human actions, global climate change, global human solutions
POSTED BY: 1kiki
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 19:38
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PAGE 67 of 111
Quote:Jeez, no shit, Sherlock.
Originally posted by second:
An update to a major climate report is a reality check on unproven carbon capture and hydrogen technologies.
By Justine Calma, Sep 26, 2023, 12:00 AM CDT
The biggest difference in this new report is that emerging technologies that have gotten a lot of hype as high-tech fixes to climate change now play a significantly smaller role than expected in 2021. Those technologies, which include hydrogen fuel cells for heavy vehicles and devices that filter CO2 emissions from smokestacks or ambient air, now account for 35 percent of emissions reductions rather than nearly 50 percent.
Why? They just haven’t lived up to the hype, the report says pretty plainly.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23889066/climate-change-internation
al-energy-agency-roadmap-hydrogen-carbon-capture
That bar (percent of emissions reductions) is pretty low, and they can't even meet that.
A new technology has to go thru proof of concept to bench scale to pilot plant scale to mayber bigger pilot plant scale to industrial scale. It's like putting all your money on fusion when they haven't even gotten past the teeny-tiny smidgen of extra energy SO small that they're still calculating (a month later) to make sure they didn't screw up the measurements or calculations and to determine HOW much energy they produced.
I shake my head in wonderment at the great fuckup/ slush fund that this has become.
Do you want to reduce CO2 emissions right away, proveably? Then switch elecricty production from coal and oil/gasoline to natgas. Et voila! Instant reduction!
Cut the DoD budget. Instant reduction!
How about repairing our rail lines so freight can move quickly, safely, and energy-efficiently. Can do with today's technology!
Solar, but only in the sunshine states. Instant reduction!
Rehabbing homes to be more energy efficient, hazard resistant, and easier to repair or remodel?
Designing and manufacturung products to last longer ane be more repairable?
Stop joyriding in space. Can do right away. Instant reduction!
Impose a 45 mpg highway mileage (or CO2 per mile, if comparing fuels) on all new vehicles, except utility vehicles. Can do right away, and a lot cheaper than EV. Instant reduction!
Cement from fly ash. Can do right away. Instant reduction!
As for the rest (storing carbon in soil, better ranching practices, reforestation, urban cooling, and new technologies)... well, you have to set up test plots and measurements or bench scale and pilot plants. You have to do pretty good estimation of life-cycle saving, making sure you're not emitting more CO2 during the mfr and recycling of this new product v the old. (For example Lego just did the calculation and realized they would be emitting more CO2 using recycled plastic than virgin.)
For example, cover cropping and green manure show the biggest capacity to store carbon on carbon-poor soils. You would have to show that better forestry practices (hand thinning, in-situ black soil creation etc) does meaningfully reduces emissions from forest fires. That EV and carbon capture technologies don't emit more than their current counterparts.
It's a technical problem as well as an economic one, and won't be solved with magical thinking and ideology.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Sweden’s Northvolt picks Quebec for new multibillion-dollar EV battery factory
Nicolas Van Praet, Jeffrey Jones
Northvolt AB, a supplier of electric-vehicle batteries to Volkswagen and BMW, has picked Quebec to host a new multibillion-dollar factory as the Swedish manufacturer pushes into North America.
Executives with the Stockholm-based company will join political leaders from the Quebec and federal governments for a formal announcement Thursday in Montreal to detail their plans, according to two sources briefed on the event. The Globe and Mail is not naming the people because they were not authorized to discuss the information.
Northvolt has been scouting sites in North America for an EV battery cell production facility, and chose Saint-Basile-le-Grand in the Richelieu Valley for its project, which is valued at an estimated $7-billion. The factory’s main site would be on land formerly occupied by Canadian Industries Ltd., a maker of chemicals and explosives.
Quebec is trying to make the province a hub for EV battery development, and it is luring companies with its low-carbon hydroelectricity and financial backing in tandem with the federal government. Premier François Legault and his cabinet colleagues have characterized the effort as a new industrial revolution, with capital investment sums the province hasn’t seen since Hydro-Québec undertook major dam projects in the 1950s and 1960s.
“This is big,” Quebec Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon told Radio-Canada earlier this month. Northvolt’s project would be the largest private-sector investment ever made in Quebec, he said. He did not specify the sum being invested.
Quebec has been vying for the plant as Canada seeks to compete with a U.S. clean-tech industry that has been turbocharged over the past year by incentives that are part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. That legislation includes US$369-billion in funding for green energy and related technology, as well as EVs and energy efficiency measures. Ottawa and provincial governments have responded with billions of dollars in public funding to lure battery makers and suppliers into building plants in Quebec and Ontario.
The federal and Ontario governments announced a deal in April to provide Volkswagen with up to $13.2-billion in subsidies for production support after the company builds a battery plant in St. Thomas, Ont. In June, Stellantis NV and LG Energy Solution Ltd. reached a deal with those governments for as much as $15-billion in subsidies to restart construction on their EV battery factory in Windsor, Ont.
In Quebec, General Motors Co. is partnering with South Korean battery material maker Posco Chemical Co. Ltd. on a new cathode factory in Bécancour, Que. And Ford Motor Co. announced last month that it’s working with South Korea’s EcoProBM and SK On Co. Ltd. on a $1.2-billion plant that would produce EV battery materials in that same city, backed by $644-million in public funding.
Quebec’s decision to open the taps for battery companies is not universally supported. At a lunch event last week with the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, National Bank chief executive Laurent Ferreira said he’s “not a big fan” of using subsidies to attract foreign enterprise to Canada when the country could prioritize support for local business instead.
“When we give subsidies to foreign companies, they go directly into the pockets of foreign shareholders who are mainly not Canadian,” Mr. Ferreira told Radio-Canada when asked to expand on his earlier comments. “I have my doubts about this model over the long run in terms of wealth creation.”
Northvolt currently produces batteries for transport and energy storage at a gigafactory in northern Sweden. It emphasizes sustainable production, with the plant powered by emissions-free electricity. It has set a goal to achieve 150 gigawatt hours of annual production capacity by 2030, with a focus on keeping a small carbon footprint through regional sourcing of materia
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Yep, there's a lot of $$$ to be made in EV. China has gone big in EV production. Half of Tesla's cars are made in a gigafactory in China, and China has a lot of other makes/models being built, from EV Smart-car-like models for $3000 to luxury models.
It's just The Next Big Investment to replace that real estate/ stock bubble, infrastructure and Road and Belt initiative bubble, and the Walmart market but it may - or may not - save the environment.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:$$$ to be made, yes. But EV is very dirty, pollution-wise. China is the world's largest coal burning engine, no?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yep, there's a lot of $$$ to be made in EV. China has gone big in EV production. Half of Tesla's cars are made in a gigafactory in China, and China has a lot of other makes/models being built, from EV Smart-car-like models for $3000 to luxury models.
It's just The Next Big Investment to replace that real estate/ stock bubble, infrastructure and Road and Belt initiative bubble, and the Walmart market but it may - or may not - save the environment.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
eFuel really does sound like the solution - if you care about the environment. Mass transit busses, the legacy type, all with zero emissions, can lead the way. And it is actually possible, and proven so, unlike all of these Libtard ideas.
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Quote:And rare earth mining and extraction is a horror show.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yep, there's a lot of $$$ to be made in EV. China has gone big in EV production. Half of Tesla's cars are made in a gigafactory in China, and China has a lot of other makes/models being built, from EV Smart-car-like models for $3000 to luxury models.
It's just The Next Big Investment to replace that real estate/ stock bubble, infrastructure and Road and Belt initiative bubble, and the Walmart market but it may - or may not - save the environment.
JSF: $$$ to be made, yes. But EV is very dirty, pollution-wise. China is the world's largest coal burning engine, no?
Quote:
From where I'm standing, the city-sized Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex dominates the horizon, its endless cooling towers and chimneys reaching up into grey, washed-out sky. Between it and me, stretching into the distance, lies an artificial lake filled with a black, barely-liquid, toxic sludge.
Dozens of pipes line the shore, churning out a torrent of thick, black, chemical waste from the refineries that surround the lake. The smell of sulphur and the roar of the pipes invades my senses. It feels like hell on Earth.
(follow the link)
https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/976x549/p02n9y28.webp
Quote:
JSF: eFuel really does sound like the solution - if you care about the environment. Mass transit busses, the legacy type, all with zero emissions, can lead the way. And it is actually possible, and proven so, unlike all of these Libtard ideas.
JSF, as you know I looked into eFuel, and the problem with it is there are only a few places on earth where it can be made from windpower. Production will be limited. There won't be enough to power the whole world.
*****
I've come to think that there are two fundamental flaws how people think about solving climate change, somewhat related
1) A breakthrough technology will save us, and
2) There will be a single, brilliant fix.
So some people ride the EV hobby-horse. Or the carbon-capture hobby-horse. Some people thump fusion or thorium reactors. Other people pin their hopes on eFuel, or wind power, or solar, or tidal power.
Looking for that breakthrough technology to invest in/ save us is venture-capitalist thinking, but it's not focused on solving the problem.
Many of these technologies don't even exist yet. Of those that do, their lifetime benefit may not have been demonstrated.
So, while I'm all for continued research... after all, our family personally benefits from high-efficiency 20% conversion solar panels (which finally got the the point of generating more electricity than consumed during manufacture) it took decades- literally- to get to that point. (I once field-tested an early Arco pilot plant for test-mfring solar panels, and that was all the way back in 1970. We had our solar panels installed almost 50 years later.)
In other words, don't expect a Big Breakthrough any time soon.
There are a number of things we can do with the technology that we have today, and conservation is one of them. So here are some facts:
Once space joyride emits more GHGs that the poorest billion people emit in a whole year.
The DoD is that largest single institutional user of fuel in the whole world, and that doesn't even count emissions from its manufacturing
Air travel is wasteful, and private jets are PARTICULARLY wasteful. It's been estimated that private jets emit almost FIVE TIMES as much GHGs per passenger than commercial jets.
https://www.bbc.com/news/59135899
One bad fire year in CA undid eighteen years of CA decarbonzation.
*****
Instead of expecting some brilliant new technology to save us, or expecting all of the burden of lowering living standards to fall on Typical America, why don't we start with the largest and most wasteful sectors/ people? (Yanno, that whole "eat bugs" thing? TPTB... they're not about to eat bugs, are they?)
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:And rare earth mining and extraction is a horror show.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yep, there's a lot of $$$ to be made in EV. China has gone big in EV production. Half of Tesla's cars are made in a gigafactory in China, and China has a lot of other makes/models being built, from EV Smart-car-like models for $3000 to luxury models.
It's just The Next Big Investment to replace that real estate/ stock bubble, infrastructure and Road and Belt initiative bubble, and the Walmart market but it may - or may not - save the environment.
JSF: $$$ to be made, yes. But EV is very dirty, pollution-wise. China is the world's largest coal burning engine, no?Quote:
From where I'm standing, the city-sized Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex dominates the horizon, its endless cooling towers and chimneys reaching up into grey, washed-out sky. Between it and me, stretching into the distance, lies an artificial lake filled with a black, barely-liquid, toxic sludge.
Dozens of pipes line the shore, churning out a torrent of thick, black, chemical waste from the refineries that surround the lake. The smell of sulphur and the roar of the pipes invades my senses. It feels like hell on Earth.
(follow the link)
https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/976x549/p02n9y28.webpQuote:
JSF: eFuel really does sound like the solution - if you care about the environment. Mass transit busses, the legacy type, all with zero emissions, can lead the way. And it is actually possible, and proven so, unlike all of these Libtard ideas.
JSF, as you know I looked into eFuel, and the problem with it is there are only a few places on earth where it can be made from windpower. Production will be limited. There won't be enough to power the whole world.
Production IS limited.
This is proof of concept, and practice.
Once any new technology, or breakthrough, occurs, many efforts are focused upon greater efficiency of that process. Greater productivity, greater production. If there is no shortage of wind there, we can use more of it to make more.
With government regulations and goals to eliminate emissions, gobs of government $$ can be thrown at this avenue, with known and proven results, instead of wasting on Libtard dreams.
Single solution? No.
Using the blending which can be done, eFuel can be used in every nation on earth, right away.
Do I care if Chile gets all of the money, just for the land to build the processing plants? No. More power to them.
Unless, of course, they run out of CO2 around there.
While China and India are racing to pollute the environment as quickly as possible, eFuel could be the premier solution for the nations which pretend to be climate-conscious.
EV as environmentally friendly is a fallacy.
eFuel is not a fallacy, despite it's current limitations.
Solar taking 50 years to break even might be a pipe dream, for current demands. Solar really should have had greater gains in efficiency by now.
Concepts like having a nuke facility in some remote location, just to produce eFuel, might be worth looking into - better than coal burning in metro areas.
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My guess is that poduction will ALWAYS be limited.
eFuel is very energy- -intensive, and its benefit comes from the fact that it is produced using "green" energy. In this case, wind power from the winds that relentlessly circle the globe in the belt from the southern tip of S America to the Antarctic.
There are very few places ON EARTH where you can squeeze out so many KW per hour from the wind, or equivalent green energy. Probably hydroelectric power, but that has its own set of problems.
Eventually they might reduce the energy required to react these compounds into fuel, but the thermodynamics is that the amount of energy that needed to create a compound is ALWAYS greater than the amount of energy that you eventually release by burning it. It's just physics and arithmetic.
I accept that eFuel is one approach, but given the energy required to make it, I still think it'll be limited. If there's research reveals sufficient locations with suitable energy density and capacity, then ... great!
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Let's just say it. Everybody who put solar panels on their roofs in the last 25 years has some serious regrets.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:We did, and no, we don't.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Let's just say it. Everybody who put solar panels on their roofs in the last 25 years has some serious regrets.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
We get a "pass thru" bill each month from SCE for taxes, fees, grid maintenance etc (but not electricity generation) of about $12-$17/mo depending on usage. Our generation bill is totaled up at the end of our contract year... net electricity drawn from the grid... and our bill has averaged close to $0 over the past 5 years.
At the time we purchased our panels, I calculated the payback period to be somewhere in the realm of 6.5 years; after that, it's all gravy. Since rates have gone up hugely since installation, the payback period is probably in the realm of 5 years; in other words, the system has paid for itself by now.
I can understand regretting if you haven't done your financial homework, intend to install in an area without enough sunshine, haven't sized your system properly, don't understand the contract, don't choose the right panels etc but for us it's worked out fabulously. I recommend it to all my neighbors because they could all benefit.
And,while you're a smart guy, SIX, you sometimes reach incredibly boneheaded conclusions based on feelings and ideology instead of reality.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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You're in California. I meant in America.
How much is it per kWh there again?
How much was the install?
No leaky roof yet? No big panel repair bills yet?
The semi-regular hail storms we get in these parts would thrash those panels, not to mention the 45" of snow that turned into ice that was on everybody's roof about 3 winters ago.
Plus there's trees everywhere. Even with the two I cut down I have 300 foot tall sycamores all along the houses across the street blocking the light from hitting my roof.
They say it costs about $15,000 to $25,000 to install a solar panel roof. It would take about 22 to 30 years for me to break even on that, long after the panels were busted and jacked my roof up more than it already is... assuming that we don't all end up paying $3 per kWh after EVs are all over the road.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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