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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
Global Warming
- Thread starter Disco08
- Start date
Agree, we should be focusing on developing significant industry change to create new export markets. The government are doing very little to drive this.
I'm very big on rooftop solar. The whole premise of the "grid" is IMO one of the biggest issues we have. The feed in tariffs we have now are actually a disincentive to invest. FIT's should not be seen as a subsidy, they are a return for the owner in producing power for the grid. Battery technology helps top offset the impact of solar predominantly producing power through certain timeframes during the day.
Whilst the Feds sit on their hands, SA is moving ahead with investments in renewable power and have a significant proportion of their power now produced from renewable sources.
Certain industries are also pushing forward with change, some more than others. I know some on here have a dislike for some big industry figures like Twiggy Forrest, but I'm an investor in Fortescue and love what they are doing with solar power in the Pilbara, transforming their operations (including trains) from diesel power to solar. They also have a new subsidiary called Fortescue Future Industries which is looking to drive large scale investment into renewables (solar and wind mainly) but as a priority is looking at hydrogen power which could be a game change and be a big game changer for those industries that will struggle to remove diesel such as shipping / airlines etc.
You have to be careful who you trust though and look into their "green" credentials and Woodside for example are also looking into hydrogen, but the problem with their plan, is the energy used for electrolysis will be generated from gas, so isn't really green. You are producing hydrogen power (which is green) but by using non renewable power to do so. Its more lip service than trying to do whats right.
There are a number of smaller things that I have read that are ongoing. Airlines are looking at removing high contrail areas from flight paths, in a similar way that they avoid large storms. Contrails are an output of higher methane releases in the atmosphere and only affect something like 40% of flights (only parts of them) but make up a much larger % of emissions from airlines.
Thanks Mr P. I can’t make up my mind on Twiggy Forrest. Sometimes I can’t stand him and sometimes he acts like a visionary.
When private industry is forced to adapt to survive most generally do, although sometimes they need a gentle shove.
Yeah I think sometimes he does some strange things (the Covid masks for example), but the focus of FFI could be huge and why I'm happy to buy more FMG. They are investing 10% of after tax profits every year directly into FFI which last year was around US$1bn. The one thing these developing industries have struggled with in the past is financing and IMO green hydrogen could be huge for the transport sector for example. FFI are already working with Rolls Royce on prototype hydrogen powered engines for their mining machinery but this could expand out to ships / aircraft etc.
I know many people when talking renewables, talk about wind and solar power which are important, but there are other fossil fuel areas of the economy that will struggle to utilise either. I'm not sure on electric cars right now, theres the issue around infrastructure and the time required to charge vs the time taken to fill with fuel that needs to be considered, obviously longer life batteries should help here, but that assumes vehicles will need to be stationary and charging for a period of time, it may work for cars / motorbikes etc, but many heavy goods vehicles just change crews and on they go, so there is significant downtime created from the use of electric vehicles, which is where I see green hydrogen coming in.
I do like rooftop solar, but we do need to be careful around large scale solar plants and where they are situated. I know there was a study done on a large scale solar plant in the Sahara desert, which in principle sounds like an amazing idea, however when they ran it through their models, they calculated an increase in heat being absorbed into our atmosphere actually having a heat island effect, due to covering light coloured sand (which reflects sunlight and their rays out of the atmosphere) to one that has dark coloured solar panels which acts to absorb more heat into the atmosphere. I'm not sure whether a light coloured solar farm could work, clearly wouldn't be as efficient as dark panels but it may still generate enough power due to the long daylight hours in deserts such as the Sahara.
I would love for companies to invest in technologies that create circular plastic economies, the tech exists but isn't being used due to price, but it needs manufacturing volume to drive the price down. I did invest in a company (it wasn't a great investment) that was to do this, but that turned into a bit of a scam IMO, constant misinformation spread by the company, led them to being delisted from the ASX, plenty of cowboys out there.
I think the shove as you speak about is happening from finance companies. Many people now wanting to invest in the ESG sector, and you can see that with industries such as coal finding it very difficult to borrow against their assets.
Electric cars and trucks are likely ok, there is already a business offering to turn trucks electric with battery swapping available at various locations. Obviously not far enough advanced to make a big dent in truck emissions now, but shows what is possible. The battery changeover was about 15 minutes from what I read, it all comes back to how you design the vehicle - most cars are used for short periods at a time and therefore don't need to have swappable batteries as long as they have range, trucks are different so designing with swappable batteries is a logical solution. Plus, any trucks at limited locations such as a mine can clearly be electric as they can control the times the truck is used and leave room for charging.
Hydrogen has a lot of potential but it has to be green hydrogen, anything else is just a fudge.
Plastics are a huge issue, the first thing we need to do is to reduce the use of plastic. When I was a kid you could only buy soft drink in a glass bottle, now you can only buy plastic. Can't buy milk in glass any more. We've seen the huge amounts of waste from using throw away plastic in health these days, lots of that used to be re-useable glass. Recycling plastic is the second step after reducing plastic use. Always remember, plastic is a petroleum product and without plastic we simply can't make the tech products we all use every day, we shouldn't be wasting plastic. Recycling plastic would also be more energy intensive than re-using glass containers.
DS
Hydrogen has a lot of potential but it has to be green hydrogen, anything else is just a fudge.
Plastics are a huge issue, the first thing we need to do is to reduce the use of plastic. When I was a kid you could only buy soft drink in a glass bottle, now you can only buy plastic. Can't buy milk in glass any more. We've seen the huge amounts of waste from using throw away plastic in health these days, lots of that used to be re-useable glass. Recycling plastic is the second step after reducing plastic use. Always remember, plastic is a petroleum product and without plastic we simply can't make the tech products we all use every day, we shouldn't be wasting plastic. Recycling plastic would also be more energy intensive than re-using glass containers.
DS
Australia puts fossil fuel company front and centre at Cop26
Criticism of Santos pavilion display comes as Coalition confirms it will not join global pledge to cut methane
yep...
In theory, no its not, but I think the issue is whether it works correctly. Those that exist don't recover the store the level of emissions that they said it would, plus they are subsidised at the moment.
There are different levels of hydrogen.
FFI - Green hydrogen. Uses renewable power to process the electrolysis of water to separate the hydrogen and oxygen molecules
Santos - Blue hydrogen. Uses gas power to process the electrolysis of water to separate the hydrogen and oxygen molecules, then capture the emissions and store them underground
Woodside - Grey hydrogen. Uses gas power to process the electrolysis of water to separate the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. No carbon capture.
Personal view, is that getting to a completely carbon free economy is unlikely, so a mix of Green and Blue hydrogen is important, it enables production to remain for a much longer period of time and therefore produces greater quantities of hydrogen.
Is it real and viable? There is no CCS tech running in production in Aus. It's expensive, more expensive than wind generated power. For a power plant to use CCS, it's estimated 10% to 40% of the electricity produced by the plant will be used by CCS itself. What's the point?
A bit like "Clean Coal" (whatever happened to that lie?) CCS is nothing more than an attempt to continue using fossil fuels. If the money the fossil fuel and their beholden governments pumped into CCS attempts went into renewable energy tech, we'd be in a better place.
Morrison wouldn't be able to bring a piece of the sun with him to parliament, but he's full of hot air which could be rebranded as renewable energy
Personally, I just don't see electric trucks working. Far more likely to move towards a hydrogen fueled system, similar again with Ships . airplanes.
Agree plastics are a huge issue, but there isn't a huge drive from anyone to change unfortunately. Plastic itself is a great invention, the problem we have is that our current re-use markets are not strong enough. There is plastic that is produced that cannot be re-used (currently) but there is also tech out there that can use heat to melt all plastics back to their core ingredients, its great tech in that it enables plastics to be created, melted and then re-created again. Essentially you need the raw materials once and they can then be re-manufactured an infinite amount of times, current recycling doesn't use this process, hence why re-use only has a shelf life before the plastic molecules start to break down and it then gets dumped.
Theres a massive market out there ready for someone to create this. Just look at how much people will pay to have their rubbish removed at the moment, and think of that as input costs into your manufacturing and re-manufacturing process.
All the main western countries are members. I don’t see any fossil fuel advocacy on the website.
For how many decades have we been told by the fossil fuel flogs that we can't rely on renewables because they aren't ready or some such nonsense (they have been ready for a long time).
But when it comes to attempting to extend the life of fossil fuel usage through unproven and, frankly, not at all working or viable CCS, there's suddenly no problem promoting technology which does not exist. Thorium reactors - more technology which does not exist. Nuclear waste disposal which will actually last for the 250,000 years that plutonium is toxic - does not exist.
CCS isn't so much bad as non existent.
Brodders - where the hell do you get milk in a bottle these days?
DS
But when it comes to attempting to extend the life of fossil fuel usage through unproven and, frankly, not at all working or viable CCS, there's suddenly no problem promoting technology which does not exist. Thorium reactors - more technology which does not exist. Nuclear waste disposal which will actually last for the 250,000 years that plutonium is toxic - does not exist.
CCS isn't so much bad as non existent.
Brodders - where the hell do you get milk in a bottle these days?
DS
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Morrison's in a tough spot. Activists are not only demanding he save the planet on his own, they're telling him how he must do it.
Thanks Brodders, looks like a couple of options near me.
Morrison is not being asked to save the planet on his own, he is being asked to catch up with the rest of the world and take the problem of climate change seriously. FFS, Australia is in a prime position to benefit from the move to renewables and with incompetent morons at the helm we're watching the opportunities rush past us.
DS
Morrison is not being asked to save the planet on his own, he is being asked to catch up with the rest of the world and take the problem of climate change seriously. FFS, Australia is in a prime position to benefit from the move to renewables and with incompetent morons at the helm we're watching the opportunities rush past us.
DS
Santos has a commitment to net zero by 2040 and CCS is an essential plank. Get behind it.
