Hydrogen vs Batteries to power EVs

Excellent video comparing Hydrogen and Batteries as the energy storage method for electric vehicles:

Fully Charged Live Highlights

Looks like 'Fully Charged Live' was a success:

The political plastic waste time bomb

The plastic waste time bomb has been ticking for many years or decades. This blog was started as a result of observations of plastic litter around Waterlooville.  Today we hear that China will no longer take UK plastic waste for recycling, some 25% of UK plastic waste in total, and why should they?

European and American companies happily exported industry to China because labour was and still is cheap, in turn British European consumers happily bought Chinese produced goods with British brand names (once produced in the UK, some in Havant), names such as Bush, Clarks, Morphy Richards and Kenwood. We exported our carbon emissions to China and then imported the products to use in our homes which inevitably became waste (partly because the products were not designed to be repaired).

A lack of action at Westminster and at our local Councils has resulted in a lack of recycling facilities and as pointed out previously Hampshire County Council has opted to reduce facilities (a political ideological decision, not one based on technological know how, science or the pseudo science of economics). Hampshire County Council have a record of banning wind turbines and approving the burning of hosuehold waste for energy.

What is wrong with plastic?

You have to distinguish between the material and the product designed to use the material.
You can view plastic as a wonder material that lasts many hundreds of years and this was how it was sold and marketed in the last 60 to 70 years, a cheap and cheerful material that can be used to make dishes, bowls, pipes, clothes, packaging and food wrap etc.

This is fine, these products would last forever wouldn't they?

Unfortunately nature and physics was ignored and of course the products did not last forever, joints break, fractures appear, threads unravel or break, babies out grow the baby products etc. So then the plastic products were buried in the ground (hidden) or burnt (causing polution and carbon emissions).

Manufacturers and governments failed to have a long term plan for the material (a typical fault of industrial economics), they didn't plan how to recycle the materials or even attempted to design recyclable products. Selling, marketing and jobs were more important and maintained a stable society for government to manage. They didn't want to take responsibility or knew they had to.

Today we know that we have to take responsibility. Plastics don't just crack and fracture, plastic threads don't just break, plastics also erode into tiny fibres and microscopic particles, they form dust that will still be in our air, water and earth for hundreds of year and we are adding to this dust as we produce more products. It isn't just waste plastic that you put in a bin that creates microscopic plastic waste, the daily use of plastic products also creates microscopic plastic particles and fibres.

Can we burn all the plastic waste?

When we burn plastic we are in reality using it as a fossil fuel like coal, diesel or petrol. We create particulate pollutants in the atmosphere and toxic residues in the furnace, we also produce carbon emissions in the same way that fossil fuels do when burnt. Climate change is already having an impact on people around the world including us in the UK, this includes migration of species to these isles following changing weather and climate patterns.

The only solutions are as follows:

1. Use no plastics or reserve plastics for very specific and essential uses (medical, military etc).
2. Use biodegradeable plastics that meld into nature after they have been used by us. This is similar to natural materials like wood, cotton, wool etc. They last just long enough to be useful and then return to nature to be used again.
3.Recycle all plastics and invest in extensive recycling facilities. Frankly if a council or Westminster is unwilling to do this then they should be legally enforcing 1 and 2.

Westminster and councils should be legally accountable for any lack of action on their part.

Carbon Isotopes and Climate Change

A while ago I explained the basics of Carbon Isotopes and how they help in understanding what is happening to our climate:

http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/is-all-carbon-same.html

Today Skeptical Science have posted a more detailed article about the subject:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/From-eMail-Bag-Carbon-Isotopes-Part-1.html


 

Latest Electric Vehicle News

Robert Llewellyn and his new co-host Jonny discuss the latest news in
renewable energy and electric vehicles, months ahead of the BBC and The Sun:

Excellent visualisation of global warming

Says it all really:

Murray Energy (Coal) sue John Oliver (British comedian)

The dying American coal industry (avid funder of Donald Trump) has decided that one man, John Oliver, and HBO are responsible for their woes, as a result Murray Energy and others are suing John Oliver for defamation.

Amusingly the legal document which Murray Energy is submitting has a lot of ranting in it appealing for the sympathy vote rather than any substantial legal claim.

The sad fact is many wealthy business folk think they are important beyond any reality just because they have wealth. Anyone who has watched John Oliver knows that he has a go at people, nations and businesses in a satirical manor which is very amusing and democratic.

The  reality is that renewable energy employs many times more people in America than the coal industry, it could employ many more including ex-coal workers!

This video posted by a lawyer deconstructs the Murray Energy lawsuit:

 Added 24/06/17...

It should also be noted John Oliver actually defames himself in the same broadcasted show! So maybe he should sue himself as well. Oh, wait a minute John Oliver has a sense of humour.

Note this video may not work for long:

03/07/17
Oh dear. Youtube removed the video. Told you so!


Links:

https://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/john-oliver-last-week-tonight-robert-murray-coal-mining-lawsuit-sued-hbo-a7802266.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/06/22/coal_baron_robert_murray_is_suing_john_oliver_over_his_segment_featuring.html 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/06/22/coal_baron_robert_murray_is_suing_john_oliver_over_his_segment_featuring.html

Upgraded street lamps become EV charging points

A German company has developed street lighting technology that allows Electric Vehicles to be charged at adapted street lamps. When street lighting is upgraded to low energy LED technology, the cables that supply the lamps with power are effectively under used. This is where the EV charging technology comes in. Ubitricity can install the EV charging technology in any style of lamp post, retro or modern.

Once a street lamp is installed all an EV owner has to do is to sign up with Ubitricity, the owner then receives a special cable from Ubitricity which monitors electricity usage of the owner. The user is then debted the cost of the electricity. The cable has an inline small box with buttons and a display, so I presume that it is password protected to prevent possible mis-use. However I assume that if the cable were stolen, it could be reported and the account suspended until a new cable were supplied.

No additional load is put on the local electricity cables because they were originally designed to take a bigger load than the LED lighting puts on the system.

Robert L explains in this video how it works and interviews the local council that has installed the lamps as well as a representative of Ubitricity.



https://www.ubitricity.com/en

Designer 'Edison' light bulbs

Not sure what the legality is regarding the sale of high wattage designer filament bulbs.

But the fact is you can get low power LED versions I bought this one for £12 in IKEA.
1.8 watts as opposed to 40 or 60 watts for an incandescent filament lamp.

Now I am not sure where to put it!

Grenfell Tower fire and Daily Mail Green Target misinformation

The despicable Daily Mail today were pointing the finger at green energy targets for fueling the Grenfell Tower fire in London.

This of course is a political tactic from a political activist media company, it is designed to divert attention from real financial issues relating to the buildings upgrade.

Setting a green target does not imply that cheap flammable materials should be used as a cladding/insulation material in order to achieve that target. The alternative to insulation is cold damp rooms and high energy bills for the poor people living in the building.

Other newspapers (including the Express) have highlighted the fact that fire proof cladding would have only cost £5000 more for the WHOLE building. Yes the WHOLE building could have been made safer for an additional £5000.

For the cost of the Daily Mail editor (Paul Dacre) installing trendy bi-fold doors in his expensive privately owned home or installing a new bath room etc. the Grenfell building could have been made safer.

So the FACT is - 60 peoples lives were taken away so that the contractor and council could save £5000. Green targets were not responsible for that.

Please someone take the Daily Mail down in court, even social media can do better news reporting than that despicable company. It isn't amusing and we can no longer make excuses about the 'Daily Mail'.

June 2017 Election Manifesto Analysis

Lets have a look at the main issue that the manifestos cover:

Liberal Democrats 

The Liberal Democratic manifesto commits to 60% renewable energy by 2030. Similar to Labours commitment (see below). Unlike the Conservatives and Labour, they explicitly commit to restoring onshore wind energy and solar energy to our supported energy mix.
.

Conservatives

The Tories manifesto states that the party does not believe that more onshore wind energy is right for England and oppose large scale onshore wind projects, but supports continued investment in offshore wind energy.
But Hampshire does not have any wind farms, even small ones! Hampshire has land and wind resources, but no wind farms harnessing those resources. Not only that but Hampshires nearest offshore wind energy project was cancelled. So the Conservatives are applying ideological reasons for not pursuing onshore wind as well as putting their wealthy rural supporters before the nation and the planet.
They also commit to low cost energy, which economically and technically must mean more onshore wind and solar energy, so they have contradicting statements in their manifesto

Labour

Labours manifesto is even less detailed than the Conservatives but commits to 60% zero carbon or renewable energy by 2030.
What is zero carbon energy??
All energy has at least a small carbon footprint.
They don't however say what technologies will make up this new commitment, they don't mention onshore wind or solar energy.

Green Party

Like the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party are commited to removing the Conservatives effective ban on onshore wind energy projects. They also want to scale up offshore wind and marine energy projects.

UKIP

The party has a record of denying mainstream climate science so it is not surprising that they wish to remove 'subsidies' from wind and solar energy projects. To be honest in a few years time they won't need such a policy because even in the UK government encouragement won't be needed. Solar and wind are becoming cheaper than the old school fossil fuel sources that we became to dependent on.


Well that's the analysis of the main policies of the locally relevant political parties. Energy and the environment are the key issues.

Trump can't stop progress

It is now inevitable that electric road vehicles, boats and even aircraft will replace our fossil fuel transport. I really don't think anything can stop it now, certainly not the ignorant Trump.
Bloomberg this week reported on research about battery technology reducing in price in the next 4 years to the point that Electric Vehicles will likely be cheaper than diesel or petrol engined cars.
Cheaper maintanance as well, with so few moving parts in EVs.
Robert in this video says a company is installing super fast chargers in the UK that have the capacity to charge the batteries of a suitable EV in 5 or 10 minutes. An Israeli company has developed batteries that might take that charge.


Anyway here is Roberts latest video:

Progress tackling climate change?

So many good things have been achieved over the period since I started blogging. The fact is humanity is brilliant at finding technological solutions to problems that climate science throws our way, including solar energy, wind energy, energy storage, electric road vehicles, electric aircraft and electric everything!  However politicians and vested interests do what they can to slow down the inevitable technological change. We are going through such a period now. Political Luddites try to reverse policies that achieved great things all in order to support an unsustainable economy and gratify voters that have been lied to by political ideologists and propagandists.

The fact is the science remains the same, the planet that we live on is warming at a faster rate because of human produced greenhouse gases. The Arctic is warming at the fastest rate which is exactly as predicted by mainstream climate science. There are literally thousands of other signs and facts that support mainstream science, yet there are people that choose to find alternative theories or more often than not they do not even know (or want to know) that the world around them is changing.

So what has been achieved?

Electric Vehicles

This is a growing success story. The revolution probably started around 2000 when Toyota started getting serious about hybrid cars (Prius), then around 2008/2009 Tesla started producing the Roadster. Since then the pace has picked up, with huge improvements in last few years in battery development and vehicle design. This development is also linked to automation features in new vehicles, such as self driving cars.

One unexpected path has been the growing field of electric car racing, including drag racing, Tesla car racing and the more formal yearly Formula E season. There is a long way to go, but the fact is 'range anxiety' is gradually fading and the incredible performance of electric vehicles along with low maintenance costs means the future is bright for electric road transport. Worldwide there are about 50 electric models on sale in 2017 and Tesla are launching their first electric truck later in the year.

Solar Energy

Another success story, largely driven by common sense and foreign uptake of the technology. The success of solar photovoltaics is largely due to automated mass production capabilities, enabling economies of scale. The more installations there are across the world, the cheaper the technology gets.

This is why solar energy is predicted to be cheaper than coal and other fossil fuels, these old (Victorian) technologies can not compete with the reliability, low maintenance costs and low life cycle/energy costs of solar energy.  

Wind Energy

Wind energy has been more controversial as a result of lies and myths (many discussed on this blog) regarding wind farms. There have been campaigns to discredit wind energy for purely political purposes and to prop up ailing fossil fuel energy businesses. Nearly all of the British countryside is industrialised by agriculture, so the idea that a wind turbine is going to industrialise natural habitats is largely a result of a poor understanding of the British landscape.

Energy Storage

This is a growing area for investment and it is sad that Fareham based company Isentropic went into administration. However the good news is that the development of their Pumped Heat Energy Storage (PHES) system continues with the support of Newcastle University at the Sir Joseph Swan Centre and work continues at the Fareham site. According to the new web site the grid scale demonstrator is being commisioned and will be going through performance testing this summer.

Apart from Insentropic the current popular technology is the battery and the improvements in this area as a result of electric vehicle development is spilling over into grid and domestic energy storage.
Tesla is again a leader in this field although there have been many other companies less well known that have been developing battery technology for a number of years. Energy storage will help to remove power stations from the grid, allowing renewable energy to be stored when there is excess and to be distributed when there is shortage.

I think Elon Musk the founder of Tesla, Space X and Solar City deserves a mention. Musk is a modern day Thomas Edison which is ironic considering he named his company after Nikola Tesla a rival of Edison (Teslas AC electricity distribution system was superior to Edisons DC system, but Tesla ended gained little for his efforts). Musk is a visionary engineer and business man, he cofounded Pay Pal, sold his share and used the money to revolutionise road vehicles and the space transport industry. He knows that climate change is a serious problem caused by our carbon emissions.

The future is bright and it's electric

Robert Llewellyn takes a look at 2016 and the future.
Don't mention Brexit or Trump...
2017 will see a huge number of electric vehicles being launched, plus they will get closer to a 300 mile range.

Trump ready to censor Climate Science?

It's been a big worry ever since Trump 'won' the US Presidential election this year. He appears to be siding with the anti-knowledge mob and is heading for the censorship of science and knowledge.

Why is this so?

Well science is basically non-political, it produces knowledge that may or may not be positive and 'beneficial' to humanity, how it is used is up to us. It is just there and may influence political decisions in a positive or negative way.

This BBC report sums up the current views regarding Trumps decisions even before he has taken up the position of US President:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38322594

According to the article:

1. Trumps team asked for all the names of the Department of Energy scientists that had worked on Climate Change issues. Basically this is the equivalent of Hitlers party supporters denouncing un-German science and forcing the likes of Einstein to leave 1930s Germany.
   Is this an extreme view? Well you either believe in the freedom to do any science that may inform government and business decisions or you try and dictate what science can be done based on your ideological preference (censoring it).
   Witch hunting scientists for their work is very, very similar to what the Nazis did in the 1930s.
   Sorry if you disagree, but if you believe in democracy then you have to accept unwelcome scientific knowledge as well as the 'welcome' knowledge.
   
   
2. Anthony Scaramucci one of Trumps team recently made comments on CNN comparing the ancient idea of the flat Earth with Climate Change. There is a big difference between ancient 'science' and modern science. Those that believed in the flat Earth did not try and prove that the theory was correct and did not collect data to prove it was correct.
   Modern science relies on the scientific method which did not develop until the 17th century, by today's standards the flat Earth theory does not stand up to scrutiny. Scaramucci's effectively assumes and bets on the assumption that in the future science will disprove current climate science knowledge. No normal sane decision maker bases political and social decisions by betting on what science might come up with in 100 years. You can only take on board what is known now and assume it is correct because it's based on existing knowledge that is tested and well proven (Infra Red radiation, Green House Effect and basic physics etc) verified by observation (temperature measurments, witnesses like farmers and other ordinary people, melting ice records, various species struggling or doing well, sea level rise etc.).
   
   
3. As the Ex-NASA boss points out in the article both government and businesses depend on truthful and factual climate data. If it is altered or is no longer available, businesses will have a false picture of reality and such holes will be replaced lies, myths, rumour and hearsay. We would have gone back in time to a more primitive period. We would be living a lie.
   
   
4.  On top of the above observations Trump has appointed Rick Perry and Scott Pruitt to positions where they are in charge of departments that they are critical of.

So far it looks like Trump will significant damage in order to achieve his 'dream'. 
Then there is Putin and Trumps love in.

One has to hope that the scientists can save the climate data and keep doing good science in defiance of Trump diktats and censorship.

Tory Government defeated at court twice in one week

Defeat No. 1

Environmental lawyers (ClientEarth) won a battle with the Tories in court over air pollution in our cities and urban areas. The court ruled that the governments plans were inadequate and would not bring down pollution to legal limits. This is frankly a classic Tory case of ignoring a part of government duties and only focusing on duties that fit with their ideology, the part they are ignoring is of couse the environment and long term outcomes.

What have they been doing for the environment?

Closed DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change), basically the department had the words Climate Change in it's title so it had no chance at all with the hypocrites taking over the Tories.

Closed the Energy and Climate Change Committee (because DECC closed).

Cut support for renewable energy and increased support for fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37847787

Defeat No. 2

 The Tories have tried to dictate the way they operate within our democracy and have said that they don't need to consult our elected MP's about the Brexit details. It's bad enough that the referendum vote was marginal across the nation, but the Tories wanted to force their ideas on us and parliament, ideas that would be permanent. Looks like they might have to do the job they are employed to do, that is to slug out the details in a democratic and transparent manor.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37857785

So how long before the government is defeated on their climate change policy?
Today the UN accused governments of failing to reduce carbon emissions sufficiently, missing the 2030 target by 23%.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37849862

Energy with a future and for our future

The fact is wind energy and Great Britain go together. Before the fall from 'Greatness' we harnessed the wind to build the British Empire. Wind is what powered the Royal Navy and hence made Britain Great.

40% of Europes wind resources are found in British territory. If wind were oil or coal then nations would be fighting for access to use this resource. Access to fossil fuels drove Germany and Japan during WWII, but today in Great Britain a minority of people drive the campaign to make us dependent on imported fossil and nuclear fuels.

As this video points out, the government has put in place legislation to stop the wind energy industry from being economically self supporting. Their alternative is to invest in extremely expensive nuclear energy funded by a European nation and China as well as the last dregs of gas in British rocks. Worse still, the science and design of these expensive nuclear white elephants is to be conducted by the foreign investors. This shows how poor we are in engineering and science skills today, the very thing that 'fuels' the development of mobile phones, computers and cars that British citizens love to buy.





There are a number of factors that make the UK the best place for wind.

1. We sit on one of the Earths wind belts which is located at a latitude of 60 degrees. At this belt, air from the Arctic and from the 30 degree latitude fall onto us, the Coriolis Effect makes the Arctic air come from the East (Polar Easterlies) and the 30 degree latitude air from the West (Prevailing Westerlies). These facts also determine how sailing vessels travel across the Atlantic.

2. Other factors include the Jet Streams (very fast winds in the upper atmosphere) and the Gulf Stream (warm water stream passing across the Atlantic). The Gulf Stream tends to keep Britain warmer than it normally should be at our latitude.

The following map shows the distribution of wind resources across Europe.

 

A few wind energy web pages and resources:

http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/03-04/wind/content/wind%20resource.html
http:/www.berr.gov.uk/files/file17789.pdf 
https://www.energy.eu/publications/a07.pdf

More subsidies for fracking in the pipe line

The media today write about the proposals by Theresa May for additional financial support for fracking on top of existing financial support for fracking drilling operations.
It's not to hard to see the hypocrisy in the governments energy policies fueled by fears that votes will be lost if rural home owners are upset when a wind turbine is built within 100 miles of their home.

The government has cut ROC support for onshore wind farms and solar energy, both of which are crucial in cutting CO2 emissions and reducing energy costs for home owners.

The so called problem of intermittent renewable energy supply is a problem that is being solved by engineers and scientists. This year global energy storage capacity has doubled, it's a market that is growing rapidly and only ignorant Daily Mail writers think it's unsolvable.

World leading Fareham based energy storage company:
http://www.isentropic.co.uk/

As well as this increased support for Fracking (and carbon emissions) Mays government has been quick to scrap the Climate Change cabinet position and close down the Department of Energy and Climate Change as a separate entity.

It seems that Climate Change are forbidden words within government despite it being a costly problem that needs real technology solutions.

Meanwhile global temperatures this year are already close to breaking the limits set by the Paris climate agreement intended to limit temperatures to a 1.5 degrees C increase. Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) has shown that this year temperatures increased by about 1.4 degrees:

http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/spiralling-global-temperatures/

Robert Llewellyn talks about Passivhaus (Low Energy Homes)

Something that this government and large developers say would be to expensive, which is a lie of course especially in the context of long term economics and damages caused by Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Wind Turbines and Hugh McNeal

According to a Telegraph article this weekend "England not windy enough, admits wind industry chief".

The wind industry chief is Hugh McNeal. So what does the article actually say?

1. McNeal thinks that there is a case for more onshore wind farms in parts of the UK despite withdrawal of financial support via ROC (Renewable Obligation Certicates that the Telegraph refers to as subsidies).
2. Without ROC further onshore wind farms in England are probably not viable.
3. Wholesale electricity prices are to low to invest in new generation, but the government is subsidising gas rather than supporting onshore wind energy to build new generation.
4. Wind energy is the cheapest form of new electricity generation in the country.

So basically the headline does not reflect McNeals comments or views. The government according to the Telegraph is subsidising gas despite onshore wind energy being cheaper. Even without ROC system support, onshore wind farms can be built and would be cheaper than any gas fired power station.

Plus this doesn't even take into account that new technology and economies of scale reduce costs further.

And then there is the Climate Change factor. The Telegraph does not include the 'energy' costs of dealing with Climate Change damage. Although economists, politicians and journalists like to keep things simple because their poor old brains will hurt if they are overloaded, the fact is the damage that Climate Change will have should be factored into the equation of whether wind farms are economical or not.

There is a cost to doing nothing or not doing enough about Climate Change. Something that the owners of the Telegraph  probably don't care about in their island fantasy home.