RE: Final EU vote on 2035 engine phaseout delayed
Discussion
DonkeyApple said:
What is sad about that article is how it talks about the damage from all the fresh water use in northern Chile. Meanwhile, VW is down in southern Chile desalinating vast amounts of water using renewable wind energy and then using that water to make methanol so a few people in Europe can drive around in some very expensive new cars after 2035.
It does highlight the madness of these industrial businesses.
It seems that the Germans stamping their feet has resulted in them getting their way, but now the Italians want to expand the exemption for e-fuels to include bio fuels.It does highlight the madness of these industrial businesses.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-25...
It's not a done deal as some EU members, and some German political parties are against the exemption. Putting that aside the requirement is for carbon neutral e-fuel, which relies on CO2 removed from the air, and the technology to do it on a practical and economic scale simply doesn't exist.
Even if they get the full exemption I'm sure that some EU countries will simply not allow any e-fuel powered cars to be registered in their country. So e-fuel cars will only be available in Germany and Italy, and the outlook for other markets looks grim.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/states-banning-sal...
https://canadianbusiness.com/ideas/gas-car-sales-b...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-province-plan...
You can have as many exemptions as you like, but if no market for e-fuels cars exist, it's a moot point.
2035 is an aggressive target and I think we will slip in the U.K. but if that happens then the only plausible fix is to allow certain lower income individuals to keep buying a certain type of petrol car. Allowing some chaps to buy a few Porsches that run on executive tramp piss at €10/L is not any kind of sensible or efficient solution. It's just old men being dicks.
NMNeil said:
You can have as many exemptions as you like, but if no market for e-fuels cars exist, it's a moot point.
I wouldn't worry about it, German manufacturing of anything but high value is about to die anyway, unless Russia loses in Ukraine and Putin or his successor gets wiped out very soon. Even then, Nordstream isn't coming back for a long time by which time it's all dead anyway.It hasn't hit yet, but they are buggered using high cost energy, they will likely blow their commitment to reduce CO2 and go full out dirty coal power just to try and salvage some of it, in which case going EV is pointless.
500TORQUES said:
NMNeil said:
You can have as many exemptions as you like, but if no market for e-fuels cars exist, it's a moot point.
I wouldn't worry about it, German manufacturing of anything but high value is about to die anyway, unless Russia loses in Ukraine and Putin or his successor gets wiped out very soon. Even then, Nordstream isn't coming back for a long time by which time it's all dead anyway.It hasn't hit yet, but they are buggered using high cost energy, they will likely blow their commitment to reduce CO2 and go full out dirty coal power just to try and salvage some of it, in which case going EV is pointless.
Strangely Brown said:
Do you really believe that going EV is going to make any meaningful difference to CO2 anyway? How, exactly, are you going to measure that difference and how, exactly do you know that any difference you may be able to measure is actually directly attributable to "going EV"?
It is one of the many measures that will make a difference. Don't worry, you will adapt, even if you never agree.
500TORQUES said:
I wouldn't worry about it, German manufacturing of anything but high value is about to die anyway, unless Russia loses in Ukraine and Putin or his successor gets wiped out very soon. Even then, Nordstream isn't coming back for a long time by which time it's all dead anyway.
It hasn't hit yet, but they are buggered using high cost energy, they will likely blow their commitment to reduce CO2 and go full out dirty coal power just to try and salvage some of it, in which case going EV is pointless.
But would still demonstrate our high moral standards It hasn't hit yet, but they are buggered using high cost energy, they will likely blow their commitment to reduce CO2 and go full out dirty coal power just to try and salvage some of it, in which case going EV is pointless.
And give us (uk) a huge economic advantage.
We’re already seeing how cheap electricity off peak can be through schemes like Ovo Anytime which has just launched. 10p/kWh whenever there is lower demand vs supply rather than stuck to a night time window. It’s just a taste of where things will be able to go once the market gets properly competitive.
We’re already seeing how cheap electricity off peak can be through schemes like Ovo Anytime which has just launched. 10p/kWh whenever there is lower demand vs supply rather than stuck to a night time window. It’s just a taste of where things will be able to go once the market gets properly competitive.
plfrench said:
And give us (uk) a huge economic advantage.
We’re already seeing how cheap electricity off peak can be through schemes like Ovo Anytime which has just launched. 10p/kWh whenever there is lower demand vs supply rather than stuck to a night time window. It’s just a taste of where things will be able to go once the market gets properly competitive.
Upgrading the grid does not come without large investment and negative environmental impact:We’re already seeing how cheap electricity off peak can be through schemes like Ovo Anytime which has just launched. 10p/kWh whenever there is lower demand vs supply rather than stuck to a night time window. It’s just a taste of where things will be able to go once the market gets properly competitive.
Yahoo Finance said:
National Grid has unveiled a £54bn ($65bn) plan to upgrade the UK’s power grid, the biggest investment since the 1950s.
The government wants 50 gigawatts of offshore wind operational by 2030, up from 10GW currently and the new network would provide capacity for an additional 23GW.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/national-grid-up...
The government wants 50 gigawatts of offshore wind operational by 2030, up from 10GW currently and the new network would provide capacity for an additional 23GW.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/national-grid-up...
BBC News said:
A huge upgrade of the UK's electricity network would see a host of pylons and cables transporting power from offshore wind farms around the UK.
Power lines from Anglesey to Swansea, Grimsby to Hertfordshire, and Loch Buidhe to Spittal would be built to pull electricity from the sea to the mainland then to homes and businesses.
National Grid ESO said it was the biggest network upgrade in 60 years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62085297
Power lines from Anglesey to Swansea, Grimsby to Hertfordshire, and Loch Buidhe to Spittal would be built to pull electricity from the sea to the mainland then to homes and businesses.
National Grid ESO said it was the biggest network upgrade in 60 years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62085297
Strangely Brown said:
Do you really believe that going EV is going to make any meaningful difference to CO2 anyway? How, exactly, are you going to measure that difference and how, exactly do you know that any difference you may be able to measure is actually directly attributable to "going EV"?
?We know how many carbon atoms are in a litre of petrol. We know how many litres of petrol are consumed a day. Ergo, we can calculate very easily the fall in CO2 emissions from cars just by knowing the amount of tax paid by fuel vendors.
In addition we can measure the atmospheric ppm of CO2.
DonkeyApple said:
2035 is an aggressive target and I think we will slip in the U.K. but if that happens then the only plausible fix is to allow certain lower income individuals to keep buying a certain type of petrol car. Allowing some chaps to buy a few Porsches that run on executive tramp piss at €10/L is not any kind of sensible or efficient solution. It's just old men being dicks.
But just like those who buy hydrogen cars, they have to live within spitting distance of a fueling station, and considering all the safeguards that will be in place to ensure that petrol isn't put in an e-fuel car, how many garages will invest in those special pumps for the handful of e-fuel cars that will be on the roads?Imagine if the proud owner of a new e-fuel Ferrari or BMW arrives in the UK and asks where the nearest e-fuel station is only to be told there are none.
Strangely Brown said:
Do you really believe that going EV is going to make any meaningful difference to CO2 anyway? How, exactly, are you going to measure that difference and how, exactly do you know that any difference you may be able to measure is actually directly attributable to "going EV"?
You could shut down the UK entirely, wont make the slightest difference.500TORQUES said:
Strangely Brown said:
Do you really believe that going EV is going to make any meaningful difference to CO2 anyway? How, exactly, are you going to measure that difference and how, exactly do you know that any difference you may be able to measure is actually directly attributable to "going EV"?
You could shut down the UK entirely, wont make the slightest difference.
Don't under estimate the huge advantage all this stuff is to the U.K. compared to our peer economies. Just look at the insane stuff happening in Germany right now as they rush to move industry to Asia and invent crazy schemes to import energy from Chile due to 2050 targets.
Plus, there's the end of $10 oil within 40 years that will spike the price of crude that we will mostly be immune to along with disconnecting from the USD on energy pricing.
Forget the eco stuff, the economic advantages are great for the next generations.
DonkeyApple said:
Mainly because Thatcher already shut down all the polluting stuff and the rest got moved to China.
Don't under estimate the huge advantage all this stuff is to the U.K. compared to our peer economies. Just look at the insane stuff happening in Germany right now as they rush to move industry to Asia and invent crazy schemes to import energy from Chile due to 2050 targets.
Plus, there's the end of $10 oil within 40 years that will spike the price of crude that we will mostly be immune to along with disconnecting from the USD on energy pricing.
Forget the eco stuff, the economic advantages are great for the next generations.
You seem completely oblivious to how big an energy advantage the USA has going forward thanks to their shale oil and gas deposits and the advances in technology to unlock that.Don't under estimate the huge advantage all this stuff is to the U.K. compared to our peer economies. Just look at the insane stuff happening in Germany right now as they rush to move industry to Asia and invent crazy schemes to import energy from Chile due to 2050 targets.
Plus, there's the end of $10 oil within 40 years that will spike the price of crude that we will mostly be immune to along with disconnecting from the USD on energy pricing.
Forget the eco stuff, the economic advantages are great for the next generations.
UK would do very well ensuring we get our hands on that, it's going to be much lower cost than dealing with the middle east.
500TORQUES said:
You seem completely oblivious to how big an energy advantage the USA has going forward thanks to their shale oil and gas deposits and the advances in technology to unlock that.
UK would do very well ensuring we get our hands on that, it's going to be much lower cost than dealing with the middle east.
Yes the economic driver conflicts with the ecological driver, at least when thought on a simplistic level.UK would do very well ensuring we get our hands on that, it's going to be much lower cost than dealing with the middle east.
But the physics of climate change are undeniable, to reasonable people.
So... larger and larger parts of the globe will become uninhabitable. Those people are going to migrate to those regions which are not.
This won't be prevented by burning more stuff and it will have a massive economic impact, at the very least.
Need to think beyond the next 5 minutes.
500TORQUES said:
DonkeyApple said:
Mainly because Thatcher already shut down all the polluting stuff and the rest got moved to China.
Don't under estimate the huge advantage all this stuff is to the U.K. compared to our peer economies. Just look at the insane stuff happening in Germany right now as they rush to move industry to Asia and invent crazy schemes to import energy from Chile due to 2050 targets.
Plus, there's the end of $10 oil within 40 years that will spike the price of crude that we will mostly be immune to along with disconnecting from the USD on energy pricing.
Forget the eco stuff, the economic advantages are great for the next generations.
You seem completely oblivious to how big an energy advantage the USA has going forward thanks to their shale oil and gas deposits and the advances in technology to unlock that.Don't under estimate the huge advantage all this stuff is to the U.K. compared to our peer economies. Just look at the insane stuff happening in Germany right now as they rush to move industry to Asia and invent crazy schemes to import energy from Chile due to 2050 targets.
Plus, there's the end of $10 oil within 40 years that will spike the price of crude that we will mostly be immune to along with disconnecting from the USD on energy pricing.
Forget the eco stuff, the economic advantages are great for the next generations.
UK would do very well ensuring we get our hands on that, it's going to be much lower cost than dealing with the middle east.
500TORQUES said:
You seem completely oblivious to how big an energy advantage the USA has going forward thanks to their shale oil and gas deposits and the advances in technology to unlock that.
UK would do very well ensuring we get our hands on that, it's going to be much lower cost than dealing with the middle east.
Once super cheap Saudi oil goes from the ME then that region becomes dominated by Iranian reserves or geopolitically, the ME shifts fundamentally to China, away from the West. The US has the Canadian oil reserves to the north and to the south the largest reserves on the planet that it has been blockading for decades, Venezuela. UK would do very well ensuring we get our hands on that, it's going to be much lower cost than dealing with the middle east.
On top of that enormous impending and inevitable oil economy geopolitical shift within most of our lifetimes and the subsequent permanent increase in the average cost of oil there is the huge currency risk that a nation such as the U.K. remains permanently exposed to economically and politically by being part of the oil economy but having no control. There has not been such strong intent to oust the current oil currency since the USD ousted the GBP post WW2 as it seized many commodity exchanges from Europe. Sitting in the U.K. do we want to be switching from having to buff dollar balls to yen balls?
Switching to renewable self sufficiency supported by local nat gas would mean that our economy was no longer totally beholden to not just the price of oil that is determined by others but also the value of foreign currencies. We can put the eco stuff to one side as the National benefit from releasing the U.K. from the cost of oil and the value of the USD is immeasurable.
As for manufacturing etc and net zero, the U.K. doesn't really manufacture cars, we import them and at best we assemble some from imported parts. The carbon emissions of those parts and cars doesn't lie on our shores. It's the same with huge amounts of 20th century basic industry. With the exception of one near pointless steel works in Wales we decarbonised before we even got to the 21st century. Compared to many EU competitors we have a near 30 year+ head start. When they were investing in trying to keep as much dirty, heavy Soviet industry as possible to keep jobs, the U.K. was burning all of that to the ground.
We can see this reflected in the whole eFuels fiasco. In the U.K. the eFuels market is being represented by a handful of aged robber barons with an insatiable appetite for other people's money at any cost while across the water in Germany it's a desperate bid to try and stave off economic collapse of a vital 20th century industrial sector. You see the same with Hydrogen. The U.K. has no need for some hugely costly and inefficient energy store or industrial ingredient. We have much more efficient ways to deal with excess renewable energy and its shortfalls and nor do we have the industries that need grey hydrogen.
What we see in the U.K. is overseas industries spending £millions trying to win over the British public to support their cause and to give them money. We have no need within the U.K. for any of these really clunky, almost Victorian desperate solutions to 20th century industrial legacies.
If we were to rewrite the history of the 80s we would rebrand all of the turmoil and mess of the second Harrowing of the North as an intellectual and ingenious decarbonising of society to save the whole of humanity.
2050 net zero is a crushing burden on our nearest economic competitors while thanks to Thatcher's immense foresight (;)) we did most of the hard lifting nearly 40 years ago switching to low carbon retail parks and office blocks.
Our two largest carbon sources are cars and the burning of nat gas.
24% Transport
21% Energy Supply
16% Residential
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport...
60% of our GHG emissions can simply be removed by 2050 by changing our cars and houses to run on electricity and by sourcing that electricity from renewables and scrubbing all the CO2 from the gas burnt in power stations.
The U.K. has to have just about the easiest and smoothest path to net zero in 2050 of any developed nation.
All we need to very slowly do and as and when it suits each individual is to change our car for an EV at some point over the next 25-30 years and replace our gas boiler in the house with an electric solution. And in reality, most people over say, 65 in the U.K. today won't have to do any of that which does beg the question as to why a group of people who have been alive for so long so should be the wisest, calmest and most rational in society are running around confused, enraged and having spiked their baggy Y fronts? You'd expect them to be being a bit smarter and chilling out knowing that they don't have to lift a finger or change anything but can also make wild claims of having set Britain on this huge positive trajectory by being part of society that destroyed dirty, evil manufacturing in the 80s. Proudly showing pictures of all the Japanese and then German cars they bought in their struggle to decarbonise the U.K. and save the world.
SpeckledJim said:
What are you suggesting? Should we invade?
The US is a nice place that could do with some culture and sophistication. Taking Pimms o'clock to the Jetski society would benefit all. However, all the shale oil is in Canada. A country so undesirable that it didn't even have to put up a fight for independence.
DonkeyApple said:
Our two largest carbon sources are cars and the burning of nat gas.
24% Transport
21% Energy Supply
16% Residential
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport...
Ahem, "Transport" includes shipping, aviation, (non-electrified) rail and freight.24% Transport
21% Energy Supply
16% Residential
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport...
I'll wager 'cars' is the biggest individual source of CO2 (although aviation may yet prove to be the bigger GW problem), but if you add in other pollutants - NOx, sulphur, CO, etc, then all those dirt(ier) diesels and the god-awful fuel that shipping use step forwards quite a long way.
Let's not do the propagandists work for them by claiming cars are the source of all transport emissions, eh?
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