Environment – Page 4 – Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans

13/12/2020

Energy Storage is a large problem- the German Experience 13/12/20

Energy storage is a worse problem in Germany because they have longer cold periods with less sun than Australia. It seems that pumped hydro storage is our best option, but this article is correct that it requires a lot of energy alternatives for when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

Demand management is also important, which means shifting things like off peak hot water to when the sun shines, but also paying people to switch off. If there is only a peak demand for a few hours a year, it is cheaper to pay people to turn off than to have a power source that is only used a few hours a year.

But articles about the problems in the German grid have been around for a long time and lessons need to be learned.

Those of us who want to move to renewable energy need to be aware of the problems and to address them, or we just look like naive ideologues.

The German experience – running everything on renewable energy

05/12/2020

Global Dimming- another climate problem 5/12/20

Global dimming is the reduction in the amount of sun energy hitting the surface of the Earth. Research shows that the amount of sun energy reaching the surface of the earth has fallen 9% in Antarctica, 10% in the USA, 16% in the UK, 22% in Israel and 30% in Russia since the 1950s. Water evaporates correspondingly more slowly. The results are from long term studies and data, and two relatively rapid studies, the change in temperature differences during the day when planes were all grounded in the USA after 9/11 in 2001 and a study comparing sun energy received in the north and south of the Maldives.

It seem that the particles in the air allow smaller water particles to be suspended on them as clouds, and these reflect more heat and light back out into space, hence shielding the earth. This affects evaporation of ocean water and may have caused the droughts and famines in North Africa.

There has been a real effort to lessen air pollution particularly in Europe which may have helped African monsoonal rainfall, but if the dimming lessens and more sunlight comes into the atmosphere, it will mean that the greenhouse effect will worsen.

Revised calculations show that global warming may be 10 degrees Celsius in a century, because the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the release of oceanic methane, which is 14x worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas will make the global warming phenomenon irreversible.

The answer is that we have to stop burning fossil fuels. We need electric cars, renewable energy, and to replace planes with trains as much as possible. It a shame we have a Liberal Government!

This 49 minute video is from the BBC Horizon program.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=57D2ii5HKxA&list=PLe6EP38qqR0af4fPQGy1LzbR6-8gY8KgA&index=11&fbclid=IwAR2eKLs9Jx2jgksiFy4rkgTaS1jRG2ZgU3Pvs7cGB5Ot9CdyDGLmqtvkyVc&t=0s

11/07/2020

Happenings in Turkey, no sillier than NSW mining policy 11/7/20

A friend has sent me this to illustrate how life is in Turkey these days under President Erdogan, who fancies himself the new Kemal Attaturk. Ataturk however was the victorious general at Gallipoli and the founder of the modern Turkish state on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after WW1. He wanted a modern, democratic, secular state an instituted a new western-style alphabet.

Erdogan has undermined democracy and concentrated power in his own hands. He claims to be Muslim and been a very divisive figure, playing to the less educated eastern side of the country against the more educated secular western side. He had fantasies of leading the Muslim world while building the country with borrowed money, principally in real estate investment. The quality of these high-rise buildings in earthquake -prone Istanbul will no doubt be tested in time. The economy is not doing well, particularly in the COVID19 crisis. This little story about digging up a glacial lake is a micro illustration of his capricious rule, which has involved things like emptying the prisons and locking up journalists and academics who oppose him.

Such stupidity does not only occur in Turkey. If it is foolish to undermine a little lake and dig a hole that cannot be filled underneath it, how much sillier is it to allow long wall mining under the catchment of a large, growing capital city that is prone to drought. Cracks will go from the surface to the mine depth and then the water will run out to sea. We should ask ourselves why we tolerate the NSW government, and Peabody, a US owned mine.

www.quora.com/What-happens-only-in-Turkey/answer/Simge-Topaloğlu?ch=1&share=02eab1a8&srid=zByA

05/06/2020

Electric Vehicles: How helpful are they for Climate Change?

5 June 2020

There are claims and counter claims for how much electric vehicles (EVs) improve the greenhouse gas situation. The production of batteries is quite energy-intensive, so a large battery car takes about twice as much energy to produce as a normal Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) car.

The ‘payback’ time for that extra energy is about 2 years based on the number of km an average (UK) driver does per year.

But the key variable is how the electricity is generated, both in making the battery and in running the car. If it is made in Asia with coal fired electricity to manufacture the car and then charged with coal powered electricity, there is very little benefit. If the battery is produced by renewable electricity and the car charged with renewable electricity, the savings are more than two thirds by 150,000km.

If you keep your old ICE car for 4 years, it will have produced about the same amount of greenhouse gas as it takes to produce a new electric car. Looked at it the other way, it takes 4 years for a new electric car to pay for itself from an emissions point of view as against paying just for the petrol of an existing ICE car.

www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change

05/06/2020

Electric Vehicles: How helpful are they for Climate Change? 5/6/20

There are claims and counter claims for how much electric vehicles (EVs) improve the greenhouse gas situation. The production of batteries is quite energy-intensive, so a large battery car takes about twice as much energy to produce as a normal Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) car.

The ‘payback’ time for that extra energy is about 2 years based on the number of km an average (UK) driver does per year.

But the key variable is how the electricity is generated, both in making the battery and in running the car. If it is made in Asia with coal fired electricity to manufacture the car and then charged with coal powered electricity, there is very little benefit. If the battery is produced by renewable electricity and the car charged with renewable electricity, the savings are more than two thirds by 150,000km.

If you keep your old ICE car for 4 years, it will have produced about the same amount of greenhouse gas as it takes to produce a new electric car. Looked at it the other way, it takes 4 years for a new electric car to pay for itself from an emissions point of view as against paying just for the petrol of an existing ICE car.

www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change

30/05/2020

NZ Environmental Law Disappoints

The Conversation has an article about how NZ rivers are degraded and a package to improve them has been disappointing as it did not take expert advice. The Conversation only takes articles from academics and the author admits he was one of the expert panel whose advice was ignored. He does not write of other […]

21/05/2020

No Target, No Plan for Carbon-Neutral Economy by 2050: Angus Taylor, Energy Minister

20 May 2020

Angus Taylor, our Energy Minister says we cannot be carbon neutral by 2050- 30 years away! Why not? Well we cannot have a target without a plan. And since we have chosen to have no plan, we cannot have a target.

This sort of circular semantic nonsense is what Angus Taylor is all about. He is now taking the Clean Energy Fund and using for that hoax, carbon capture and storage. The man should be sacked for his rorting and corruption, and his actions as a Minister are totally in the wrong direction for Australia.

Carbon capture is just a fossil industry bad joke. A lot of carbon dioxide comes out with natural gas, and is already separated, because of course it would stop the gas burning as well if it went in the gas pipes. So if it is already separated from natural gas. What happens then? It is released to the atmosphere; Obviously- the cheapest solution! Privatise the profits and externalise the costs. So there is lots of carbon dioxide to store or sequester. Is this possible? Perhaps at great cost. If so, it should be part of the cost of selling gas. How economic would gas be then?

But it goes on. Coal is concentrated carbon. When it combines with oxygen it releases a lot of energy in a process commonly known as burning. And instead of a compact little bit of carbon that can be passed around a Parliament there is huge amount of gas that has to be captured from the atmosphere, and stored somewhere, presumably under a lot of pressure and presumably forever. This is quite a problem, will be difficult to do and will cost a lot of energy, perhaps as much as burning it released. You could call it it a difficult scientific problem. Or you could call it a very silly thing to do. Create a problem, then spend a lot of money and time to try to find a way to fix it.

But the fossil fuel lobby wants to get at the clean energy money to try. This has two advantages. One is called ‘opportunity cost’, which the economists’ way of saying that if you have spent your money on A, you do not have that money to spend on B. You spend your clean energy money researching an unlikely solution to a problem that you have created by burning, and you do not have that money to spend on something like pumped hydro, which would allow the problem of energy storage of renewables to be addressed. So real progress towards renewable energy can be slowed. Also you can pretend that capturing the huge amounts of carbon dioxide is a scientifically feasible option with just a bit more government funded research. All this suits the fossils fuel industry who can continue to burn as usual. The parallels with the tobacco industry denying the obvious health effects and profiting from delayed definitive action is striking.

Angus Taylor came from a grazing family, went to Kings School, St Andrew’s College at Sydney Uni and Oxford. He studied Economics and Law and worked with investment bankers and was in a group that tried to buy Cubbie Station.

He may or may not know any science, but his track record of using taxpayers money for the interests of his connections are already the stuff of scandal and have led to calls for his resignation. This last lot of nonsense simply adds to that imperative.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/19/angus-taylor-says-it-is-not-australian-government-policy-to-achieve-net-zero-emissions-by-2050?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_News_Feed

21/05/2020

Australia as a Compliant Colony getting Fracked.

21 May 2020

Here is an old but relevant article of how a British gas company got approval to sell gas to China, and pay no tax.

It happened at exactly the time that Rudd was rolled for asking for a resources rent tax.

The CEO, Catherine Tanna was given a seat on the Board of the Reserve Bank.

I wrote to her in disgust on another matter, when I left EnergyAustralia, the Chinese consortium who bought the privatised Sydney County Council electricity customers, because they pay no tax. To my surprise, she wrote back saying that she was looking after her shareholders, (naturally not mentioning that they are all on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange).

Here is an excellently researched article from the Michael West Website on how Prince Andrew as a UK Trade Ambassador, the Qld Liberal Government of Campbell Newman, and the Federal Labor Government, with Wayne Swan as Treasurer all dudded the Australian people. Now we have Qld Labor, and LNP Federally, but it makes no difference. Tanna is still on the Reserve Bank board, fracking still goes ahead, these folk still pay no tax and Australian gas prices are still sky high.

If we do not change, the luck will run out. We cannot trust our politicians. We need Swiss style Direct Democracy Now, with referenda able to be initiated by anyone, and a part-time, advisory Parliament with no career politicians. Yes, it will need major constitutional change, but tinkering with the Lib/Lab duo will not make a difference. A bigger change is needed, so we had better get on with it.

www.michaelwest.com.au/the-second-british-invasion-how-royal-cronies-and-the-gas-debacle-took-australia-for-billions/

05/05/2020

Government Steals Clean Energy Finance for Fossil Fuel Development

4 May 2020 Angus Taylor, the Energy Minister has announced a $300 million new hydrogen project, but has not specified that it be powered by renewable energy and he wants to use gas to produce the hydrogen. There is fine rhetoric about trying to get the cost of hydrogen to $2 a kg, but the […]

30/04/2020

Angus Taylor Must Resign

30 April 2020The Energy Minister Angus Taylor must resign. He told Parliament that he had downloaded Clover Moore’s travel expenses from the Sydney City Council website, but NSW Police have stated that they have looked at the metadata and this is not possible. He claimed that Council international travel expenses were $15 million, but they […]