The following charts, the first from a 2013 Scientific American article and the second from Wikipedia, are useful context for current debates about fracked shale gas. Energy Return On Investment is a measure of how much energy you get out compared with how much you put in (expend) to get that energy out. Shale gas is obviously going to have lower EROI than shale oil (which is a much more energy-dense fuel). Clearly, some renewable energies are far superior to fossil fuels in this respect, with hydroelectricity and wind being the clear winners on this measure, and even Solar PV being superior to shale oil (and therefore by implication also superior to shale gas). And I'm guessing these data currently exclude the energy expense of any Carbon Capture and Storage processes associated with each fossil fuel, since CCS is neither a mandatory requirement nor widely deployed yet.
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A friend recommended this film. In about 40 minutes, it gives a wonderfully positive message about how we can all be part of the change to a sustainable future.
Find it on Youtube here. I attended a gathering of the Oxfordshire Green Construction Network earlier this week in Bicester. The network's strapline is "Building a Greener Tomorrow - Today" and it does what it says on the tin. It's a network of members who are local businesses in Oxfordshire who all have an interest in the building sector and who want to see more sustainable building design and construction practices. More information will be made available on a website coming soon.
Some details of the gathering can be found via this link (opens in new window) In a Coursera course on Designing Cities, one of the lectures showed some emerging ideas about driverless vehicles and how city spaces could be restructured, without kerbs and other traditional separators between vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians. The artistic representations are visually pleasing, and the idea itself has some attractions. Emma Harvey, The Head of Sustainability for Virgin Atlantic, has authored an article published by 2Degrees, indicating that the company is pushing for biofuels to replace traditional fossil fuels in aircraft. She quotes a target of 60% reduction in aviation carbon emissions on 19% of the world's aircraft. So that's about 20% reduction in emissions from the world's aircraft, assuming no increase in air travel (which is unlikely). That's good news overall, but I wonder if it goes far enough. Emissions from air travel, per passenger- or freight-kilo-mile, and in aggregate, are still an issue compared with other forms of transport. Click the link here to my blog post "Impact of food transport by air", where I compare freight miles travelled on various modes of transport. There is a big question remaining over what level of total air travel is sustainable.
In the video linked here, Matt Ridley sets out many of the positive outcomes from using fossil fuels, such as the 'green revolution' in agricultural efficiency and productivity. However, overall, the video suffers from what in Business Schools might be described as 'marketing myopia' which is the tendency for successful groups of people to assume that such successes can continue forever. It's why companies such as IBM fall from grace, when they fail to recognise game-changing shifts or limits.
One such change is the realisation that human systems are constrained by planetary limits. Matt Ridley doesn't address those limits in his talk. Instead, he focusses on the past and what it has achieved for us. Methinks he is like the character taking the lead role in this short video "Peak Oil - how will you ride the slide?" summarising why the fossil-fuel age must come to an end and we must transition to a renewable, sustainable future. Here's a link to an article (from January 2013) in Plastics Today which explores the impact of the weight of EVs and suggests that making them lighter would help market penetration. In Europe, EVs were only 0.2% of new car sales in 2012 (the equivalent figure in the USA was 0.6%). The new Renault Zoe, at 1.4 tonnes, is dubbed "an electric tank" by the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan. Of course, where range is an issue for the environmentally conscious car owner, hybrids such as the Vauxhall Ampera are an option likely to become increasingly popular, in my view, because they provide all-electric motoring over reasonable ranges (I've seen up to about 90 miles round trip quoted as being achievable from one charge) while also including a petrol engine to remove range anxiety completely from the equation. It's just a shame that hybrids seem to be so much more expensive than pure EVs.
I noticed these cars on a recent trip to Paris. They're rented out by "Libre Comme L'Air". Here's an article from Treehugger with more info. Several million miles travelled so far since their launch a year or two ago. Boris - your Boris Bikes in London are a good start but you're lagging behind the French when it comes to EVs! Today, for the first time ever, when I arrived in Oxford, I saw an Electric Vehicle being recharged at a Park-and-Ride car park. "Yippee" I thought. But the next thought was - "hang on, if I had been driving an EV today instead of a petrol driven car, I wouldn't have been able to use that recharging point [there's only one in that car park] - I'd have had to go looking for another one in a different part of Oxford."
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About the BloggerI'm David Calver - an Accountant with a passion for sustainability. Categories
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