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Comment by amanaplanacanal | Hacker News Reader

Given how polluting diesel is, this could be a good thing long term. So much of our commercial transportation is dependent on it though, so this is a major pain point short term.

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It's more than transportation. "Heating oil" is basically diesel and is affected by these prices. Winter is about to hit the Northeast and many people still heat with it. To fill up my tank today would be around $1200 and I will be expecting to refill it every 40-60 days for the next six months.

I assume these are places with no natural gas infrastructure? I finally convinced my mom to convert from oil to gas, even though she has a somewhat irrational fear of gas, based just on the cost. She'll break even on the cost of the new furnace within a couple years. The cost difference between the fuels is significant.

Yep. In New England [1] roughly 2,000,000 households heat via "heating oil" or kerosene (which is more expensive). There are slightly more folks that heat with natural gas, but this is a rural vs suburban divide and New England is quite rural overall.

Heat pumps are in vogue now but usually they are supplemented with fireplaces, wood stoves or pellet stoves.

[1] https://www.mass.gov/service-details/how-massachusetts-house...

I've lived in South Texas my entire life, so my winter experience is pretty limited (though I got quite the crash course in February 2021 along with most of the state), but I see lots of talk about modern heating systems the world over preparing for the coming winter in a time of energy shortage, and I just think about how these places have been inhabited since before industrialization and I wonder how?

I suppose the question that I have is what has modernity done to us? Are people just used to a comfort standard that is getting less achievable (I'd be pretty miserable in summer without HVAC myself), or is this a life and death issue that people are no longer able live in warm enough shelter to survive?

There is no renewable answer to diesel fuel, since there's nothing that can match its energy density and portability.

Biodiesel?

Too expensive. Diesel fuel is almost as cheap as water. Your standard of living depends hugely on it being this cheap btw.

If we stop externaizing the environmental cost of cheap fuel we’ll pay a lot more for food, especially meat and shipped things. Good. We should eat less in general, less meat in particular. Buy less artificially cheap shit, ship things less casually. If it costs three times more to ship something, local production suddenly becomes more appealing (which is good in a handful of ways).

Propping up artificially cheap fuel prices, hides the true cost of things and messes up our decision making.

I argue our stability, happiness and well-being would be improved by drastically higher diesel prices. Bring it.

They have a place but we need to consider land use and how to reconcile biodiesel production with food production

Tractor/trailers, locomotives, heavy construction equipment, ships, and boilers for residential heat don’t run on gasoline. Without diesel, the economy stops.

Locomotives than run on diesel have diesel-electric transmissions - basically the diesel engine acts as a generator, with electricity that turns electric motors.

When the UK electrified a lot of its railways in the 1970s, some diesel locomotives were converted so they could run on diesel or electric. If they really wanted, US railroad companies could electrify their tracks in stages, and continue to use their existing rolling stock.

Electrifying the US rail network sounds like a 20 year project, not an "oh shoot, diesel supply is low, let's switch" project.

I guess that's why it should have started some 60 years ago.

You know, like Europe.

It appears that German electricity is 45% fossil fuel generated. They keep shutting down their nuclear.

Even an electric train that is being provided with electricity has a better footprint than a train with diesel engines.

But yes; unfortunately the Germans keep shutting down their nuclear reactors. There's a lot of education that needs to happen.

France on the other hand is almost completely (80% or so?) nuclear and the Swiss have hydro and wind. So there's some wins there.

> But yes; unfortunately the Germans keep shutting down their nuclear reactors. There's a lot of education that needs to happen.

They elected a gas stooge who sabotaged wind development. Then went even further right wing.

> France on the other hand is almost completely (80% or so?) nuclear

70% and not this year. Over half of it is offline.

They at least had the sense to build about 20% renewables which is working fine.

20 years. Your optimism is quaint. The US couldn’t do a major infrastructure project in 20 years if our fat asses depended on it.

When the UK electrified 50 years ago, how was the electricity generated? I'm thinking, mostly from coal (67% in 1991).

Currently, electricity generation in the UK is 43% renewable (I'm including hydro and "bio-energy"), 16% nuclear, and 40% fossil fuels.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom#E...

Diesel is more efficient than gas as far as MPG, so CO2 is actually less per mile, NOx and particulates should be equivalent on a modern diesel with DPF and DEF SCR.

Doesn't pass the smell test - I can smell diesel exhaust from at least 100 feet away (maybe 10x as pungent as non-diesel), has to be something I'm smelling

If i let an egg rot in your yard you'll smell it too, doesn't mean it has a meaningful contribution to nox, particulate, or carbon emissions. Things can be smelly without being bad emissions-wise.

Is it a modern diesel with DPF and SCR? The smell from the exhaust of my 2021 6.7 liter cummins diesel motorhome is actually almost undetectable to me while my 2016 V10 gas motorhome had a very noticeable smell.

Perhaps the diesel is not ULSD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-low-sulfur_diesel

>NOx and particulates should be equivalent on a modern diesel with DPF and DEF SCR.

Is it? I thought the whole deal with dieselgate was that they couldn't get it to be more efficient and comply with emissions regulations, so they ended up cheating.

Dieselgate was trying to avoid using DEF claiming you could get compliant NOx output without it [1]. You can if you reduce power and efficiency during the test cycle, if you want good power and efficiency while having compliant NOx output you need DEF on a diesel engine and it works very well but does increase complexity and cost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

Amazon ships all their goods on trains and big rigs both of which use diesel. Will the cost of items on Amazon go up? Or maybe just availability goes down once the edge distribution centers are depleted?

it'll be interesting to see the short-term market shortages caused by it.

I have a few acquaintances that are ripping diesel motors out of their boats due to the cost of operation and going electric -- problem is that many of the motor controllers used are back ordered due to the supply issues that are all over the transistor/electronics markets already that haven't been remediated.

well, at least battery prices are dropping with the market volumes.

As a scuba diver I would love to see dive boats switch from diesel to electric motors. Obviously that wouldn't work for large live-aboard boats that go out for multiple days. But it could be practical for smaller boats that run day trips. Most of them make fairly short transits out to dive sites and then sit at anchor (or drift with the current) while divers are in the water. Divers tend to be ecologically conscious so this would be a good marketing point. And besides the environmental benefits, I hate inhaling a lung full of diesel exhaust when I climb back onto the boat.

Of course there are practical obstacles in terms of safety and charging with high-voltage electrical systems and battery charging in a marine environment. Everything is constantly corroding.

It's even more unfortunate when diesel is still being used as fuel for some homes for heating.

Have you seen the price of regular fuel? It’s not much better.

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