2021 Climate Change

Status
Not open for further replies.
Well as long as you do not burn the trees it will be good.
Just read there are much better CO2 scrubbers than trees, one that is relevant in most northern places, and thats Bogs, a Bog will store much more Co2 than a similar area of trees would.

This make me happy the place called lille vildmose ( little wild bog ) north of me have been restored / flooded again after having been used for digging peat since the war. :)

BTW in Danish bog mean book, but please do not flood libraries like savages have destroyed so many libraries in history.
 
Last edited:
I don't think peat would make good wind turbine towers, could use peat bricks for house insulation, but they are a bit flammable!

BTW in Danish bog mean book, but please do not flood libraries like savages have destroyed so many libraries in history.
Bog isn't really an english word anyway, it is one of the few gaelic words that has got into english. In old english the word was moss, similar to your word, and here they are mires, which is a nordic word.
 
Perhaps, as you imply, the world doesn't really need any base load energy capacity after all?
Nuclear base load might be useful if it was cheap, but it is not cheap, so why use an expensive base load when you could just install some more cheap wind power?

All that is missing for using wind as base load is reliability, and reliability has been steadily increasing as more wind is installed, moving offshore increased reliability massively, installing extra wind which can be used for hydrogen generation when not needed for baseload also increases reliability. And adding storage in whatever form also increases reliability. Storage can be lithium batteries, hydrogen, or maybe air power:
 
Last edited:
LOX is also something we need to get off this planet, so probably buyers for that.
And i dont expect to be able to store say wind power at a 1:1 ratio, there will probably be losses in converting to X, but as long as it is losses from none polluting things it is not a big issue, and the question should more be can we afford not to even if it dont make 100 % sense.

But there need to be something ( strong ) that can kick in at a moments notice, or we will have flaky power supply

So weather you split water or compress air with your excess power, at least you do something.
If only we could make Helium-3, cuz if the tokamacs / stellerators work we need that, and maybe making in here would be cheaper than ferrying it in from the moon / Mars.
But i dont think you can make Helium-3
 
LOX is not a nice thing to store. The liquid air, which is actually nitrogen, they remove the CO², can be stored at quite low pressure using standard LPG storage components. Losses seem to depend on system size, and if you build the store next to a source of heat/cold, varies from 40% down to 0%! So on losses it is competitive with hydrogen and possibly lithium batteries, but it is a much cheaper system to build and more storage just needs a bigger tank, you can get quite big LPG tanks:

Petredec-VLGC-e1485230641625-780x470.jpg
 
Largest LPG tanker carry 101,000 cubic meter, that should fill a few Olympic sized pools if you are in the mood for a little cryo swimming.
Depend a little how you look at it, there is full pressure - semi pressure and even refrigerated gas tankers.

The biggest tanker i sailed though just liquid and not one of the really big ones, when emptied and cleaned out, it was no problem to play a 3 V 3 indoor soccer game in a tank, usually the machine DPT VS the Filipino deck crew.
And it was not like we was falling over each other to get to the ball. :)

Also plenty of room for a 9 hole round of deck golf,,,,,, which is pretty much ice hockey but you have to get the puck inside a circle drawn on the deck.
 
Nuclear base load might be useful if it was cheap, but it is not cheap, so why use an expensive base load when you could just install some more cheap wind power?

All that is missing for using wind as base load is reliability, and reliability has been steadily increasing as more wind is installed, moving offshore increased reliability massively, installing extra wind which can be used for hydrogen generation when not needed for baseload also increases reliability. And adding storage in whatever form also increases reliability. Storage can be lithium batteries, hydrogen, or maybe air power:

Highview Power's technology is interesting but it appears to be rather complex and high maintenance and we just don't know yet if it will prove viable. I guess we are about to find out as Highview Power's first operating plant in the US is currently planned for construction right here in Vermont. It will be a 50 MW pilot facility that will provide all of 8 hours of storage but that should be enough to give an indication of how well the technology functions and whether it is suitable long term for our climate conditions.

Highview Power and Encore Renewable Energy to Co-Develop the First Long Duration, Liquid Air Energy Storage System in the United States

Highview Power Storage, Inc., a global leader in long duration energy storage solutions, and Encore Renewable Energy, a developer of renewable energy generation and storage projects, today jointly announced plans to develop the United States’ first long duration, liquid air energy storage system. This facility will be a minimum of 50MW, provide in excess of eight hours of storage (400MWh) and will be located in northern Vermont.

No doubt newer technologies will be needed going forward but good luck if you believe that Highview Power is the ultimate solution to the energy crisis. The fact is that every available "non-variable" and "variable" technology will be needed and as soon as possible. That's along the lines of what Tesla is doing with their grid storage Powerpack commercial and utility battery facilities. So far their 100MW/129MWh lithium-ion battery storage system has proven very successful in Australia. In fact it proved successful enough that capacity was recently upgraded to 150MW/194MWh. Here in the US the energy storage market is expected to increase 700% to nearly $5.4 billion by 2024 according to analyst firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.

As for nuclear, the next generation of reactors will be far less expensive to build and operate and far safer than the 40-50 year old technology you are basing your argument on. Make no mistake, nuclear will be required as a major component of the world's energy future.
 
Last edited:
but good luck if you believe that Highview Power is the ultimate solution to the energy crisis.
I don't think we will need it once there are enough hydrogen generating wind turbines, but according to the boss, the Highview Power plant also produces beer!

but it appears to be rather complex and high maintenance and we just don't know yet if it will prove viable.
We have 2 plants already running, all built with standard components so no real maintenance problems.

That's along the lines of what Tesla is doing with their grid storage Powerpack commercial and utility battery facilities. So far their 100MW/129MWh lithium-ion battery storage system has proven very successful in Australia.
We are using them here too, good for instant power and needed because with our coal nearly gone and our gas sometimes not needed we are losing the power stored in the inertia of spinning steam turbines that used to be used for instant power. They are expensive for large amounts of storage though.

 
We have 2 plants already running, all built with standard components so no real maintenance problems.
Standard components? So, highly complex still unproven energy systems like this don't need maintenance or repair?

The UK doesn't have the sort of harsh climate we have here in northern Vermont during this time of year. Even systems designed and built for these conditions, much less a new unproven system. Obviously, that is why they are building a modest sized pilot facility.

Why do you feel it necessary to keep posting these puff piece infomercials for Highview?

In any event, always amusing how you claim to have the entire climate/energy crisis all figured out. What on earth would you do if you couldn't post links you find on the internet?
 
Alcohol are a pretty abundant compound in the universe, they are also pretty sure there is at least one planet or moon sized diamond out there.

Thats a rock that would knock the legs out from under De Beers and friends.
 
New Climate record here, in just 11 Days until yesterday the temperature gone up 35.7 degree C in a place in Denmark, this happened when they measures +15 degrees in a little town near the DK / German border.
Same town had below -20 deg C 11 days ago.

First time since 1874 such a change have been seen.
 
A couple days ago it was 3°F at my house when I got up in the morning - about 10 hours later it was 39°F. Not quite as much change as you experienced but really illustrates the effect those arctic cold masses can have when they finally decide to get out of town - quickly in this case.
 
New Climate record here, in just 11 Days until yesterday the temperature gone up 35.7 degree C in a place in Denmark, this happened when they measures +15 degrees in a little town near the DK / German border.
Same town had below -20 deg C 11 days ago.

First time since 1874 such a change have been seen.
A couple days ago it was 3°F at my house when I got up in the morning - about 10 hours later it was 39°F. Not quite as much change as you experienced but really illustrates the effect those arctic cold masses can have when they finally decide to get out of town - quickly in this case.

You guys may remember a video I posted almost exactly two years ago where I experienced a harrowing night time drive home going uphill in deep mud after a 65º (F) temperature swing that occurred within less than a 10 hour period. The temperature dropped to -10º below zero Fahrenheit (-23.33333º Celcius) during the night and then suddenly spiked all the way up to +55º Fahrenheit (+12.77778 Celcius) by the following afternoon.

".....the night before this video capture it dropped to about -10º below zero Fahrenheit (-23.33333º Celcius) and then suddenly spiked all the way up to +55º Fahrenheit (+12.77778 Celcius) the following day."

That was another polar vortex like the US has just experienced. Polar vortexes are not a new phenomenon but I don't recall them happening so often or being quite this severe. No doubt the folks in Texas and other parts of the southern US feel the same way.
 
Fairly common here to be sweating profusely one day and thawing out frozen pipes a few days later (or the reverse) :p Not as big a change as these though. The long-term predictions for here are that our thick forests are going to turn into grasslands for a lack of regular rainfall and higher temperatures over the next several hundred/1000 years which is unimaginable to me. It's the plentitude and diversity of our trees which make for the wonderful place I live in.

The scale of the Polar vortex that happened here this time is epic. Nothing like it in living memory, and possibly in all of history. It was known to be possible though and one must never discount the possibilities or they will bite you sooner or later :cautious:

Phil
 
The large scale railway project in my friends field almost drowned, there was a foot or so of water in some places, the day after there was a few inches.
Clearly we need to expand on the drainage, but we already knew that., just rare we experience flooding as part of frozen ground and precipitation.

The situation are reverse over here, cold to the east and west of us, but Danes toasty right in the middle, yesterday we had Sahara sand "rain" down on us.
 
Denmark soon set off building Europe's largest power to X plant, which will make CO2 free ammonia for a range of uses,
The plant will cost 7.5 billion DKkr or a good billion USD


Ørsted / or Orsted for the none Danes are also moving on "PTX"
 
Last edited:
Denmark soon set off building Europe's largest power to X plant, which will make CO2 free ammonia for a range of uses,
I was going to say that I hope that in calm weather when we don't have enough wind powered electricity, the electricity from these turbines can be sent to the electricity grid instead of into making fertiliser, but then I read: "The excess heat will be used to provide heating for around one-third of the local households in Esbjerg.", so the Danes will get cold if the electricity is diverted!
 
UN Security Council
PM Boris Johnson (Virtual Chair) said:
Whether you like it or not, it is a matter of when, not if, your country and your people will have to deal with the security impacts of climate change.
Sir David Attenborough said:
If we continue on our current path, we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security: food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperature, and ocean food chains, and if the natural world can no longer support the most basic of our needs, then much of the rest of civilization will quickly break down.
UN chief António Guterres said:
The science is clear: we need to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.
 
  • China leads the world in new annual offshore wind installations for the third year in a row with over 3 GW of new offshore wind capacity in 2020.
  • Steady growth in Europe, driven by the Netherlands and Belgium, accounts for majority of the remaining new offshore wind installations in 2020, along with the US and South Korea.
  • The offshore wind industry installed just over 6 GW of new capacity globally in 2020, nearly the same levels as the previous year despite the impacts of COVID-19 and the second-best year for the sector.
  • The UK remains in the top spot globally for total offshore wind capacity, while China has now overtaken Germany to become the world’s second largest offshore wind market.
  • Total global offshore wind capacity is now over 35 GW, helping the world avoid 62.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions – equivalent to taking over 20 million cars off the road – and providing around 700,000 jobs globally over the projects’ lifetimes.

1614247947807.png



The 2020 new wind power capacity figures for China, released yesterday by the National Energy Administration (NEA), are truly formidable. The NEA announced that a staggering 71.7 GW of new wind capacity was installed last year – more than double China’s previous annual growth record and far exceeding GWEC’s Q3 2020 expectations.
 
The modern (US) power grid is a horse built by committee over 100 years. The result is a 17-leg camel with a stock portfolio.

It should be noted that I’m an expert in energy, and am part of the 0.01% of the population who understands the power grid, and I still do not fully understand it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top