run out of the smaller model, and I suspected that when the new stock arrived it would no longer be "on offer", hence going on-line.

ps We have collapsed all three boxes and stored them for future use. The brown paper has been flattened out and put in the recycling bag.

 

[AMc]

Using the solar energy at the sahara to power Europe and feed Africa would be an extraordinary project...it would take the global arms budget to achieve it though

Yes, that's the sort of thing. It may not be very PC to mention this, but I've long been amazed at how a continent with such incredible mineral and other resources can remain, essentially, such a poor area of the world. Perhaps this will change as the Chinese seem to be moving in, presumably to secure natural resources for their own expansion plans.

Perhaps we shouldn't stray into colonialisation, the world bank, arms and defence suppliers and globalised commerce?
Broadly a little money in a poor state goes a very long way to get what you want, even if its worth a lot more. I really don't want to get into why Africa is poor - other than to say I don't believe the average subsaharan peasant is predominantly to blame for their predicament or the continuation of desertification.

Alternatively, perhaps the Arabian countries will become motivated to develop solar power for export to Europe; after all, they'll be at the forefront of the effects of peak oil. It's not as if they've got much more than deserts anyway, so why not cover them with solar generators and export the captured energy?

Distance springs to mind - it's a (comparatively) short distance between North Africa and Southern Spain and into the European grid. I can't pretend to know how good the grid between Eastern Europe and Saudi is but I'd be guessing at "suboptimal". Then there is the issue of power loss in transmission.
Depending on the people you believe the UK grid loses something between 5 and 50% of it's input energy to delivery and it's a long way to Morocco & Algeria via Spain.
I have read about projects to make this a practical application using ultra high voltage lines but it remains in the theoretical space until energy costs are so high or solar generation so cheap that it makes economic sense to build the network.
There would also be geopolitical implications in powering Europe from Africa and we'd need to work out an energy storage strategy for when it gets dark.

Japanese scientists have an alternative plan to put a mirror in space to focus solar energy on parts of their less than geographically ideal country to boost generation yields. It sounds like science fiction, but then look at communications satellites. It's probably doable and it would be entirely within their control.

I suspect that the developed world will continue to pump (not really enough) money into fusion research in the hopes of creating an independent, limitless power source. In the mean time a bit more blood and guts approach to large scale renewable energy which meant we spent more money on capacity and were prepared to make the same compromises that allowed Drax to be built would help a lot IMHO.

Japanese Solar Space Generator link - seems they want to collect the energy in space and use lasers/microwaves to get it to earth
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=farming-solar-energy-in-space

 

[biffvernon]

Plans are advancing for solar pv in the deserts, but not without issues:
http://www.desertec.org/

 

[Flyfisher]

Then there is the issue of power loss in transmission.
Depending on the people you believe the UK grid loses something between 5 and 50% of it's input energy to delivery and it's a long way to Morocco & Algeria via Spain.
I have read about projects to make this a practical application using ultra high voltage lines but it remains in the theoretical space until energy costs are so high or solar generation so cheap that it makes economic sense to build the network.
There would also be geopolitical implications in powering Europe from Africa and we'd need to work out an energy storage strategy for when it gets dark.

I've read that DC grids are far more efficient than the usual AC ones. I also wonder about the current state of the super-conducting art these day. I'm not sure about the technical feasibility but a worldwide grid would seem a good way of solving the 'night time' problem of solar PV. But even if it were technically possible, the political considerations would probably make it impossible in practice.

I wonder how the world would react if we discovered a huge asteroid on a collision course with Earth and impacting in 2100? I would bet that we'd be able to come up with some way of preventing it, given that it would be a guaranteed extinction event and would surely galvanise the entire world to focus on the issue. Or would we just discuss all the issues until 2099 before rushing to bodge something together at the last minute? :roll:

 

[biffvernon]

Our National Grid loses about 8% between power station and end user. That's fine for the relatively short distances involved but would be rather worse across continents. HVDC transmission losses are just a couple of percent over distances of a couple of thousand kilometres, based on the Chinese experience.

Superconducting needs super low temperatures so is no use for distance transmission.

 

[Flyfisher]

Depends what you mean by 'super low temperatures'. I believe some substances are up to liquid nitrogen temperatures these days - cold, yes, but not really super-cold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Superconducting_cables
High-temperature superconductors promise to revolutionize power distribution by providing lossless transmission of electrical power. The development of superconductors with transition temperatures higher than the boiling point of liquid nitrogen has made the concept of superconducting power lines commercially feasible, at least for high-load applications.[24] It has been estimated that the waste would be halved using this method, since the necessary refrigeration equipment would consume about half the power saved by the elimination of the majority of resistive losses. Some companies such as Consolidated Edison and American Superconductor have already begun commercial production of such systems.[25] In one hypothetical future system called a SuperGrid, the cost of cooling would be eliminated by coupling the transmission line with a liquid hydrogen pipeline.

However, it's probably an unnecessary complication if HVDC can limit losses to a few percent anyway.

 

[biffvernon]

In my book liquid nitrogen is super cold. You can't have wires strung across the countryside at that temperature. What would happen to the starlings' toes?

 

[Nigel Watts]

HVDC transmission losses are just a couple of percent over distances of a couple of thousand kilometres, based on the Chinese experience.

I had also heard this. It's a long time since I studied engineering but it makes sense. Alternating current, being constantly changing, emits electromagnetic radiation, albeit at ultra low frequency and therefore low energy (E = h nu). Very high voltage AC has the advantage that it's easily transformed back down into low voltage. The DC electricity would still need to be transmitted at very high voltage, power loss being inversely proportional to the square of the voltage, so how do they do the transformation I wonder? Presumably it's converted back to AC before doing so, but that cant be a loss-free process.

 

[Flyfisher]

In my book liquid nitrogen is super cold. You can't have wires strung across the countryside at that temperature. What would happen to the starlings' toes?

Not wires, but insulated superconducting pipes containing liquid nitrogen might do the trick. I've read that liquid nitrogen is half the price of milk and, of course, nitrogen is practically unlimited in supply and does no harm when it evaporates back in to the atmosphere.

As for the Starling's toes, I wonder if an overhead global supergrid would be such a good idea - it would be far more secure to bury such infrastructure, though I realise this would likely cost a lot more.

 

[AMc]

I've read that DC grids are far more efficient than the usual AC ones. I also wonder about the current state of the super-conducting art these day. I'm not sure about the technical feasibility but a worldwide grid would seem a good way of solving the 'night time' problem of solar PV. But even if it were technically possible, the political considerations would probably make it impossible in practice.

I doubt we'll surmount the political difficulties to make a world grid happen unless we were also able to invent a free source of power first which is a bit chicken/egg.
Presumably we'd also need a large equatorial solar farm in the middle of the pacific to deal with the expanse of that area?

I imagine that the problem with liquid nitrogen isn't the gas but the energy required to refrigerate it - we keep coming back there don't we ?

 

[Moo]

These highly technical exchanges invariably leave me baffled, but I could understand what this chap is saying:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10059/

 

[biffvernon]

...unless we were also able to invent a free source of power...

The Sun

 

[Flyfisher]

...unless we were also able to invent a free source of power...

The Sun

I've heard about Murdoch's alleged plans for world domination, but didn't realise he had a source of free power? :shock:

 

[Flyfisher]

These highly technical exchanges invariably leave me baffled, but I could understand what this chap is saying:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10059/

A very interesting article Moo, and a far more eloquent argument than my earlier point about 'green elitism'.