Billionaires who made their fortunes by trying to stop climate change
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
btw, I have a pre-idea/pre-founder start up I like to pitch. It's sort of like a SPAC without any special purpose. I'd appreciate any VC intros that can be made.
Solar and wind are already becoming more profitable than running existing coal plants in some areas. Market forces in tandem with continued technological development will accelerate these shifts. It would also be prudent for government to nudge this process along.
So theoretically one could have carbon neutral ICEs by not using fossil fuels, which could be sourced by converting carbon dioxide into fuel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...
I don't think that this is a reasonable thing to do though. Go electric instead. Producing and transmitting electricity is easier and also more flexible as different sources (solar, wind, hydro, nuclear...) can be used.
If you are really serious about lowering your carbon impact then you will be visiting the bike shop rather than car showroom.
It's all down to the fact that if you exert yourself, you'll need to eat more food, and food production is very CO2 heavy.
Stated tailpipe/windpipe emissions don't include the carbon cost of production for either fuel or food. That will depend on your diet, where in the world you live, where food or fuels are grown/extracted, where/how they are processed and transported, and so on. The environmental impact of production can also cause CO2 emissions long after production through land use change, land remediation, etc most of which is not accounted for when making these comparisons even if a "full" LCA is undertaken.
The carbon cost of manufacturing a car is rarely quantified but I remember one maker estimated it was the equivalent emissions of driving 40-50,000 miles. A bicycle is far less and lasts far longer (I've had my bike for 23 years and it's fine). And of course, that's just the manufacture. Car maintenance also has a much greater carbon impact than a bicycle or replacing the soles for your shoes.
We also have a fairly crazy situation where people drive to work or other places, but then go for a run or go to the gym to burn calories and 'get fit' – perhaps even running on a treadmill which itself consumes energy. Just the idea that you have excess calories that you need to undertake an activity specifically to burn them is a counter to the argument that walking or cycling more would lead to increased food intake. Of course, I know that some people go to the gym to do resistance training targeting physiological benefits.
But then again, the obesity epidemic also demonstrates that excess calories (exacerbated by shifts in the make-up of diet) is an existing problem.
[1] https://www.livestrong.com/article/524672-what-effect-does-e...
Biodiesel and [m]ethanol fuels are a real thing.
And you have to fertilize them for this efficiency, and those either require non-neutral manufacturing process, or composting which releases methane (in itself a biofuel that could be used but isn't). Plants also release some methane on their own when growing.
That's not even counting loss of biodiversity or replacing carbon-negative fields, farming grasslands and forests.
You could make a biofuel carbon neutral but we're not even close. Bioethanol for example has a CO2 producing fermentation step. Going biohydrogen and burying the plants could work. (Even methane is not clean enough to offset planting, unfortunately.)
And we do not want to go neutral but to reduce emissions.
-- +) The number is 37% according to in-depth study: http://theconversation.com/biofuels-turn-out-to-be-a-climate...
Electric vehicles are far more promising and compelling as a large scale solution to replace most existing consumer ICE transportation, but there are probably some roles for ICE vehicles using carbon neutral fuels.
No, it's not. ICE doesn't care if the fuel is manufactured from fossil sources (which isn't carbon neutral) or from biomass by thermal depolymerization or other means, which can be carbon neutral.
Thus even bioethanol is not carbon neutral unless used in chemistry where it's not burnt.
No, growing biomass sequesters carbon.
> burning fuel derived from it never is.
Burning fuel derived from biomass releases the carbon sequestered in growing it. So, the whole process is carbon neutral.
(Yes, that means fossil fuels are carbon neutral viewed over the entire time window from when the biomass from which they were derived was grown. They aren't carbon neutral over the timescales we care about, but anything derived from recent and sustainable biomass production is.)
Just think about how inefficient this chain of events is: sun -> plant -> coal -> coal plant -> electricity.
The answer renewables offer is: sun -> electricity, wind -> electricity.
Massive gains in efficiency can be had simply by switching to renewables. The way primary energy is counted is very favorable for fossil fuels. For renewables the secondary energy they produce is counted as primary energy but for fossil fuels the primary energy in the fuel itself is counted. This makes fossil fuels dominate the primary energy pie charts [0] even when the reality is completely different. The real primary energy share of renewables could be twice as high but we don't know, because of the way energy is counted.
[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
You still need to convert sun/wind energy to electricity. And you have to store it. Or you may use a sail.
This brain-washed journalist makes it clear how green tech often is green washing, and a very effective one.
People refuse to look at reality, now.
For example when I was living in Switzerland I used public transport because I was lazy to use a car, as it's so much more hassle.
I went to Mountain View, California to a business trip, and wanted to do the same thing (as I was used to public transport), and I couldn't even find a way to go to a supermarket, as the closest one to my corp apartment was 40 minutes walk away :(
I decided to rent a car because the closest car rental was closer than a place to eat at...as a European it sounds crazy, but it's true.
Driving less is much more effective than switching to electric vehicles.
I am guessing you are someone who wants us to stay on fossil fuels forever, and are only pretending to care about the environment
Electric cars are better than regular fossil fuel cars, yes. But the article talks about "stopping" climate change, not just making it slightly less bad.
There's a big hospital not far from where I sit, too. All of the food and goods for 1100 patients there are moved with bicycles and public transportation.
You might argue that you didn't mean all kinds of public tranportation, you meant only the kind of vehicles whose interior is designed to carry people and a bit of luggage. Not the kind that's meant to carry goods for the general public. But why shouldn't the companies that transport for the general public be free to choose vehicles, routing, perhaps even timing to suit the loads and other needs?
My supplier (United Kingdom based) provides 100% renewable electricity. I'm sure there are plenty of other countries (where Tesla is on sale) that can provide energy generated in a more efficient way than internal combustion.
It isn't perfect but it's the lesser evil when compared to combustion engines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
Having an electric car fleet means that transportation will get greener "automatically", as the power grid switches over to wind and solar. Having a fossil fuel car fleet means you're screwed no matter what happens in the electricity sector. Having a smaller fossil fuel car fleet just means that you're screwed a little more slowly.
Makes sense, though... Assuming that a coal plant's going to be hopelessly unprofitable the next time it needs maintenance, it does make a certain sense to use it harshly now and wear out every moving part.
Sure, https://yearbook.enerdata.net/coal-lignite/coal-production-d...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining#Production needs an update then.
And I know of a brave man who could do it
> Assuming that a coal plant's going to be hopelessly unprofitable the next time it needs maintenance
How come? See no reason for that
I assume that coal plants become unprofitable once they need considerable maintenance because they're not being built any more, which I assume means that no investors consider them a worthwhile investment. Further, because the price of solar and wind power is dropping. If the price curves continue as in the past decade, then in a few years, building a new solar plant becomes cheaper than operating an existing power plant in the first parts of the world. At that point, what coal plant owner will spend money on signfificant maintenance?
Data not yet out, but yes, I believe so. There is a prediction it would rise till 2022 though not yet reaching the peak of 2013.
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/03/20190306-coal.html
> I assume that coal plants become unprofitable once they need considerable maintenance because they're not being built any more
mmm... not sure this is true about coal plants not being build. China and India I believe still building them.
> Further, because the price of solar and wind power is dropping.
well, while they are dropping, coal production is gorwing three years in a row (and potentially another three years in making).
> hen in a few years, building a new solar plant becomes cheaper
and what people supposed to do by night?
You recognize, that even if you saturate your grid by solar electricity from, say, 11 to 5, there are still 18 hours left...
mmm... could you name a most significant one?
> But the idea that somehow energy experts are slapping their foreheads thinking 'OMG how did we miss this' is slightly insulting.
well, let me remind you how this conversation started - coal production is GROWING. Not because someone is just evil, but this is what customers demand - reliable supply of cheap electricity
Where I live right now, the farmers are building things like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/20... The green things are more or less balloons, because it pays to store the gas until peak time and burn most of it then.
yeah, the only problem is how to apply this model to, say, south of US - California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada etc. Not a lot of hydro around
> The green things are more or less balloons, because it pays to store the gas until peak time and burn most of it then.
not sure how it is applicable to electric storage
Generating electricity in an environmentally-friendly way is almost an entirely separate problem from using electricity to run things that used to not run on electricity. Electric cars try to solve the latter problem, and the hope is that the widespread existence of electric cars will make the transition to clean energy easier in the future.
Renewable sources of electricity are a huge improvement to be encouraged, but EVs running off fossil generated electricity are better than petrol or diesel ICE.
Point is most if not all of you haven't a clue about "Climate Change" just like the political scene. For the last 60+ years "global cooling," "global warming," and lastly "climate change" have been used to make unethical people a lot of money playing off people's ignorance and fear.
Depends on what you consider "bad". But there seems to be a lot of material that climate changes is mostly negative economical and health wise for humans. (e.g., http://www.oecd.org/env/the-economic-consequences-of-climate... )
'Also, if everyone is SOOO concerned with CO2 emissions or waste in general why is Nuclear power not being discussed?'
It's impossible to escape the nuclear discussion on this topics. Many threads about anything climate or CO2 related are full of discussion of nuclear.
'It is only the most clean energy source on the planet considering waste to energy production lb for lb.'
I couldn't find any numbers on this, but I am willing to believe it. Could you provide a citation? I'd like to know more about it.
'Also, does anyone know the pollutants created making solar panels or super light weight material for wind mills?'
It has been in mainstream news and outlets a few times, so I assume most people are aware that toxic materials are used to produce solar panels. As far as I can tell from the reports I saw, these can be disposed of reliably, and fairly easily while still being safe. (unlike nuclear waste as far as I can tell.)
'If not, why not?'
Most people have limited capacities and do not concern themselves with everything.
'Point is most if not all of you haven't a clue'
This is true for most people on most topics and has never stopped anyone from forming an option, discussing it on hackernews, or call people that might actually have a clue out on not having a clue.
The problem is that humans will keep emitting CO2 until it becomes dangerous. Thinking climate change isn't bad is falling right into that trap. It will be okay until it won't be ok. The problem can only be prevented ahead of time and if you wait and do nothing then the solution may never happen once it's too late.
I don't understand how you can consider this to be a political problem about ignorance and fear. There are obvious economic downsides to using fossil fuels. They are expensive, inefficient, require significant maintenance, may cause increased background radiation (above levels of nuclear) simply through the sheer amount of material that they consume. In Germany they caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the photovoltaic industry in exchange for protecting 20000 jobs of coal workers by spending billions on keeping uneconomical ones alive. The fossil fuel industry is obsolete and dangerous to the public. It's holding us back, causing local health problems even if you ignore the CO2.
In Germany renewables receive priority to feed in their electricity yet the coal plants keep running because they cannot throttle down significantly and since they keep running to secure jobs they are allowed to clog the electric grid even when renewables are available. "Baseload" is not a benefit. It means that the power source is inflexible and interferes with the grid.
Then there are electric cars. They don't require expensive fuel and can be charged at home with cheap renewables. Maintenance costs are significantly lower. Overall the economics speak for themselves.
Even if you don't believe in anthropogenic climate change you would be foolish to choose to be stuck in the past and ignore two of the most critical innovations of the 21th century.
About half of them have nothing to do with lithium.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978012385...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00380...
For example the article below estimates a time period of 6 - 18 months for some electric car models. That seems a little low to me so I would like to review the literature a bit more before making any serious claims. Then obviously the greenness of running the car depends on the source of charging electricity.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/electric-car-well-to-wh...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-cars-are...
However, such activities are certainly greener than dumping 20 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year.
No doubt we'll have yet another hollywood style celebrity who knows nothing, is famous for being attractive to look at and if they have any skill at all it is lying convincingly go on to tell us to tackle climate change we should refill our water bottles in stead of placing them in the bin in the follow up article. "Well it's a start" No it isn't, it's nothing at best, it's a distraction from adults talking intelligently and undermines grass roots movements, which is the whole point of the publicising of celebrity advocacy in general. "Let's ignore this person who knows and makes a solid case, because Angelina Jolie has thoughts her publicist would like to share as long as you agree to these terms so she massage her image while you farm your clicks."
Bloomberg. Yeah. Bloomberg claims to be better than this. Now let's play "What has this article got to do with Mike Bloomberg trying to undermine the reform of the massive corruption in the Democrat party?" Unless you think he's actually seriously trying to be elected, which is something worth discussing if you do. What isn't worth discussing is weather Bloomberg News are, possibly among other things, his personal propaganda, because they've actually announced that themselves.
Genunine idealogically Republicans and Democrats alike are all desperate for reform. From just about anywhere, which is a concern because there are places we don't want it from, like the extremes. Under-qualified Obama got in on that ticket. Democrats voted for Donald because "Just maybe a maverick outsider, and anyway unlikely to be actually worse" Plenty of republican support for Bernie because "Just maybe a maverick outsider and anyway unlikely to be actually worse"
It saddens me that Bernie as the most credible Democrat reformer would have smashed Donald as the most credible Republican reformer at the last election. It saddens me because Donald was the most credible Republican reformer and that there still doesn't seem to be anyone better among Republicans standing against him.
Anway back to businesses making money saving the planet. We need more. This list is very, very thin and contains ring ins.
I've reworded it to make sense without resorting back to "these".