[HN Gopher] BHP says battery electric cheaper than hydrogen as i...
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BHP says battery electric cheaper than hydrogen as it dumps diesel
Author : _aavaa_
Score : 95 points
Date : 2023-07-31 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thedriven.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (thedriven.io)
| atourgates wrote:
| I thought this sentence at the end was quite interesting:
|
| > BHP's modelling shows that battery charging time may be the
| biggest cost on the electric side, something that dynamic
| charging can reduce significantly.
|
| For an industry like mining, the biggest cost of switching to
| electric isn't buying vehicles, or batteries or setting up
| charging stations: it's the downtime they experience while
| charging.
| pixl97 wrote:
| A fair portion of their huge equipment is already connected to
| a power cord, so electricification isn't a problem itself. But
| pretty much everything is moving 24/7. For things like heavy
| shovels uptimes are commonly 88% per year. When you look at how
| much maintenance is needed to keep running in these rough
| environments it's a pretty amazing number.
| algo_trader wrote:
| Please see my sibling comment.
|
| Do we really use 2000A cables running around a work site? Are
| they buried ?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yep, and no mostly not buried. They have cable tractors to
| move around the wires and heavy spools. At the interface
| they'll have it lifted in places so the trucks don't drive
| over it.
| audunw wrote:
| Very interesting. Makes me imagine a battery swapping station
| for a huge mining truck. Probably not feasible but I'm sure it
| would look awesome if it was.
| pixl97 wrote:
| They have hybrid test trucks that can power themselves via
| overhead lines for the uphill loaded portion of the trip. I
| wonder if something like that could reduce battery usage and
| time to charge.
| atourgates wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense.
|
| I went in a road trip in our EV yesterday pulling a trailer
| for the first time. We basically drove down into a valley
| in the morning, and back up out in the evening. As you
| could imagine, we got basically infinity range going
| downhill, and much much shorter range going uphill.
|
| A track that powered/charged mining trucks while they were
| hauling material up, coupled with regenerative breaking
| seems like it could pretty much solve charging for that
| application.
| defrost wrote:
| Even better, _many_ BHP iron sites in the Pilbarra are
| mesa mining .. they drive up unloaded and roll down with
| 100+ tonnes - plenty of opportunity to gravity charge
| while retarding downhill motion (free wheeling a laden
| HaulPak down a mesa doesn 't end well).
| jacquesm wrote:
| > free wheeling a laden HaulPak down a mesa doesn't end
| well
|
| I think you win the understatement of the month award.
| discordance wrote:
| That's the principal behind Fortescue's infinity train:
|
| https://newatlas.com/transport/fortescue-wae-infinity-
| train-...
| westurner wrote:
| Regenerative braking in trains: https://www.google.com/se
| arch?q=regenerative+braking+trains
|
| Regenerative braking:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_braking
|
| From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27579732 :
|
| > _In Scandinavia the Kiruna to Narvik electrified
| railway_ [...] _The regenerated energy is sufficient to
| power the empty trains back up to the national border_
|
| Is re-planning routes for regenerative braking solvable
| with the Modified Snow Plow Problem (variation on TSP
| Traveling Salesman Problem), on a QC Quantum Computer;
| with Quantum Algorithmic advantage due to the complexity
| of the problem?
|
| From "Snow plow routing problem":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_plow_routing_problem :
|
| > _The snow plow routing problem is an application of the
| structure of Arc Routing Problems (ARPs) and Vehicle
| Routing Problems (VRPs) to snow removal that considers
| roads as edges of a graph._
|
| > _The problem is a simple routing problem when the
| arrival times are not specified.[1] Snow plow problems
| consider constraints such as the cost of plowing downhill
| compared to plowing uphill.[2] The Mixed Chinese Postman
| Problem is applicable to snow routes where directed edges
| represent one-way streets and undirected edges represent
| two-way streets. [3]_
|
| Arc routing > Algorithms:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_routing#Algorithms :
|
| > _Finding an efficient solution with large amounts data
| to the Chinese Postman Problem (CPP), the Windy Postman
| Problem (WPP), the Rural Postman Problem (RPP), the
| k-Chinese postman problem (KCPP), the mixed Chinese
| postman problem (MCPP), the Directed Chinese Postman
| Problem (DCPP),[8] the Downhill Plowing Problem (DPP),
| the Plowing with Precedence Problem (PPP), the Windy
| Rural Postman Problem (WRPP) and the Windy General
| Routing Problem (WGRP) requires using thoughtful
| mathematical concepts, including heuristic optimization
| methods, branch-and-bound methods, integer linear
| programming, and applications of traveling salesman
| problem algorithms such as the Held-Karp algorithm makes
| an improvement from O(n!) to O(2^{n}n^{2}).[9] In
| addition to these algorithms, these classes of problems
| can also be solved with the cutting plane algorithm,
| convex optimization, convex hulls, Lagrange multipliers
| and other dynamic programming methods. In cases where it
| is not feasible to run the Held-Karp algorithm because of
| its high computational complexity, algorithms like this
| can be used to approximate the solution in a reasonable
| amount of time.[10]_
|
| QC algos for TSP and similar:
|
| - QISkit tutorials > Max-Cut and Traveling Salesman
| Problem:
| docs/tutorials/06_examples_max_cut_and_tsp.ipynb: https:/
| /qiskit.org/ecosystem/optimization/tutorials/06_examp...
| bee_rider wrote:
| That is kind of funny. If the stuff is mined at the site
| using plugged-in equipment, and then lifted up to get
| into the trucks, I guess the mining equipment could be
| seen as a very convoluted way of doing energy storage via
| gravity.
|
| Just make sure the mine is uphill of society! Then the
| trucks only need battery packs sufficient to get back up
| the mining site unladen.
| guerby wrote:
| Already in production:
|
| https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1124478_world-s-
| largest...
|
| "Marking that trip around 20 times a day, Kuhn Schweitz
| says the eDumper produces 200 kwh of surplus energy every
| day, or 77 megawatt-hours a year. A typical dump truck
| uses between 11,000 and 22,000 gallons of diesel fuel a
| year. "
|
| They have to discharge the surplus :)
| defrost wrote:
| The mining trucks are 100+ tonne (carry capacity) Haul Paks
| with a (say) 30 minute turn around time from excavator to
| loadout (dumping into train) and back again.
|
| The trucks are already "electric" having diesal generators that
| power electric axle motors.
|
| Dynamic charging _probably_ means auto hooking a charger at the
| excavator (which are often electric - they don 't move much and
| can have fat ass HV cables running to them that are dragged
| when the excavator moves) to boost batteries on the trucks
| while they park as they're loaded.
|
| Optimal performance is no truck idle save when being loaded -
| dumping is relatively quick.
| algo_trader wrote:
| > fat ass HV cables running to them
|
| Do you a more exact specs?
|
| Maybe MV 10kV-40kV ?
|
| And how thick are these cables?
|
| Do they carry 2000A snaking around the site?
| defrost wrote:
| > Do you a more exact specs?
|
| Yes. ( _It 's also a fun bit of internet search challenge
| best left for the reader_)
|
| > And how thick are these cables?
|
| Thicker than a snake, thinner than a human torso.
|
| Imagine the thinnest part of a Toyota Landcruiser after a
| HaulPak runs over it ...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TskUzmg6Sk
| 95014_refugee wrote:
| There are a number of "standards", but e.g. Liebherr are
| using 6kV for their newer small electrified excavation
| equipment. Cable size obviously varies based on the needs
| of the equipment, but "not small", and yes, they are
| routinely surface-laid around the site. Larger sites do the
| predictable step-down thing to reduce IR losses.
|
| Many of these systems have been around for quite a while,
| but the move into smaller scale (sub-100t) gear seems to be
| picking up.
| atourgates wrote:
| Hard to get a sense of scale, but you can see them running
| across the ground in this video: https://youtu.be/Kw-
| enXeOnKE?t=101
| tivert wrote:
| >>> Dynamic charging probably means auto hooking a
| charger at the excavator (which are often electric - they
| don't move much and can have fat ass HV cables running to
| them that are dragged when the excavator moves) to boost
| batteries on the trucks while they park as they're
| loaded.
|
| >>> Optimal performance is no truck idle save when being
| loaded - dumping is relatively quick.
|
| > Hard to get a sense of scale, but you can see them
| running across the ground in this video:
| https://youtu.be/Kw-enXeOnKE?t=101
|
| It seems like the loading process is pretty quick too.
| It's hard for me to see how it would be feasible to hook
| the truck up to a charger during loading without slowing
| the process significantly.
| zardo wrote:
| I would guess overhead lines and catenaries for some portion
| of the route rather than dragging cables around.
| adolph wrote:
| The US has seemed to "hit the gas" [0] with large expenditures to
| support hydrogen use as a fuel.
|
| _In November 2021, Congress passed, and President Joseph R.
| Biden, Jr. signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs
| Act (Public Law 117-58), also known as the Bipartisan
| Infrastructure Law (BIL). This historic, once-in-a-generation
| legislation authorizes and appropriates $62 billion for the U.S.
| Department of Energy (DOE), including $9.5 billion for clean
| hydrogen._ [1]
|
| _the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $1.5 billion to
| support hydrogen electrolysis and $8 billion to fund a broad
| Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program._ [1]
|
| 0. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hit%20the%20gas
|
| 1. (largish pdf) https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/us-
| national-clean-hydro...
|
| 2. https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-
| materials/2023/07/05/...
| defrost wrote:
| BHP Australia Operational Decarbonisation 'Report' (30 slides)
|
| June 2023
|
| https://www.bhp.com/-/media/documents/media/reports-and-pres...
| Recently appointed as Principal Power Decarbonisation, Tamahra
| Kierath and her team are focused on exploring options to provide
| renewable energy to BHP's Western Australia Iron Ore operations.
| To achieve our aim of eliminating emissions from diesel by
| electrifying our truck and locomotive fleets, we will require
| more electricity to support that transition. Our Pilbara
| operations are not connected to the power grid, so my team are
| exploring a range of opportunities for renewable energy
| solutions. The transition will start with proven renewable
| technologies such as wind and solar and we will continue to
| explore long duration energy storage options as technology
| advances.
|
| ( _yep, that 's it so far_ )
|
| from: https://www.bhp.com/news/articles/2023/06/tamahra-is-
| focused...
| ortusdux wrote:
| Hydrogen is a battery.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Just not a very good one.
| _hypx wrote:
| It's the theoretically best one possible. BEV fanatics are
| just spreading propaganda against it.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The laws of thermodynamics disagree with you on this. There
| are inherent inefficiencies with hydrogen that you can't
| get rid off without basically inventing a perpetuum mobile
| machine.
| _hypx wrote:
| You don't understand the thermodynamics of the situation.
| Fuel cells/electrolyzers are electrochemical systems with
| theoretically the same efficiency as batteries. If the
| alternative is just battery, then both have the same
| fundamental limitations. You are spending more energy
| than you are get back. At best, you are saying that for
| now, there is a more efficient way of doing it. But in
| the long run, that advantage will disappear.
|
| But the real point is that you can power things with wind
| or solar energy without depending on fossil fuels. While
| you can do this with both batteries and hydrogen, you
| avoid the heavy weight and the resource requirements if
| you go with the latter. You need only just wind, solar
| and water in order to create an an energy storage system.
| That puts the cost at potentially very close to zero. In
| the long-run, it likely will approach zero, just like how
| wind and solar power itself plunged in cost once they
| scaled up. As a result, it is likely going to be the
| dominant solution for most transportation needs.
| jansan wrote:
| Thanks, I did not know the definition of an accumulator or
| battery is that broad.
|
| "A device that stores energy is generally called an accumulator
| or battery."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage
| Kon5ole wrote:
| Storing hydrogen in vehicles has never seemed like a good idea to
| me. The risk is too high since the gas tanks can't be made
| indestructible and hydrogen goes boom quite spectacularly.
|
| But as a grid storage medium it could make a lot of sense. The
| fundamental equation is just too good to ignore - energy plus
| water becomes hydrogen, hydrogen becomes energy plus water - and
| only water.
|
| The world needs both energy and clean water, so it seems like a
| potentially perfect "twofer". (I must admit that I have no idea
| if the amount of water generated from combustion is relevant).
|
| The inefficiency doesn't seem to be a fundamental problem, as we
| get increasingly more surplus energy from solar and wind. This
| summer utility companies have had to "pay" customers to use
| electricity in Europe, a mere 6 months after they had the highest
| electricity prices on record. Any method to store even a fraction
| of the current surplus so that it can be sold for 50+ cents per
| kwh in 6 months should be very interesting.
| legitster wrote:
| Not part of the official analysis, but BHP is a huge player in
| many of the raw resources of electric drivetrains. So they have a
| lot of personal stake in advancing electrification.
| sbradford26 wrote:
| I will say that they would also be a player in many of the
| metals utilized in hydrogen fuel cells as well.
| causi wrote:
| _BHP says battery electric cheaper than hydrogen_
|
| Well, duh. Hydrogen is just a (terrible) liquid battery you have
| to re-manufacture every time you discharge it. You lose a third
| of the energy making the hydrogen, another quarter moving it
| around, and then half of it converting from hydrogen to
| electricity.
| gumby wrote:
| Process H2 generated at point of use makes sense (e.g. for steel
| production), but the whole "H2 as a fuel" story is simply
| nonsense to keep the legacy fossil fuel companies happy.
| martinald wrote:
| Well it doesn't in some ways, but I think many overlook the
| fact there is going to be trillions (quadrillions?) of kWhs of
| free/negative price electricity in the coming decades - when
| there is too much solar and/or wind on the grids.
|
| There needs to be more productive uses of this free electricity
| and I imagine H2 is one of them.
|
| NB: Batteries won't solve this unless prices dropped
| astronomically. The issue isn't overcapacity on a day by day
| basis, it's seasonal overcapacity. Areas further south are less
| affected by this, as there is less seasonal variation in solar
| output. You're not going to charge a battery then discharge it
| weeks later - the economics don't make sense.
| nsavage wrote:
| I can see it being a useful battery tech as well to be used
| with wind power: offshore wind to generate electricity and
| generate hydrogen from ocean water to be burned when the wind
| isn't blowing.
| gary_0 wrote:
| I keep waiting for everyone to wake up to the hydrogen scam. Do
| you see any practical consumer hydrogen infrastructure going
| up? Has it even been invented yet? Electrical infrastructure is
| a solved problem, we need to scale it up anyways, and it hooks
| into everything (industry, consumer use, consumer solar panels,
| public transport, renewable generation) because it just _wires
| together_ and there are lots of electricians and engineers you
| can hire. There is electrical infrastructure almost everywhere
| there is human settlement! But hydrogen is a bunch of exploding
| leaking embrittling bullshit, and it will only ever have niche
| uses.
|
| Fun fact: currently 95% of hydrogen is produced from fossil
| fuels. This might be a clue as to why such a dumb idea is still
| around.
| nicholassmith wrote:
| > Do you see any practical consumer hydrogen infrastructure
| going up? Has it even been invented yet?
|
| It has been invented, the majority are in China and Japan if
| I remember rightly.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Yeah, my Canadian girlfriend works there.
| turbobooster wrote:
| We don't care that she's Canadian
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Hydrogen becomes more attractive once electricity is
| decarbonized. It's really the only fuel that has both the
| energy density to power flight and transoceanic travel and
| does not emit carbon. Batteries are fine for cars, and trains
| can be electrified. But you'll never fly across the Atlantic
| on a battery powered passenger plane.
|
| Synthetic methane and other hydrocarbons are also ideas that
| are floated. But those need hydrogen as an input anyway. They
| also need a source of carbon, which is too difficult to
| extract from the atmosphere. So using the hydrogen directly
| may be more feasible.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Long-haul flights are the one possible exception, but
| they're not the saving grace the fossil fuel companies are
| trying to manufacture. Tanks of hydrogen at the airport are
| not a "hydrogen economy". And since it's looking like air
| travel will be one of the last things to decarbonize,
| there's no guarantee hydrogen will be relevant. Long-
| distance flights don't account for a large portion of
| global CO2 emissions[0] which leaves room for various
| options.
|
| Short-range aircraft will probably switch to batteries in
| the coming decades, because the prototypes are already
| flying[1] and battery and electric motor tech is ever-
| increasingly ubiquitous and mature.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions#
| Aviat...
|
| [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-
| columbia/vancouver-el...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It's not just long haul flights, it's really anything
| longer than a hundred miles or so. Battery powered
| aircraft are also very small and light with little
| passenger or cargo capacity. Then there's the issue of
| charging. Planes can't just sit idle for hours at th gate
| as they charge. Faster charging reduces the lifespans of
| the batteries, and a plane needing a new set of batteries
| after a few hundred flights due to aggressive wear from
| fast charging is unacceptable.
|
| It's not just long haul flights out of reach of battery
| powered aircraft. Even a regional flight like Seattle to
| San Francisco cannot be feasibly done with batteries.
| This is fundamentally due to the energy density of
| lithium ion batteries, no amount of engineering can
| change the chemical limitations at hand: https://en.m.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#/media/File%3...
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > Faster charging reduces the lifespans of the batteries
|
| As far as I understand, the problem is not just the
| speed, but the thermal management. IIRC the impact on
| battery life is not as bad if cooled properly.
|
| > and a plane needing a new set of batteries after a few
| hundred flights due to aggressive wear from fast charging
| is unacceptable.
|
| That's an economics question. How much does it cost to
| get that battery replaced and charged over its lifetime
| versus the alternative.
|
| > This is fundamentally due to the energy density of
| lithium ion batteries, no amount of engineering can
| change the chemical limitations at hand
|
| That's the beauty of battery technology, you can
| substitute. Cobalt a problem? Fine we can make batteries
| with out it. Lead-acid not suitable, fine here's lithium
| ion. Lithium ion not good enough, find we'll find a
| better battery.
|
| Hydrogen however is just that: hydrogen. Notice how low
| it is on the energy per volume scale. You can't
| substitute it out for anything. The volume requirement is
| what's going to kill you with hydrogen.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Lithium ion not good enough, find we'll find a better
| battery.
|
| Well, then get back to us when you find that battery.
| Unfortunately, simply finding a new battery chemistry
| that has an order of magnitude better energy density is
| easier said than done.
|
| > Hydrogen however is just that: hydrogen. Notice how low
| it is on the energy per volume scale.
|
| You're looking at uncompressed hydrogen. Hydrogen at 700
| bar has several times better energy density than lithium
| ion batteries, and over 1000x as much energy by mass. And
| lower mass means you need less fuel since the craft is
| lighter.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| A point if and I seriously mean if in the I'm
| exceptionally dubious about hydrogen powered aircraft. If
| aircraft were hydrogen powered you'd generate the
| hydrogen on site at the airport.
|
| Will point out takes a decade now to produce a blue print
| aircraft. So if we started designing one now it would be
| flying when 2033? China rolled out a high speed rail
| network in ten years. You could do that in the US and
| other places.
|
| Notable point. The complaints I hear about high speed
| rail in Europe is tickets cost more than airplane tickets
| and the trains are always full. The explanation is the
| ergonomics and logistics of passenger aircraft sucks.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| If flights are carrying that much hydrogen around with
| them they should also just use them for "free" lift. I
| don't think hydrogen fuel tanks save the airplane, I
| think they return us to economic models where the
| blimp/airship make more sense.
| Qwertious wrote:
| It makes sense for large vehicles - a passenger plane from New
| York to London will _never_ make sense for batteries, but could
| be done with hydrogen.
|
| Similarly, cargo ships can't run on batteries, but could fairly
| trivially be switched to hydrogen with only minor loss in
| storage capacity (1-5%).
|
| The benefit of hydrogen is that it was functioning just fine in
| the 1960s, there aren't any outright technical _showstoppers_
| here; just financial problems and technical problems that are
| hard to solve cheaply.
|
| I'm not saying that hydrogen is _the best_ solution (if
| synthfuel pans out then it 'll be a perfect drop-in replacement
| for existing jet fuel), but it's _a_ solution that exists
| today. It 's there if we care.
|
| Obviously we don't care, since coal plants are still around,
| but if we genuinely wanted to stop using fossil fuels ASAP then
| it would permit us to keep using planes/cargo ships.
| regularfry wrote:
| The problem isn't doing one plane. It's doing enough of them
| to make a difference.
|
| Jet fuel is _ludicrously_ energy dense, to the extent that it
| 's easy to underestimate how much energy you need: at any
| reasonably-sized airport, if you want to replace the current
| fleet then you need to be talking about roughly a power
| station's worth of continuous energy delivery into aircraft
| fuel tanks. That's doable with jet fuel because you're not
| climbing out of an energy well just to get hold of the fuel.
| You just separate it out, and the problem becomes pure
| logistics.
|
| With H2, the volume you need and the added storage complexity
| means the current logistics becomes a rounding error in
| comparison to how on earth you get the gigawatts to churn
| feedstock into gas.
|
| You could do it, but you'd want nukes on-site to do it.
| _hypx wrote:
| It will make sense for nearly all transportation that can't
| be directly electrified. The problem with batteries is that
| it is a massive resource hog, and one that is fundamentally
| unsustainable. It will have be abandoned. The only
| alternatives are ideas like synfuels or ammonia, but those
| require green hydrogen production anyways.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| They are not the only alternative.
|
| Ammonia (a toxic gas) as a fuel is an insane idea and will
| lead to needless deaths.
|
| Efuels are incredibly inefficient. Hard to justify paying
| 10x the price.
|
| Ammonia or synfuels are not the only alternative. The
| elephant in the room, the one fuel that is _being used
| today_ is biofuel.
| _hypx wrote:
| BTW: Biofuels are ludicrously inefficient. Something like
| 1% of the solar energy actually ends up being usable at
| the end of the process. That's not include all the other
| inputs like fertilizers or pesticides and the like. It is
| pretty resource intensive in reality. Which is why
| serious environmentalists reject them entirely.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Ah yes, No true environmentalist(TM).
| _hypx wrote:
| This is not the true Scotsman fallacy. Biofuels are an
| environmental disaster, full stop. Anyone who promotes
| biofuels is aggressively undermining environmental
| policy.
| _hypx wrote:
| Biofuels are not green. It is purely greenwashing since
| the production of biofuels is very carbon intensive. It
| is also very environmentally destructive since it takes a
| lot of farmland to produce.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol
| _hypx wrote:
| When they actually start producing that in any
| significant quantities, wake up me.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| They will produce it as soon as it's economically viable
| to do so. Until then, (government subsidised) corn it is.
| Which some will call simply farming.
| _hypx wrote:
| Imagine thinking corn ethanol is even remotely a good
| idea...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It probably sounds like a great idea if you are a senator
| or congressman from a midwestern state.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I'd appreciate if you at least tried to keep a non-
| condescending tone.
|
| I was merely stating _why_ cellulosic ethanol is not the
| major source of biofuel; because corn is heavily
| subsidized and produces a cheaper product, hence nobody
| wants to buy the more expensive product.
|
| That's not a technical problem, it's an economic one. And
| the subsidies where to change we would see less from corn
| and more from other sources.
| _hypx wrote:
| Government subsidized corn ethanol is an environmental
| disaster. If you hear it being brought up, you
| automatically assume the person is either confused or
| working for the corn lobby.
|
| Cellulosic ethanol is an idea brought up as a solution to
| the problems of corn ethanol. Ironically, by the George
| W. Bush administration. Unfortunately, nothing has
| materialized in any meaningful quantity.
|
| And FYI, they'd be subsidizing it heavily if any
| meaningful quantity of cellulosic ethanol could be
| produced. So bringing up that part doesn't mean much. But
| cellulosic ethanol production never happened and so far
| there is no reason to believe it is possible.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > And FYI, they'd be subsidizing it heavily if any
| meaningful quantity of cellulosic ethanol could be
| produced.
|
| I'm not so sure. That would introduce competition for the
| corn ethanol, and there's a fairly large constituency
| (those having their corn production subsidised) that
| would oppose this kind of measure.
| _hypx wrote:
| The corn lobby are huge advocates for cellulosic ethanol
| because it means corn stover could also be made into
| ethanol.
| [deleted]
| moomoo11 wrote:
| The best solution for large airplanes is remote meetings and
| realistic remote experiences.
|
| Sorry. But there's no reason so many people need to fly
| (consultants, I used to be one racked up a few hundred
| thousand miles) besides leisure or critical travel. And it
| should reflect in the price so tickets aren't $150 to be
| crammed in like cattle.
|
| And yes it should be rare to fly until we figure out cleaner
| fuel methods. Just my hot take.
| martincmartin wrote:
| Couldn't cargo ships use wind? A wind turbine on the ship? A
| kind of modern re-imaging of how sailing ships of old were
| powered.
|
| Is the problem that wind isn't reliable and you might go days
| without it? Or you wouldn't fit in ports or other areas with
| a big turbine sticking out? Or is there some other practical
| problem.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It's not just that wind is unreliable, it's also very low
| energy density. You'd need a lot of sails to haul a small
| amount of cargo. There are applications using kite sails to
| supplement combustion engines, but that's just an
| opportunistic mitigation.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Cargo ships could use wind sure, it would just be much
| slower and each boat would have to carry far less stuff.
|
| Might solve problems for countries that have lost their own
| manufacturing capacity because shipping products gets way
| less appealing.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Several designs have been proposed for adding _sails_ , of
| one shape or another, to ships in addition to an active
| mode of propulsion in order to reduce fuel consumption.
|
| Further, the ships take a significant amount of energy to
| get going, so much of that initial acceleration could be
| handled by strong tug boats which would then be immediately
| recharged.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| How would a hydrogen powered passenger plane work? How big
| and or heavy would the fuel tanks need to be? As I understand
| it you either need very big tanks to store it as gas, or very
| heavy insulated tanks to store it liquefied. Would a
| passenger plane still work?
| _hypx wrote:
| Hydrogen planes have been tested. The physics works out
| provided you have more room for the tanks.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Ah yes, it works if only it weren't for those pesky
| economic considerations.
|
| Making more room for the tanks means either less
| cabin/storage and/or bigger cross-section and increased
| drag.
| _hypx wrote:
| The alternative is SAF, which has to be a synthetic fuel
| if the goal is to be honestly green. However, that
| requires enormous green hydrogen production anyways.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The alternative is electric and biofuels.
| _hypx wrote:
| There will never be a long-distance battery powered
| plane. Not with any kind of battery we can conceive of
| today at any rate. And again, biofuels are not green.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > There will never be a long-distance battery powered
| plane.
|
| "Long-distance" is a subjective term. There is an ever-
| increasing distance for which batteries are doable.
| Everything else is will be liquid biofuels, rather than
| efuels.
|
| Biofuels are as green as the process making them.
| Electrify the equipment being used (something that's
| being done for reasons orthogonal to this) and you're
| already made the process more green.
| _hypx wrote:
| Airplanes are not cars. Weight actually matters, even for
| short trips. There are not an "ever-increasing" number of
| routes that can be powered by batteries. You can't even
| legally send passengers using batteries, because you
| can't even get to reserve range minimums. It is basically
| zero today. And people have noted that even with miracle
| battery advancements, we would still not have a battery
| good enough to build a 737 or a320 equivalent. As a
| result, most of the aviation community has abandoned the
| idea altogether.
|
| Again, biofuels are not green. The process that makes
| them involve vast quantities of land and resources. It is
| in fact a very inefficient and resource intensive idea.
| It is actually much worse than what it takes to make
| e-fuels.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Wing tanks won't work for hydrogen, and wing tanks are
| essential for weight distribution and reducing load on
| the wing roots. A hydrogen cylinder in the central
| fuselage will require a complete rework of the aircraft
| design and a new type designation, it's not something
| that can be retrofitted into current aircraft, even if
| converting the engines to hydrogen would be otherwise
| feasible.
|
| Aircraft will remain liquid-hydrocarbon-fueled for the
| foreseeable future, even if the fuel production
| transitions to a synthetic process vs. refined crude oil.
| epistasis wrote:
| Liquid hydrogen takes 4x the volume of standard aviation
| kerosene. Coming up with on-jet liquid storage of hydrogen of
| that volume is a rather steep engineering hurdle. And
| hydrogen, liquid or not, will require some rather impressive
| storage and handling techniques at the airport.
|
| If I were to bet, I would say that converting hydrogen to
| kerosene will be far cheaper and more efficient than trying
| to power long distance flight with hydrogen
| pjc50 wrote:
| Synthfuel apparently exists already and the US Navy has a
| solution. It's just very energy-intensive.
|
| The shipping industry is investigating making ammonia from
| the hydrogen and then using that in fuel cells; it has the
| advantage that it's easier to handle. https://maritime-
| executive.com/article/highest-power-output-...
| HPsquared wrote:
| The Germans in WW2 made large quantities of synthetic fuel.
| It's not new, the same challenges continue to exist. Most
| of their military aviation fuel was apparently synthetic
| due to oil shortages.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel#History
| FreshStart wrote:
| The whole idiotic war would have been over the moment the
| free trade system of the US would have surplanted the
| pre-existing empires and their embargoes. Harber+Bosch +
| liquid gas is what feeds the world and creates the pre-
| requisite to all peace.
| gumby wrote:
| > ...there aren't any outright technical showstoppers here
|
| H2 molecules are extremely small -- storing them without loss
| is heavy and volumetrically expensive, making it implausible
| for any aircraft.
|
| The same factors apply to ships, pipelines etc because space
| for fuel is space that does not contain high value cargo.
| slushh wrote:
| >The same factors apply to ships
|
| Ships don't care about weight. The cooling infrastructure
| or heavy steel tanks are possible.
| gumby wrote:
| > Ships don't care about weight. The cooling
| infrastructure or heavy steel tanks are possible.
|
| Have you looked at how high the containers are stacked on
| a container ship? Space taken up by fuel is space that
| can't be sold.
|
| Source: we partner with commercial shipping companies and
| spend time not just talking to the commercial people but
| on the ships themselves.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The problem, just like for car, is the volume that
| hydrogen takes up, not the weight
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| There seems to be a lot of lobbying going on around hydrogen and
| unfortunately politicians seem to think:
|
| Hydrogen is a gas - therefore everywhere you use gas you can use
| hydrogen instead.
|
| I'm not sure it's quite so simple.
| adrianN wrote:
| Was that ever controversial in the last fifteen years or so?
| local_issues wrote:
| [flagged]
| fnord77 wrote:
| there's some still clinging to fuel cells despite the numbers
| showing the edge to BEVs
|
| I can think of one major car maker...
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Only to those without a firm grasp on the laws of
| thermodynamics. There are a lot of those people. They fall into
| two categories:
|
| - those genuinely confused about this (most of the general
| public)
|
| - those representing oil and gas lobbies that have been using
| hydrogen lobbying as a way to stay in the fossil fuel industry
| a bit longer. Because most hydrogen is made from natural gas
| and they love the idea of growing the market for that.
|
| In short, there's a lot of waffle about stored energy by people
| who don't get (or refuse to acknowledge) that most of that 1)
| needs to come from somewhere (which is a lossy process) and 2)
| needs to be transformed into a usable form of energy (which is
| also a lossy process).
|
| That's before you take into account the logistics of moving
| hydrogen around, which is challenging because it takes up a lot
| of space. You can either compress it to a few hundred bar
| (which takes energy) or cool it to a few degrees of kelvin
| (which takes energy, and keeping it there costs you more
| energy). And once you do that, you need to keep it contained
| for extended periods of time (which isn't 100% efficient,
| especially in liquid form), and use about 18x more trucks for
| hydrogen in gas form compared to methane in liquid form; or
| only about 3x more trucks is you actually do cool it down to
| liquid form.
|
| In short, you end up loosing a lot of energy in various lossy
| energy transformations, compression, storage, and transport of
| hydrogen before you even get to extract energy from it. All
| these inefficiencies multiply to a very significant cost
| disadvantage over simple battery electric.
|
| And even if you do all go down this path you end up charging a
| battery with a hydrogen fuel cell. Because fuel cells suck at
| producing variable output that you would need for a vehicle.
| Which is why most hydrogen vehicles today that use a fuel cell
| are fully functional battery electric vehicles that happen to
| have a tiny battery.
|
| You could just rip out the hydrogen bits and replace them with
| a bigger battery and you end up with a vehicle that's cheaper
| to operate. By about 2-3x. A better vehicle in other words.
|
| Vehicles like the ones BHP produces are huge. So, shoving a few
| mwh of battery in them is not going to be that big of a deal.
| Charging them is a logistical challenge but also a solvable
| one. Multi mw charger technology already exists. And of course
| not having to truck in lots of diesel/hydrogen trucks to the
| remote places where these things are used might also be a
| benefit. The main challenge for companies like this is access
| to enough battery and electricity.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Funnily enough, if you mine underground you spend an
| incredible amount of electricity trying to keep the air fresh
| down there, mostly due to whatever combustion reaction is
| powering your vehicles.
|
| I've seen reports claiming you break even or even use less
| electricity when operating electric vehicles since your
| ventilation requirements are significantly reduced.
| _hypx wrote:
| > Only to those without a firm grasp on the laws of
| thermodynamics.
|
| You are the one completely confused by the laws of
| thermodynamics.
|
| A hydrogen fuel cell is an electrochemical system. So are
| electrolyzers. They represent the equivalence of charging and
| discharging a battery. There is no fundamental reason why
| this must be less efficient. You can potentially reach 100%
| efficiency at least in theory.
|
| What people really are saying is that "in practice," it is
| less efficient than a battery setup. But this is also mostly
| made-up and filled with exaggeration. Electrolyzers are
| reaching 98% efficiency. Fuel cells, at least in large
| installations, can already reach 85% efficiency or battery
| (assuming heat recapture).
|
| In short, it is already pretty close to what batteries can
| do. Future advancements will eliminate the efficiency gap
| almost entirely.
|
| Furthermore, it is actually _more efficient_ to store and
| move around hydrogen than it is with electricity. Energy
| storage at scale is very difficult, and enough of a problem
| that we are looking at using hydrogen for long-duration
| energy storage. That alone basically kills the argument that
| batteries have any advantages in this respect.
|
| Finally, as the economics of hydrogen production scale up, we
| can expect cost to approach _zero_. That's because it is very
| much like wind and solar: We're using a basically free
| resource (wind, sunlight and water) and turning it into a
| fuel. People criticized the efficiency of photovoltaics in
| the past, but the fundamental advantage of not having to pay
| for fuel means that costs can drop to nearly zero, and it
| did. This is the same story again. Except nearly free green
| hydrogen in the long-run.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > Fuel cells, at least in large installations, can already
| reach 85% efficiency or battery (assuming heat recapture).
|
| Heat recapture is great, but we care about electricity
| output.
|
| > Finally, as the economics of hydrogen production scale
| up, we can expect cost to approach zero. That's because it
| is very much like wind and solar: We're using a basically
| free resource
|
| It will never reach zero because the equipment,
| transportation, and people involved are not free.
|
| Further solar panels and wind turbines got cheaper due to
| learning effects. These effects are not present for over
| half of the things involved in a hydrogen fuel system.
| Pumps and tanks and valves and pipes are already mass
| produced.
|
| And while the sunlight might be free, the electricity from
| it is now, and never will be since the equipment isn't
| free.
| _hypx wrote:
| We do not always need electricity as an output. Even
| then, you can combine SOFCs with gas turbines and still
| get an electrical output. Efficiency is still very high.
|
| The equipment is mostly made out of steel or other cheap
| materials. You read about using fiberglass or HDPE for a
| lot of the components. Those aren't expensive materials.
| Certainly, way cheaper than what batteries use.
| Transportation is via pipelines which is 10x cheaper than
| wires. The costs of infrastructure should be very cheap.
|
| > Further solar panels and wind turbines got cheaper due
| to learning effects. These effects are not present for
| over half of the things involved in a hydrogen fuel
| system. Pumps and tanks and valves and pipes are already
| mass produced.
|
| Solar panels and wind turbines are over a century old.
| Hell, wind power existed for millenia in form or another.
| But as it turns out, it still benefits from the learning
| effect. So you're just spouting more of your anti-
| progress agenda here.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > So you're just spouting more of your anti-progress
| agenda here.
|
| And with that, I'm leaving this conversation and letting
| anyone else reading to clearly see that pro-hydrogen
| zealots are alive and well, despite the astonishment of
| one of the top-level comments.
| _hypx wrote:
| Your own posting history suggests a BEV fanatic. And the
| fact you keep on bringing up biofuels show how unserious
| you are about the topic.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| It's controversial _now_. There are many people smoking the
| hopium pipe claiming that fuel cell vehicles are the solution
| of the future.
| tivert wrote:
| I wasn't sure who "BHP" were, it turns out it's an Australian
| mining company:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BHP:
|
| > BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an
| Australian multinational mining, metals, and natural gas
| petroleum public company headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria,
| Australia.
|
| > The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded on 16 July 1885
| in the mining town of Silverton, New South Wales.[3] By 2017, BHP
| was the world's largest mining company, based on market
| capitalisation,[4][5] and was Melbourne's third-largest company
| by revenue.[6]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's now pretty clear that chemical fuel systems, i.e. any system
| based on the combustion of a fuel with oxygen to generate
| heat/pressure/motive force, are going to be fairly niche markets
| in the future. International jet travel and orbital launch
| rockets, and maybe long-distance commercial shipping, are about
| it.
|
| The real value of renewable-energy-powered chemical synthesis
| will be in the production of things like fertilizers, dyes,
| carbon fiber, etc. Basically you can take the entire fossil-fuel-
| sourced front end of the petrochemical industry and replace it
| with hydrogen and carbon inputs from water and atmospheric CO2
| respectively.
| brnt wrote:
| Question is always: what's externalized and what isn't?
|
| Grid storage, required if you want to ensure your energy source
| is renewable, is usually not taken into account. Sure, diesel and
| commercial hydrogen isn't either, and an energy reduction even if
| not renewable is still great, but I'd be keen on knowing the
| number when taking it into account. That's the end goal after
| all.
| beej71 wrote:
| I think in this particular case the question might be "what is
| cheaper to operate?"
| bee_rider wrote:
| Who pays for grid storage? Is it really externalized or does it
| just become part of the cost of doing business for the power
| company?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The answer for "who pays for X" is always similar. If no
| government intervenes, people that use electricity when its
| most expensive pay for it; or if the power company keeps the
| price constant, it gets included on the average price.
| bee_rider wrote:
| But, governments tend to intervene in utility prices
| somewhat often, and power companies have varying policies
| WRT constant pricing, so we have at least three (fairly
| dissimilar) possible answers here.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > so we have at least three possible answers here
|
| For a question of who pays for a service, in an undefined
| market, at an undefined place, not specifying what
| participant it's about, and not determining at what
| history period exactly it's about (yeah, near future, but
| how near?). Do you think that's too many?
| Qwertious wrote:
| Grid storage isn't needed before the grid is at least 50%
| renewable (and I don't mean "once in a blue moon more than 50%
| of demand is satisfied by renewable electricity, I mean
| _baseline_ "); in fact it's hard to justify building a lot of
| storage out before renewables give them lots of stuff to
| balance.
|
| Grid storage is _eventually_ needed, but the discussion around
| batteries is kind of like demanding your website be "web
| scale" when you've had less than 100 visitors a day for the
| past year. Like, I'm all for planning ahead but is this really
| our priority?
|
| Meanwhile, if we reduce our emissions by 10% today, then we
| have 10%(ish) more time to get rid of the remaining 90%. Our
| deadline isn't time, it's CO2e emitted.
|
| In other words: Grid storage _should not be taken into account_
| , because the only way it becomes important _soon_ is if we buy
| ourselves a lot of time to deal with it by majorly cutting
| emissions. People focus too much on "100% renewables by 20XX"
| and not enough on "50% renewables by ASAP".
|
| I'm sure there's a better way of phrasing that, because
| "[thing] should be taken into account" is basically an applause
| light and I'm contradicting it, but you get the idea.
| pjc50 wrote:
| You can _significantly_ reduce grid storage requirements for
| high-renewables scenarios if you can include demand-response in
| a big fleet of EV chargers to say "if your charge is not
| urgent, please delay it a bit".
| gruez wrote:
| > Question is always: what's externalized and what isn't?
|
| In many (most?) electricity markets this is a non-issue because
| on the producer side, the price they get is determined by a
| spot market. Rather than every producer getting paid $0.05/kWh
| (or whatever) all the time, the price is calculated every
| hour/minute according to supply and demand. That means
| producers that generate electricity when there's an abundance
| (eg. renewables on a windy/sunny day) are penalized
| accordingly, and producers that generate electricity when
| there's a shortage (eg. peaking fossil fuel plants) are awarded
| accordingly.
| major505 wrote:
| Well if theres a sector that can benefic form eletric vehicles,
| this would be big machines. They would have lighter engines,
| because they would not need a transmission.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Cat is one of the few manufacturers that make direct drive
| trucks. Most are diesel-electric.
| daydream wrote:
| Same with locomotives. Most are diesel-electric in that a
| diesel engine drives a generator, which generates electricity
| to power an electric motor that actually turns the wheels.
| Less mechanical wear and tear this way, though it adds some
| inefficiency as the article says.
| logifail wrote:
| Q: Where is the electricity coming from to recharge the
| batteries?
|
| "Powered by electricity" doesn't necessarily mean "clean", years
| ago I visited friends in Germany who were within cycling distance
| of an open-cast lignite mine. It had its own (lignite-fueled)
| power station on-site, which powered much of the equipment.
|
| Will never forget climbing steps up the earthen embankment at the
| edge of the mine to reach a viewing platform. The scale of the
| destruction was literally breathtaking.
| adrianN wrote:
| It's talking about Australia. If they have one thing it's
| sunlight.
| pluies wrote:
| Also a looooot of coal.
| https://www.energy.gov.au/data/australian-electricity-
| genera...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| If they discovered a new source of coal, as large, clean
| and easy to mine as their best ever existing coal seams,
| they'd be financially better off putting solar PV over the
| top of it than mining the coal seam. So that problem should
| solve itself if they let the market do its thing and don't
| tilt it to help out coal mine owners.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They have 30GW of renewables in the AEMO connection
| pipeline at the moment, ~7GW greater than entire continent
| coal generation (which will add to current renewables
| capacity) [1] [2]. Batteries are scaling up to consume grid
| services revenue and drive out thermal generation [3].
|
| Also of note: "NEM total emissions declined this quarter to
| the lowest Q2 level on record, of 28.7 million tonnes of
| carbon dioxide, 6.6 per cent lower than Q2 2022, whilst
| emissions intensity dropped 4.3 per cent to 0.61 tCO2
| e/MWh."
|
| ""Rooftop solar generation increased 30 per cent from Q2
| 2022, which reduced electricity demand from the grid.
| Coupled with higher renewable output, wholesale prices were
| zero or negative nine per cent of the quarter throughout
| the NEM, a new Q2 record," Ms Mouchaileh said." This bears
| repeating: 9 percent of the time, the wholesale cost of
| power is zero or negative.
|
| [1] https://www.energymagazine.com.au/aemo-quarterly-
| energy-repo...
|
| [2] https://opennem.org.au/facilities/au/?status=operating
|
| [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-04-04/how-
| tesla... | https://archive.is/egMXl
| logifail wrote:
| > They have 30GW of renewables in the AEMO connection
| pipeline at the moment, ~7GW greater than entire
| continent coal generation (which will add to current
| renewables capacity) [1] [2]. Batteries are scaling up to
| consume grid services revenue and drive out thermal
| generation [3].
|
| Yet they are still digging coal out of the ground - for
| export. Australia exported USD 75 billion worth of coal
| in 2022.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| We should try to keep it that way.
| ImaCake wrote:
| I imagine a mix of solar and natural gas. A lot of natural gas
| is mined in Western Australia and Australian mines tend to be
| in hot sunny places. Coal mining isn't BHPs business so that
| seems unlikely.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| Uhhh, BHP is like one of the largest coal miners on the
| planet. Though, it's just one of their operating units
| (mainly iron and copper).
| mkj wrote:
| The iron ore mines are nowhere near the coal mines, but are
| near the North West Shelf gas area.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| Nah, I know, the iron is in WA, iirc the main coal mines
| are in Queensland and some in NSW. The main point was the
| comment that coal isn't BHP's business, when they've
| gotta be the largest coal miner in Australia.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've been there too, it's the saddest view, maybe only on par
| with the destruction in Northern Canada due to fracking. And
| likely in Africa there are similar sites but I haven't seen
| those in person, just online and photos do not do this kind of
| damage any justice. If you haven't seen any of this try anyway:
|
| https://priceofoil.org/content/uploads/2012/07/tar_sands.jpg
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Panorama...
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > "Powered by electricity" doesn't necessarily mean "clean"
|
| "Powered by electricity" is an abstraction that lets you move
| towards clean sources of energy over time and zero emissions.
| Even if the source of that electricity is dirty today and
| shifts emissions, it can become clean and zero emission.
|
| On the other hand "Powered by gasoline" or "Powered by diesel"
| will always be dirty, even with bio-diesel.
| runako wrote:
| Came to say this. I would add that "powered by electric" also
| typically means that power was generated at an industrial-
| scale facility and so is likely inherently more efficient
| than on-site generation. Powering a vehicle with electricity
| generated from diesel is (or can be upgraded to be, over
| time) more efficient than powering the same vehicles using
| diesel powertrains.
| hardware2win wrote:
| Thats interesting point, thanks.
| a_c_s wrote:
| An electric car powered by coal is still cleaner overall than
| one powered by gasoline.
|
| https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/10/26/analysis/dirty-e...
| .
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2018/08/19/myths-an...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikescott/2020/03/30/yes-electr...
| gambiting wrote:
| Yes, almost always. But it's important to point out the edge
| cases.
|
| Where I'm from the largest power plant in the country is also
| insanely polluting - Belchatow power plant burns lignite for
| electricity and the CO2 emissions are just bananas. The
| official number is around 1.7kg(!!!!!!!) Of CO2 for every kWh
| of electricity produced[1]. If you run your electric car
| using energy from that power plant then yes, it pollutes more
| than almost any petrol/diesel vehicle bar some sports cars
| and large trucks.
|
| But that's a curiosity, an edge case, and if anything it
| proves that Belchatow should be closed down immediately and
| not that EVs are a bad thing.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_S
| tat...
| logifail wrote:
| > An electric car powered by coal is still cleaner overall
| than one powered by gasoline
|
| I'm sceptical that we know enough about the energy and
| resource mix in use across our global supply chains to be
| anywhere near that confident.
|
| Look up Enrico Mariutti and his thoughts on the photovoltaic
| lifecycle figures ( mentioned in "China's dirty fuel
| advanage" - https://public.substack.com/p/solar-panels-more-
| carbon-inten... )
| logifail wrote:
| "You glide silently out of the Tesla (TSLA.O) showroom in
| your sleek new electric Model 3, satisfied you're looking
| great and doing your bit for the planet. But keep going -
| you'll have to drive another 13,500 miles (21,725 km)
| before you're doing less harm to the environment than a
| gas-guzzling saloon."[0]
|
| Appreciate this may be desperately off-message here, but
| here's the rub: what we change in Europe and North America
| isn't going to fix anything unless we take China, India,
| and all the rest of the world with us.
|
| "Most of the electricity in China comes from coal, which
| accounted for 62% of the electricity generation mix in
| 2021"[1]
|
| "China permits two new coal power plants per week in
| 2022"[2]
|
| "China ramps up coal power despite carbon neutral pledges.
| Local governments approved more coal power in first three
| months of 2023 than all of 2021."[3]
|
| If we really care about fixing the planet, China and India
| are where we should be looking. Teslas in California are an
| irrelevance.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/when-d... [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China
| [2] https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-
| permits-two-... [3]
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/24/china-ramps-
| up...
| causi wrote:
| Electric fueled by coal _produces less CO2_ than gasoline. It
| 's not _cleaner_ by a long shot. The pollution produced by a
| coal plant, especially a brown coal plant, is insane even
| when they _don 't_ have an ash pond breach that kills more
| wildlife than a tactical nuclear explosion.
| _hypx wrote:
| This story is Tesla propaganda by a Tesla propagandist. The
| author of the piece wants every EV maker other than Tesla to go
| fail. Look at the history of articles the person wrote. No
| surprise, it's another attack on an alternative green
| technology. I doubt the guy even cares about green technology
| other than what can promote Tesla.
|
| There's no reason to believe that this a serious attempt to go
| green. The vehicles are already diesel-electric so it is simply
| a matter of hooking them up to electricity. And since diesel is
| not that cheap, you can get save money with an electrified
| system, provided you have no interest in ensuring green
| electricity.
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