Climate Protests

Interesting nuclear technology from Bill Gates TerraPower which uses existing depleted uranium (the waste product from current nuclear power stations) to generate power in a much safer reactor.
 
I have given my personal point of view which I got slated for, however we have heard from the media regarding the un climate summit in New York recently. I did not here about the 500 climate scientists and professionals with 15 from Ireland (I could be wrong) (CLINTEL) sending a letter to the un secretary General regarding climate change, draw your own conclusions for a balanced opinion, I have made mine.
 
I get that we can measure CO2 at a global level, but specifically for Ireland, how reliable is our estimate of 'carbon emissions'?
I'm sure there are statistics available for energy produced through National Grid, consumption of fuel.

What about people who burn wood and peat sourced from their own land, that's unlikely to show up on any stats.
Is any attempt made to balance output against what is absorbed by trees, bogs etc on our landmass and I dunno, seaweed in our seas?

What about planes and shipping?

If we say we're going to cut emissions by X, or be fined for not doing so, seems like we need to be have a decent idea about what is being produced.
 
Purple said:
Interesting nuclear technology from Bill Gates TerraPower which uses existing depleted uranium (the waste product from current nuclear power stations) to generate power in a much safer reactor.
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yes bill gates being a technologist is not a believer in renewables it just cannot deliver. The only way for highly populated countries like china and india to decarbonise is with nuclear energy of some sort.
It would be a bit silly for countries like ireland to proceed at very high cost with renewables when they simply cannot deliver for countries like india and china.
 

Haven't we just hooked up an energy line to fond-of-nuclear-energy France?

European bank to help fund electricity cable linking Ireland and France in light of Brexit

The €1 billion underwater electricity cable linking Ireland and France is expected be finished by 2025/2026.
www.thejournal.ie
 
odyssey06 said:
Haven't we just hooked up an energy line to fond-of-nuclear-energy France?
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which begs the question why dont we just buy a small reactor for ourselves, it could be installed in moneypoint where all the cables and pylons are already in situ. The interconnector to france will probably require high voltage pylons and power lines to wexford from central ireland.
I know France is a friendly country but we should not be depending on third countries to balance our grid when we have too much wind, what if there is a problem in france and they are short of power themselves?
 
From the budget...
Additional measures, Donohoe says, will include €5 million for peat land rehabilitation to support reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and enhance biodiversity.

€5 million? When you add up the money coming in from carbon taxes this should be at least 10 times that much!
 
Leo said:
Your data may be a couple of years out of date there.
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From a quick glance at some of those articles , they are not comparing like with like, firstly the cost of the massive amount of extra infrastructure that is needed to facilitate renewables like gas power stations (when the wind not blowing) ,pylons and thousands of km of extra high voltage power lines are not levied on the wind or solar farms.

I wont believe alot of this data on renewables until I see renewables actually making a big dent on the proportion of total energy consumed globally and they have still barely made a dent. Here is a graph from 2017 of global energy consumption. Hydro is the only renewable energy source that is at the races with fossil fuels.

Reality Check: 85% Of Global Energy Consumption Based On Fossil Fuels

By Paul Homewood More on the BP Energy Review. Despite a small drop in coal consumption, fossil fuels remain dominant, with a share of 85%. Wind and solar in contrast contribute only a tiny …
www.climatedepot.com

Oil consumption is still rising and it doesnt take much to panic the oil markets like the attack on the saudi oil refineries recently, even with the carbon taxes oil demand will not go down .
 

All costs are factored in on a like for like basis, levelised costs are starting to shift in favour of renewables. Renewables are generally on a smaller scale than gas or coal fired stations, so they can require less in terms of additional infrastructure. Unit costs from onshore wind have dropped ~90% in 10 years.


I was sceptical myself, but data from the last year or so is making me question that. Sweden generate 54% of all electricity from renewable sources. Uruguay went from almost complete reliance on imported oil to almost 95% clean energy in less than 20 years, lowering the costs to consumers without any subsidies. Germany runs at 35% and up to ~80%, etc.. None of these include the rapid rise of small scale micro-generation, I believe it'll be another few years yet before they start to make sense on a financial basis.

joe sod said:
Oil consumption is still rising and it doesnt take much to panic the oil markets like the attack on the saudi oil refineries recently, even with the carbon taxes oil demand will not go down .
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I believe oil only makes up a very small amount of global electricity generation, so the electricity market won't have a significant influence on overall oil demand. Gas is used way more, and wholesale gas prices are falling due to displacement by renewables.
 
Industry is the highest global consumer of energy, accounting for about 30-35%. Transport (mainly passenger road vehicles) use about 25% of global energy. We seem to think of domestic energy consumption when we talk about renewables but if we move to electric vehicles we'll need a massive increase in output. In my opinion the low hanging fruit, from an infrastructure matching perspective, should be large industrial consumers; if you build a Data Centre then build a green power source beside it.
 

Sweden is always thrown out there in these sort of surveys, its a fairly big not particularly densely populated country with plenty of forests mountains and rivers for hydro, in any case it probably imports hydro from norway which is abundant in it. As was shown in the graph I posted earlier hydro is the only renewable that can fight its corner with fossil fuels.
As for Germany yes it has gone headlong into renewables in the last decade, the cost of electricity has increased dramatically. Therefore what German industry has actually done is outsourced the heavy industrial, energy hungry parts of its industry to eastern european countries like Poland and Hungary and further afield. We know that Poland is still a heavy user of coal.
This is why it is very important to look at what energy is being consumed globally because while germany and sweden might look like the best puplils in the class , they are really handing their dirty homework to other countries to do for them. That is why renewables still barely register on the global energy chart.
 
joe sod said:
in any case it probably imports hydro from norway which is abundant
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The numbers are for local generation.

joe sod said:
hydro is the only renewable that can fight its corner with fossil fuels.
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What do you mean when you say fight its corner? Are you talking about current production ratios or total cost per unit? If the latter it's pretty clear that on-shore wind in particular is now cheaper in many cases than the fossil alternatives.
 
Leo said:
What do you mean when you say fight its corner? Are you talking about current production ratios or total cost per unit? If the latter it's pretty clear that on-shore wind in particular is now cheaper in many cases than the fossil alternatives.
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On that chart I posted of global energy consumption, hydro is at 7percent, wind and solar at only 2 percent, that's what I mean, hydro has a meaningful impact on the global energy chart, hydro was also the first renewable source to be harvested a century ago, because it is the only source of concentrated renewable energy. Wind and solar cannot be concentrated they are dilute, no advances in technology can change that simple fact.
As for costs of renewables approaching fossil fuels, I don't trust those figures as they are heavily manipulated , what is really happening is that governments are increasing the costs on fossil fuels and subsidizing renewables, in other words it is financial engineering. The whole carbon tax trading system is a financial charade.
The developed countries are then outsourcing the heavy dirty energy hungry parts of their industries to third countries. This gets captured only in the global charts like I have posted not in country specific statistics like Sweden and Germany. This explains why Germany is actually not over shooting its 1990 carbon figures.
Energy hungry industries like smelting steel cannot be powered with windmills,( and the majority of steel even for electric cars is smelted using dirty old coal ) they have simply moved to developing countries.
 
joe sod said:
On that chart I posted of global energy consumption, hydro is at 7percent, wind and solar at only 2 percent, that's what I mean,
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OK, so little to no bearing on where we should look at sourcing current and future energy needs.

joe sod said:
Energy hungry industries like smelting steel cannot be powered with windmills
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Who's talking about smelting? That's a pretty small use case.
 
Leo said:
OK, so little to no bearing on where we should look at sourcing current and future energy in needs.
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That's like the famous quote about Brazil, "Brazil is the country of the future and always will be"
It never came close to fulfilling the prophecies of its destiny, just like renewables have long been touted as the energy of the future but the future keeps getting moved forward.

I mentioned steel smelting because it is the basis of everything and is highly energy intensive, if you as a country can move that off your books and onto a third country's books then on the face of it you are reducing considerably your energy usage and carbon emissions. Third countries then do this with coal and are allowed to because they are developing under the Paris agreement. It doesn't make any difference to overall carbon emissions globally it's just that the emissions have shifted off Germany's books and onto the third countries books.
Also with regard to the 1990s , cars were a lot smaller with less steel and plastic than today's cars. Every second car now is a huge suv, have you ever seen them beside a classic car from the 80s or 90s, they are at least 50percent bigger.
 

Not really sure what point you're trying to make there. I'm pointing out that the links provided show the current unsubsidised cost of electricity generation for renewables is competitive with fossil fuels. You point out the current worldwide consumption, they're two very different things.

joe sod said:
I mentioned steel smelting because it is the basis of everything and is highly energy intensive,
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It really isn't. Smelting is a tiny use case compared to home heating, data centers, and many others, even crypto mining.
 
Leo said:
It really isn't. Smelting is a tiny use case compared to home heating, data centers, and many others, even crypto mining.
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here is a chart showing the energy required to produce a kg of iron, steel, silicon etc from base materials..

How much energy does it take (on average) to produce 1 kilogram of the following materials?

Wood, steel, aluminium, iron, glass, paper, plastics, copper, silicon, nickel, titanium, electronic grade silicon.
www.lowtechmagazine.com

In fairness steel is not the worst of them, plastic, aluminium and silicon require horrendous amounts of energy to produce from raw ores or even from recycled.
Therefore to create a new car including electric, computer or smart phone requires enormous amounts of energy.
It would be better for the environment as a whole to slow this all down, therefore hold onto the diesel car dont buy a brand new electric, dont dump your phone or computer.
To all those dermot bannon fans dont rip out your kitchen and interior , basically slow down the whole consumer cycle.
Thats why I am highly suspicious of this drive for a "green economy" because essentially it involves dumping more cars ,building materials etc at enormous cost for no benefit because more CO2 gets dumped into atmosphere and more junk gets dumped in landfills, maybe not in europe but in asia and africa.
 
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