EV-based road transportation is not viable

[tom66]

Even IPCC has conceded the 1.5C goal is impossible without carbon capture.

Removing CO2 from the oceans is also essential to limit ocean acidification but I don't know at what rate it gets reabsorbed or how practical the technology is to do so yet.

And building forests is absolutely noble but trees take 30-50 years to absorb enough carbon; they also constantly face targeting for deforestation (we will always want wood for furniture and to clear area for farming.)   I also don't think the planet will go meat free, which would reduce farmed area considerably, any time soon.  (I mean, I'm not even meat free, because the alternatives aren't there yet IMO.  I can't imagine "Joe Public" wanting to be vegan unless we have true artificial meat and still there will be demand for real animals.)   Imagine another Bolsonaro deciding that the Amazon is fair game again, despite international condemnation.  So not convinced they make a huge degree of sense in terms of averting significant climate change.

[nctnico]

Even IPCC has conceded the 1.5C goal is impossible without carbon capture.

A quick scan tells me that this is to be achieved through biomass (= grow more plants).

[tom66]

The secondary benefit of reducing combustion fuel usage is improving air quality which is why EVs (or I guess hydrogen FCEV) must be the requirement for city centre air quality.

That won't help if the power plant next to the city keeps on emitting toxic fumes. In a previous post I already showed (through a simple calculation) that only a few percent of coal based electricity generation makes a BEV several time more dirty compared to a modern hybrid. Also, dense city centers are not big so the actual number of people living there is low while there are many more people living in the suburds. All in all the idea to make a few streets cleaner while exposing the entire city to several times higher concentrations of toxic gas is not a good idea. It makes more sense to simply block the streets that have little ventilation for traffic (or ban cars with poor or no emission control for those streets) in order to improve air quality.

Can you link to your analysis/post because I scanned through and couldn't find a mention of that.  It doesn't sound even remotely correct to me, but even if it was, longer term we are moving towards 0% coal, we used nearly no coal in the last 5 years and it's expected by 2030 that we will use no coal at all.  The only reason it's being used at all this winter is due to gas shortages as a result of the Ukraine war.

And CO2 capture is one of the worst ideas ever. You basically create an underground toxic gas bubble. There have been several incidents with natural CO2 sources that suddenly release their content resulting in a great number of deaths.

That's just one possible CO2 storage mechanism.  And these are geological reservoirs that have held CH4 for millennia, so there is no reason to believe they will be worse with CO2.  But if you were concerned about that you could focus more on carbonification of rock, such as using limestone deposits. 

Even IPCC has conceded the 1.5C goal is impossible without carbon capture.

A quick scan tells me that this is to be achieved through biomass (= grow more plants).

DACCS is part of many scenarios, there isn't one possible pathway, one scenario is no carbon capture at all but 30% less energy usage, well we know that is extremely unlikely to happen but the scientists present options for the politicians and bureaucrats to argue over.

[vad]

Can you link to your analysis/post because I scanned through and couldn't find a mention of that.  It doesn't sound even remotely correct to me, but even if it was, longer term we are moving towards 0% coal, we used nearly no coal in the last 5 years and it's expected by 2030 that we will use no coal at all.

By “we” did you mean your household, Great Britain, or the world? Volume of global coal production did not change much over the past 12 years:

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-total-coal-production-1971-2020

[vad]

All we need to do is plant more vegetation, forests, and change our usage to reduce unnecessary emissions.

True. And with higher CO2 atmospheric concentrations and warmer and moister climate the vegetation will thrive.

What needs to be banned is deforestation for the sake of production of biofuels. The practice of cutting down forests in North America, to manufacture wood pellets that are then exported to EU as renewable biofuel is madness.

[tggzzz]

... longer term we are moving towards 0% coal, we used nearly no coal in the last 5 years and it's expected by 2030 that we will use no coal at all.  The only reason it's being used at all this winter is due to gas shortages as a result of the Ukraine war.

I don't think it is quite that simple. Currently the UK is generating ~3GW from coal and "pre-coal". While the coal plant has hastily been saved from decomissioning, the "pre-coal" Drax plant looks like it will continue operating for quite a while.

Whether or not coal can be phased out depends on the introduction of a lot more green "dispatchable" capacity, presumably nuclear and grid-scale seasonal-scale pumped storage.

Germany has, of course, stepped up generation from its "pre-coal" sources.

(In my terminology, "pre-coal" = trees or lignite.)

[MadScientist]

I suspect we'll still have ICE for a long time in specialty applications.  For simplicity little beats a small petrol genset for emergency / worksite power for instance.  And diesel trucks will probably outpace electric trucks on some routes.  However, these will need to run on carbon neutral fuels, either synthetic or biofuel, and/or have a carbon offsetting tax applied to them that pays for the carbon produced to be removed.  This will make such fuels uneconomical for all but the most difficult use cases to use batteries and fuel cells in.

Correct. It’s not about converting everything instantly to BEVs it’s about converting what’s possible. It’s possible now and the near future to move personal cars away from ice. That’s needs to be done

[nctnico]

I suspect we'll still have ICE for a long time in specialty applications.  For simplicity little beats a small petrol genset for emergency / worksite power for instance.  And diesel trucks will probably outpace electric trucks on some routes.  However, these will need to run on carbon neutral fuels, either synthetic or biofuel, and/or have a carbon offsetting tax applied to them that pays for the carbon produced to be removed.  This will make such fuels uneconomical for all but the most difficult use cases to use batteries and fuel cells in.

Correct. It’s not about converting everything instantly to BEVs it’s about converting what’s possible. It’s possible now and the near future to move personal cars away from ice. That’s needs to be done

Incorrect. The whole goal is to move to renewable, non-poluting energy sources. ICE in itself isn't bad. It is the fuel that is being used that makes it bad. Alternatives can even be worse (like BEVs powered indirectly from coal).

People are obsessing over CO2 but the reality is that CO2 emissions are not today's problem. The emission of toxic gasses like SO2 and NOx (which cause respiratory and other health issues) are. Just look up the number of annual deaths due to producing electricity from coal as published by the WHO. Even in small countries like the NL, the number exceeds over 100 persons per year that die prematurely. Nuclear is far better and it boggles the mind how environmentalists can be against it...

As I wrote before, I ran the numbers a long time ago to show that moving the BEVs is not a good idea if electricity is (partly) generated by coal plants (which are also likely to provide the cheap night time power to have a base load):

Gasoline has a density of 0.72kg/litre and contains a maximum of 10ppm of sulphur (this limit is adopted world wide nowadays and rumour has it, it is significantly less in a lot of places). So 1000 grams of gasoline contains (up to) 10 milligrams of sulphur. 10 * 0.720  = 7.2 milligrams of sulphur per liter of gasoline.

One liter of gasoline takes you 20km in an efficient hybrid (going from realistic numbers). SO2 consists of 1 sulphur atom and two oxygen atoms. In totaal this molecule weighs about twice as much as a sulphur atom. 7.2 * 2 = 14 milligrams of SO2 per liter. Divide by 20 => 0.72 milligrams per km.

In 2019 the NL SO2 emissons for electricity production are 2400 metric tonnes (2.400.000 kg = 2.400.000.000 gram)
https://opendata.cbs.nl/statline/#/CBS/nl/dataset/83390NED/table?ts=1610469052046

In the same year 121TWh was produced.
https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2020/12/elektriciteitsproductie-naar-recordhoogte

2.400.000.000 / 121TWh=19,8 microgram/Wh

With a realistic use of 225Wh/km for a BEV that brings you to 225 * 19.8 microgram = 4.5 milligrams per km

4.5 milligrams / 0.72 milligrams = 6

So in the NL a BEV causes the emission of 6 times more SO2 compared to an efficient hybrid per distance travelled.

You can do a similar calculation for  NOx and you'll see a BEV barely meets the Euro6 limit for NOx.

[Monkeh]

Though some farm equipment does seem ideal for electrification - short distances, long days, but with a place to charge every night.  An electric tractor with a 100kWh battery doesn't seem infeasible to me.  More difficult if the engine has to do a lot more work, like a combine or mill.

The majority of tractors have PTOs for delivering non-trival power to towed or pushed implements, they're very multipurpose machines, and often do many miles of road hauling. Combines, as noticed by tszaboo, are exactly what I was thinking of in terms of 'not happening'.

Some of the smaller ones for yard work are very electrifiable, though, and in fact there are electric options on the market.

[Marco]

Industrial/farm equipment will likely transition to having on site LH2 tanks/pumps resupplied by tanker truck, once the LH2 infrastructure is in place for long haul trucking it's not an issue.

Large LH2 tanks have low enough evaporation rate you don't really need to take it into much consideration.

[tggzzz]

Industrial/farm equipment will likely transition to having on site LH2 tanks/pumps resupplied by tanker truck, once the LH2 infrastructure is in place for long haul trucking it's not an issue.

Large LH2 tanks have low enough evaporation rate you don't really need to take it into much consideration.

Onsite diesel tanks are low tech and require little maintenance.

Pressurised cryogenic tanks are high tech, and require regular maintenance and special skills to maintain. Conditions on a remote farm and the staff skillsets will remain, to use the standard euphemism, a challenge.

[nctnico]

Industrial/farm equipment will likely transition to having on site LH2 tanks/pumps resupplied by tanker truck, once the LH2 infrastructure is in place for long haul trucking it's not an issue.

Large LH2 tanks have low enough evaporation rate you don't really need to take it into much consideration.

Onsite diesel tanks are low tech and require little maintenance.

Pressurised cryogenic tanks are high tech, and require regular maintenance and special skills to maintain. Conditions on a remote farm and the staff skillsets will remain, to use the standard euphemism, a challenge.

Modern day farm equipment is chuck full with electronics anyway. So a tank -which still is a passive device- won't matter much. Besides that, H2 isn't stored in a cryogenic tank at all but a normal tank that can withstand pressures up to 750 bar. If a farmer owns a blow torch, then the knowledge on how to deal with high pressure gas tanks is already present.

[tom66]

Incorrect. The whole goal is to move to renewable, non-poluting energy sources. ICE in itself isn't bad. It is the fuel that is being used that makes it bad. Alternatives can even be worse (like BEVs powered indirectly from coal).

People are obsessing over CO2 but the reality is that CO2 emissions are not today's problem. The emission of toxic gasses like SO2 and NOx (which cause respiratory and other health issues) are. Just look up the number of annual deaths due to producing electricity from coal as published by the WHO. Even in small countries like the NL, the number exceeds over 100 persons per year that die prematurely. Nuclear is far better and it boggles the mind how environmentalists can be against it...

The problem with ICE is even running on the cleanest carbon neutral fuel they produce soot, NOx and other hazardous compound (fuel produces VOCs from evaporation, plus some hydrocarbons escape the combustion process.)  Also pretty much every engine burns a little bit of oil, which adds to the problem.  NOx is actually a really tough problem to solve as VW discovered with their cheating diesels, it's more or less impossible to make an efficient and powerful turbocharged engine that does not produce NOx, and therefore requires AdBlue treatment or at least a NOx trap.  It's easier to clean up power plants than it is to clean up ICE, given most of these recycling/capture systems are only efficient at scale.

CO2 emissions are a long term existential problem.  You are correct to say they are not a huge problem now but to ignore them because of that would be foolish - it's like saying "I don't need to stop smoking until I get cancer".  We need to decarbonise now so that we don't have the crisis in 30 years time.  That doesn't preclude doing things about city pollution like restricting/fining the worst offending vehicles and encouraging as much public transit/cycling/EV use as possible.

As I wrote before, I ran the numbers a long time ago to show that moving the BEVs is not a good idea if electricity is (partly) generated by coal plants (which are also likely to provide the cheap night time power to have a base load): [...]

The sector you have highlighted is not limited to electricity generation alone.  It also includes production of natural gas, steam, cooling etc (going by the English translation).  However, I did a similar calculation and come to a similar conclusion based on US data.  So I will grant you that.  It is a very good reason to be removing all fossil fuels from the grid as soon as practically possible. 

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29812

For EV charging, at night time most demand will be coming from nuclear and natural gas.  So far we are only using coal during periods of high demand, typically the 4-7pm evening peak.

[nctnico]

As I wrote before, I ran the numbers a long time ago to show that moving the BEVs is not a good idea if electricity is (partly) generated by coal plants (which are also likely to provide the cheap night time power to have a base load): [...]

The sector you have highlighted is not limited to electricity generation alone.

It is. There is a different website ( emissieregistratie.nl ) which has the same number (and a little more accurate). I have checked the calculation and verified the data 5 times over to make sure the SO2 emissions stated are from electricity generation alone.

[nctnico]

Incorrect. The whole goal is to move to renewable, non-poluting energy sources. ICE in itself isn't bad. It is the fuel that is being used that makes it bad. Alternatives can even be worse (like BEVs powered indirectly from coal).

People are obsessing over CO2 but the reality is that CO2 emissions are not today's problem. The emission of toxic gasses like SO2 and NOx (which cause respiratory and other health issues) are. Just look up the number of annual deaths due to producing electricity from coal as published by the WHO. Even in small countries like the NL, the number exceeds over 100 persons per year that die prematurely. Nuclear is far better and it boggles the mind how environmentalists can be against it...

The problem with ICE is even running on the cleanest carbon neutral fuel they produce soot, NOx and other hazardous compound (fuel produces VOCs from evaporation, plus some hydrocarbons escape the combustion process.)  Also pretty much every engine burns a little bit of oil, which adds to the problem.  NOx is actually a really tough problem to solve as VW discovered with their cheating diesels,

NOx is a problem for diesel (which works with excess air by design) but for a hybrid with an Atkinson cycle engine, the NOx emissions are really really low. A fraction of the Euro 6 limit. Again, lower than you can reach with a BEV powered from coal / natural gas power plants. With NOx and SO2, NIMBY just doesn't work as these gasses get blown around by the wind and end up everywhere.

Actually, a lot more cars could perform as good like the ones from Toyota where it comes to emissions from regular passenger cars. However, the European car manufacturers formed a cartel in which they agreed not to compete on emissions AND only do so much to stay within the legal limits where it comes to emissions. Mercedes rolled over and snitched but didn't have to pay the fines in return.

Capturing pollution from power plants doesn't work either. It simply isn't economically viable; otherwise they'd be doing it already. Electricity prices would become insane. Ofcourse a lot has been improved the past decades. Turning SO2 into gypsum has been done for decades already. But getting the last bits out, would be exponentially more expensive.

[nctnico]

I just had a horrible thought.

A hillbillie playing around with liquid hydrogen.

Hydrogen is the wrong stuff for that. Look on Youtube for videos where people do stupid things with liquid oxygen. Everything burns with pure oxygen... Liquid hydrogen needs to mix with air first to become combustible so it is far less of an issue.

[tggzzz]

Industrial/farm equipment will likely transition to having on site LH2 tanks/pumps resupplied by tanker truck, once the LH2 infrastructure is in place for long haul trucking it's not an issue.

Large LH2 tanks have low enough evaporation rate you don't really need to take it into much consideration.

Onsite diesel tanks are low tech and require little maintenance.

Pressurised cryogenic tanks are high tech, and require regular maintenance and special skills to maintain. Conditions on a remote farm and the staff skillsets will remain, to use the standard euphemism, a challenge.

Modern day farm equipment is chuck full with electronics anyway. So a tank -which still is a passive device- won't matter much. Besides that, H2 isn't stored in a cryogenic tank at all but a normal tank that can withstand pressures up to 750 bar. If a farmer owns a blow torch, then the knowledge on how to deal with high pressure gas tanks is already present.

750 bar isn't "business as usual". Then add hydrogen embrittlement of metals, a topic which I haven't investigated.

I'll stand in a puddle of diesel while you throw a lighted match in it. Would you stand in a cloud of escaped hydrogen when I (remotely ) throw a lighted match at you?

[nctnico]

Industrial/farm equipment will likely transition to having on site LH2 tanks/pumps resupplied by tanker truck, once the LH2 infrastructure is in place for long haul trucking it's not an issue.

Large LH2 tanks have low enough evaporation rate you don't really need to take it into much consideration.

Onsite diesel tanks are low tech and require little maintenance.

Pressurised cryogenic tanks are high tech, and require regular maintenance and special skills to maintain. Conditions on a remote farm and the staff skillsets will remain, to use the standard euphemism, a challenge.

Modern day farm equipment is chuck full with electronics anyway. So a tank -which still is a passive device- won't matter much. Besides that, H2 isn't stored in a cryogenic tank at all but a normal tank that can withstand pressures up to 750 bar. If a farmer owns a blow torch, then the knowledge on how to deal with high pressure gas tanks is already present.

750 bar isn't "business as usual". Then add hydrogen embrittlement of metals, a topic which I haven't investigated.

I'll stand in a puddle of diesel while you throw a lighted match in it. Would you stand in a cloud of escaped hydrogen when I (remotely ) throw a lighted match at you?

Embrittlement is not a problem. If you had investigated that, you wouldn't be parrotting about problems that don't exist. And sure you can throw a lit match to me. Hydrogen is so light that by the time the match is near me, the hydrogen is already gone. If you let 5kg (a full filling of a typical car) of hydrogen leak in a garage, then that garage will need to consist of less than 6 parking spaces in order to achieve a flammable mixture. These are not difficult math problems to solve. There is a whole lot of gut feeling stuff going on that makes no sense when you apply some math to it. Do as I do: only use your underbelly feeling to indicate when it is time to eat. For anything else: use a calculator.

[TimFox]

Hydrogen embrittlement of metals is an important issue, when atomic hydrogen is present, although reduced at high temperatures.
Practical storage of hydrogen at high pressure usually has an inert lining inside a steel vessel, where the steel holds the stress from pressure but the thin plastic (or other) lining keeps the hydrogen from the iron.
Hydrogen embrittlement has been studied in great detail ever since the days of steam locomotives, where it represented practical limits to operating pressure.
The typical limit on steam pressure was around 250 psig (1.7 MPa =17 bar), later increased to 1500 psig (10 MPa = 100 bar) with special construction.
The usual source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

[nctnico]

So it is a known, well studied phenomenon with know countermeasures. IOW: not a problem.

[tom66]

I'm not that worried about hydrogen safety.  The tanks are pretty leak proof, they might leak during an accident but comparably Li-Ion batteries aren't perfectly safe either and neither is ICE fuel.  Plenty of post-crash car fires, as well as just car fires from bad maintenance or bad luck.  The bigger issues are the end-to-end efficiency (which is really bad for hydrogen) and the production source for the hydrogen (it needs to be green, if it's used).  I think the feasibility of solving these issues plus the high cost of fuel cells will exclude them from mass automotive usage any time soon but I'm waiting for those £20k hydrogen cars, we have £20k EVs already so surely they aren't far behind?

[themadhippy]

methane powered tractors seems an obvious solution,especially for livestock farms.

[Marco]

Onsite diesel tanks are low tech and require little maintenance.

Pressurised cryogenic tanks are high tech, and require regular maintenance and special skills to maintain. Conditions on a remote farm and the staff skillsets will remain, to use the standard euphemism, a challenge.

You don't use high pressure tanks, it's way more trouble than it's worth.

If there is a market for it you can make the pump assemblies easy to replace. Don't repair anything on site, just have a spare assembly delivered with all the tools to install it calibrated torque wrenches and all in hermetic packaging, which can be put in whole.

[Marco]

methane powered tractors seems an obvious solution,especially for livestock farms.

The problem with significant scale synthetic natural gas at net zero is that there's not a lot of CO2 to go around which isn't in the air. Sure there is (crop) waste incineration, but that's not a lot of CO2 in the grand scheme of things.

The only scalable solution for SNG is using direct carbon capture from the air. Liquid hydrogen is going to be expensive to use, synthetic natural gas at direct carbon capture scale is likely going to be even more expensive.

[eti]

We know this, obvious is obvious, electric vehicles are a nonstarter and dead in the water. I don’t need to “qualify” my statement, the future will prove it