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renewable energy

Paul,

I knew that cement production releases CO2 as well as uses much energy (so it has a big carbon footprint because of energy consumption), but the amount of CO2 attributable to making concrete was a bit of a shock.

The thing that concerns me is that even with hard lockdowns, shuttering of businesses and the drop in travel because of the pandemic, CO2 emissions are still up.

co2_trend_mlo.png


Oil crises, recessions, dot com busts, financial crises, pandemics,... nothing seems to lead to lower CO2 emissions.

co2_data_mlo.png


Joe
 
Joe P said:
The thing that concerns me is that even with hard lockdowns, shuttering of businesses and the drop in travel because of the pandemic, CO2 emissions are still up.
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Joe, there is some explanation of this on the same site: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/covid2.html

If emissions are lower by as much as 25%, then we would expect the monthly mean CO2 for March at Mauna Loa to be lowered by about 0.2 ppm, and again in April by another 0.2 ppm, etc. Thus, when we compare the average seasonal cycle of many years we would expect a difference to accumulate during 2020 after a number of months. The International Energy Agency expects global CO2 emissions to drop by 8% this year. Clearly, we cannot see a global effect like that in less than a year. In addition, the fires are producing CO2 at perhaps a similar rate as the modest lowering of emissions resulting from the pandemic.
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darrenyeats said:
UK not doing that bad per capita for a large advanced country.

I'm shocked by Canada, higher than the USA.
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I think this relates to how emissions are allocated. The current system of accounting does not consider a lifecycle approach. Therefore the countries whose economies have a higher proportion of energy intensive industries such as raw material extraction and manufacturing bear a higher percentage of emissions than those countries with services-based economies like the UK.

As noted in one of my earlier comments I believe an emissions accounting system that is based on the full lifecycle of goods and services that consume fossil fuel energy would be a far more effective basis for making successful policy decisions.
 
I agree that the stats are skewed that way. Achieving what you say would be extremely difficult. Am thinking raw materials from China and Africa and up in a transistor built in India, the transistor ends up in a board made in Poland, the board ends up in an ECU built in UK, it ends up in a car made in Germany. Tracking all that to raw materials and how much true CO2 was accrued at each stage of the value chain, aggregating it accurately - so difficult it's not funny.

What is easier is to work on each stage. If all producers are motivated to choose geographically closer inputs to their stage in the value chain, that will help for example - it's easier to reason about.

I think the direction is good at the moment, I think, the question is only if it's too little too late.
 
cubastreet said:
Doesn't the law of conservation of energy tell us that all energy is renewable?
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Energy is conserved, but not in the same form or the same location. Every process involves some sort of “escape” of some of the input energy into a form that cannot be used in a future process. The energy still exists, but it might be as a single photon travelling towards the edge of the universe at the speed of light: the fact that there’s still energy contained in that photon is irrelevant because there’s no way you can capture it again.
 
MikeMA said:
I think entropy puts paid to that, eventually.
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Entropy often called 'the arrow of time'.

I have given this equation before but its worth reiterating

ΔE=ΔG+ΔH-TΔS

What does this mean? ΔE is the energy that you extract (use) to do something however depending on how you take this energy it can come in two forms. ΔG known as the Gibbs free energy is the stuff that does useful work whilst ΔH the enthalpy is wasted as heat. It comes to pass that the slower you take the energy the more ΔG (useful work) you get and very little wasted as ΔH (heat). The converse is also true so work an engine or battery hard to get the energy quickly and you'll get a lot of heat and less efficiency.

That brings us to TΔS. T is the absolute temperature at which you are taking the energy and ΔS is the Entropy a measure of disorganisation of the Universe - it always increases. You can see that some of the energy taken is 'lost' as Entropy Eventually this should* mean that all useful energy has been squandered by complete disorganisation of all matter in the Universe as Entropy. However the total Energy of the Universe at its end will be exactly the same as when it was born.

Why use the symbol Δ? Its a measure of the change in a value rather than its absolute value in the Universe.

Interesting no?

DV

* We don't know what will actually happen. Many years ago I discussed this with Prof J Silk as he gave a talk about his latest book and the findings that the rate of expansion of the Universe was to our surprise accelerating. I suggested that there may come a time when space-time was stretched so thinly that it becomes too weak to hold together and wondered what would then happen. We don't know but the Prof thought that the Universe may turn into pure energy.
 
Organians can turn into pure energy. Holy shit, watch what happens at 0:45!


Fascinating.

Joe
 
cubastreet said:
Doesn't the law of conservation of energy tell us that all energy is renewable?
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To paraphrase the laws of thermodynamics:

1. You can't win, you can only break even.
2. You can only break even at absolute zero.
3. You can never reach absolute zero.

The second statement is another way of saying that entropy tends to increase so, as other posters have said, the amount of usable energy tends to decrease.
 
Drood,

But green energy is green, right? If it's actually more chartreuse I think we should be told. :–)

Joe
 
Kris,

KrisW said:
̀

No, it really is green energy. It just looks yellow because of the studio lighting and the film stock.
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I hear ya. My Ektachromes have faded to yellow over the years. Everyone said, shoot Kodachrome, but did I listen...?

I usually learn from the mistakes of people who have taken my advice, but in this case I have no one to blame but someone else.

Joe
 
Mike,

We can avoid the worst of the warming to come, but it will take concerted, sustained and global effort. Step one in my mind is to not elect populist boneheads like Trump and Bolasarno. They don't understand the issues, but more importantly they don't care. They are psychopathic carbuncles on the arse of society.

But if we give up and carry on as usual, it's a lost cause.

Joe
 
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