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Urgent action is needed to reduce transport, housing and agriculture emissions if Scotland's new climate targets are to be met, according to a new report.
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http://stv.tv/news/scotland/1366845-urgent-action-needed-to-meet-climate-change-targets/
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"Urgent action is needed to reduce transport, housing and agriculture emissions"
(48 posts)-
Posted 8 years ago #
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How much of Scotland's reductions come from closing all our heavy industry and exporting the creation of steel etc to China?
Posted 8 years ago # -
We'll need a great deal of help to reduce agricultural emmissions. The natural gas fuelled Haber process and the diesel fuelled tractor are the twin basis of our current diet.
We won't be eating much beef, that's for certain.
Posted 8 years ago # -
"the diesel fuelled tractor"
Surely not beyond the wit of engineers to design an electric tractor? Could even have solar panels on the cab roof to extend battery life.
Charging points at farmyards, charge overnight, ready to go at first light.
Posted 8 years ago # -
mgj - loads. The closure of Ravenscraig and the move of a nitric acid plant from Leith to Dublin account for most of the reduction in Scottish industrial greenhouse gas emission reduction since 1990. Throw in closure of coal fired powers stations, better landfill gas management and some fairly dubious massaging of the figures around carbon storage in forests and peat bogs and you have most of the rest of the reduction. All one-off stuff - reductions based on hard choices (for the general population - obviously steelworkers have already borne the brunt of these choices) are still to be made.
Loads here: https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat07/DA_GHGI_1990-2013_Report_v1.pdf
Posted 8 years ago # -
@crowriver
It appears to be a genuine challenge with present technology. Tractors are astonishingly powerful seen up close, and the energy density of diesel plus atmospheric oxygen is enormous.
Who fancies spending their (short) life using a back-hoe all day?
Posted 8 years ago # -
"Who fancies spending their (short) life using a back-hoe all day?"
Now there's a question.
Though it also highlights the problem - polarisation of this and other debates (not meaning on here).
'It's either more of the same or back to the Stone Age/growing your own' is often the tone taken by those with a vested interest or unwillingness to face the future/look at different ways of doing things.
Ironically most 'back breaking' agricultural work in the UK is done by 'foreigners' rather than 'natives'.
It remains to be seen whether UKGov values keeping (the pledge of) immigration to "10s of thousands" over the continuation of UK food production. (It could just of course be a precursor to making the unemployed harvest brussels sprouts in January.)
It's not really fossil fuels (tractor fuel and fertilisers) v mass return to the land and subsistence. Well let's hope not, but details of 'the third way' are far from clear.
It would be nice to think that Governments, industries and
Europeanresearch projects are coming up with answers. Let's hope...Keeping the lights on is apparently about Nuclear (unless it includes Chinese spies), or wind turbines on every hill. (Or perhaps fewer lights/electrical gadgets and more small scale power generation, district heating and better insulation etc.)
Transport just needs more roads.
So many problems/questions and so little apparent urgency to produce (possible) solutions.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Who fancies spending their (short) life using a back-hoe all day?
I watched one of those BBC "this is what life was like in the olden days when it was all better" dramatised documentary things. Anyway what piqued my interest was a plough system using stationary engines , with the piece of farm machinery hauled through the field on an endless loop of moving cable (similar in principle to the cable car tram of yore). This was what came inbetween animal labour and mobile steam (later internal combustion) tractors. It would not be anything like as efficient and flexible as the internal comubstion tractor, but it's a system that could be easily and cheaply driven electrically.
I'm not seriously proposing this as an alternative, but it's worth considering that it wasn't until the post-WW2 period that British agriculture began to seriously mechanise, and mechanisation prior to this was based around static and usually steam (i.e. coal) driven power sources.
I guess we could run tractors on rapeseed oil or biodiesel?
Posted 8 years ago # -
Interesting table in the report Morningsider linked to, can be used to work out the 1990-2013 greenhouse gas emission changes estimated for Scotland.
| % of 2013 total | % reduction since 1990
Agriculture | 18% | 15%
Business | 17% | 31%
Energy Supply | 32% | 30%
Industrial Process | 1% | 73%
Public | 2% | 26%
Residential | 14% | 13%
Transport | 21% | 1%
Waste Management | 5% | 73%
Sub-total | | 35%So, transport emmissions are 1/5 of the total and yet have barely moved in 23 years. Any improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency I assume have been offset by successive government policies that have done nothing but encourage (specifically) wasteful driving practices.
Posted 8 years ago # -
The emissions that particularly bother me are the black clouds coming out of those Lothian buses exhausts into my lungs at every stop-start. Remember the gas buses? I see the LRT FB page had a bit on the new Scania double decker ones in May. Fingers crossed.
http://www.scania.com/group/en/worlds-first-double-deck-gas-bus-prepared-for-market-release/Posted 8 years ago # -
"(It could just of course be a precursor to making the unemployed harvest brussels sprouts in January.)"
Always suspected this was the ultimate aim of Brexit: cut benefit "scrounging" and keep wages bill low for farmers all in one fell swoop. The poor won't even be able to flee abroad without a visa.
"(Or perhaps fewer lights/electrical gadgets and more small scale power generation, district heating and better insulation etc.)"
But people literally cannot live without having their smartphones fully charged, massive flat screen tellies, dishwashers, wandering around the house in t-shirts and shorts in mid-winter, etc.
"Transport just needs more roads."
Yeah because then "the market" will find the most (in)efficient solution and politicians/planners don't have to think too hard.
Posted 8 years ago # -
"
In addition to being quieter than diesel models, the gas bus will also produce much lower carbon emissions. “We’re pleased that we’ve got a vehicle that uses fuel from a low-carbon, sustainable fuel source, in both single and double deck models,” said Oliver."
"sustainable fuel source"
Biogas? Where will LB get it from?
Posted 8 years ago # -
"Biogas? Where will LB get it from?"
Don't they turn our food waste into biogas (and compost/fertiliser) at a special plant in Cumbernauld?
EDIT: This is what happens to the food waste...still doesn't answer the question of whether LB can use the gas produced as a fuel.
http://www.scottishwater.co.uk/business/horizons/horizons-environment/food-waste-recycling
http://www.scottishwater.co.uk/business/horizons/horizons-environment/anaerobic-digestion
http://www.biogas.org.uk/plants/deerdykes-composting-and-organics-recycling-facility
Posted 8 years ago # -
Biofuels are notorious for being higher carbon than fossil fuels under some circumstances. Also, they are often made from food.
Perhaps biogas here will be from waste tip seepage?
Posted 8 years ago # -
I think there are also biogas plants using sewage and grass cuttings as feedstock. So you could imagine a plant being built at Seafield, for example: biogas, compost/fertiliser, and combined heat and power for local housing. That's how they'd do things in Sweden anyway...
Apparently the Cumbernauld plant can use these things as feedstock: Source separated food waste, liquid slurries, fish waste, Cat. 3 animal by products (that's "low-risk" slaughterhouse by-products such as blood, feathers, etc.)
Posted 8 years ago # -
Fetilisers are largely a by product of main fuel production so reducing their use wouldn't help (from a purely ghg.
Most crops grown purely for biofuel use are pretty bad relative to FF, I've not looked in a while but lignate digestion technology looked pretty promising turning inedible farming by products to fuel though I suspect the knock on of that would be reduced feedstock for wintering animals.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Longannet used to co-fire with a dried sewage product supplied by Scottish Water. Calorific value was similar to brown coal (no pun intended).
Posted 8 years ago # -
"Biogas? Where will LB get it from?"
Does such a thing as a hybrid trolleybus exist? Runs under the wires through the core of the city but can move off the wires under battery power at the margins of the route. Would also solve one of the shortcomings of the trolleybus, namely it's hard to divert them off route if there's a hold up or road closure.
Given the shape of the current LB Network, you might be able to achieve it by running wires from Leith Walk to Princes St, Corstorphine to Princes St., Newington to Princes St. and Morningside to Princes St., Slateford to Haymarket and King's Road to Leith Walk.
One of the things that ruined the economics of municipal tramways and trolley busses in the UK was the centralisation of electricity generation at the national level. Before WW2, the municipalities generated their own electricity supply and ran their own transport system. The cost for the power for these networks was as cheap as they could make it, and they could cross-subsidise the production of electricity for municipal needs from private and commercial sales.
Or, save that huge capital expense and encourage more cycling through proper infrastructure.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@ Steveo (and others), so, we are where we are - wherever that is.
Certainly in the land of unintended (and perhaps unexpected) consequences.
It's perhaps asking far too much to expect politicians to come up with much in the way of 'solutions'. Not least because it suggests that there are straightforward solutions - tweaking the present, radically changing 'society's expectations' or (for instance) perfecting nuclear fusion.
Part of the problem is that we (humans/the world) are reluctant to face much change - especially if we expect to feel worse off.
So (to think of a small extreme) banning all cars is a non starter - even in more than a few streets - and yet (almost) everyone might actually be better off...
Posted 8 years ago # -
I think a step change is needed either in an "oil crisis" and the lessons from that sticking but more likely from a technology which is only 10 years away.
Currently what we're doing is tweaking at the periphery even large scale sustainable biofuel production won't be near the billions of barrels of oil we use in a year there just isn't the land to grow it.
Consider the thousands of years of solar energy stored up in oil and some folk (not on here) reckon we can produce anything like that amount annually and still feed an expanding population with foods they'd actually want to eat. No way am I on a Vege/Marmite diet for the rest of eternity just so folk can drive! Even if we started to grow certain types of oily algae on the sea it still wouldn't be enough.
Posted 8 years ago # -
"
More than 1,000 British wildlife species are under threat of extinction after decades of decline caused by factors including shifting agricultural practices and climate change, a major report warns today.
"
https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/1000-british-species-face-extinction-conservationists-warn/
Posted 8 years ago # -
"but more likely from a technology which is only 10 years away"
Like 'the future is fuel cells' (which has been said for 50 years)?
Posted 8 years ago # -
"Consider the thousands of years of solar energy stored up in oil"
Yes, the creator of life as we've known it for a few hundred years.
It's also (supposedly) going to help us transition to a 'post fossil fuel world'. Except no-one knows how or what.
As said up thread - "even large scale sustainable biofuel production won't be near the billions of barrels of oil we use in a year there just isn't the land to grow it"
Good news of the week is the beginning of this -
But electricity is only part of the energy requirement for replacing FF. Getting closer to generating all electricity (in Scotland) but if all transport went electric how much more required?
No sign of electric planes yet - just a reduction in APD, which is apparently to encourage more prosperity/inward investment etc.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Hybrid trolleybuses FTW
Posted 8 years ago # -
if all transport went electric how much more required?
Tragically I don't have access to the same data sources I had in my previous employ or I could have answered that! From memory though it was A LOT.
The USAF developed a biofuel strategy for its fleet but it was worst case scenario for security and neither cheap nor low carbon, can't see EasyJet jumping on it. Jet fuel is very energy dense and synthesising that wouldn't be trivial, most of the gaseous byproduct fuels we see at the moment are only lightly compressed and about the same energy density as natural gas, they basically are. This means they've have very few carbon molecules released but equally the amount of energy stored up is very small.
Ultra large scale solar will probably help, but you need to transport the energy from places where it is hot and dry (where few can live) to demand centres, raw hydrogen will probably play a part in this but very unlikely for transport fuel.
My "10 years from now" technology will be synthetic petrol produced in countries with lots of sun, the inefficiencies in the process will be hand waved away by the sheer volume of electricity being produced by massive solar thermal power farms (CSP) in the Sahara. Massive amounts of global investment and interest stabilising the middle east and North Africa. And world peace....
Posted 8 years ago # -
"raw hydrogen will probably play a part in this but very unlikely for transport fuel"
Yes, but -
http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/council_government/shaping_aberdeen/Shaping_Aberdeen_Hyrdogen_Bus.asp
Posted 8 years ago # -
"Massive amounts of global investment and interest stabilising the middle east and North Africa"
Would be good, but apart from the politics, how much - as compared with (for instance) oil company deep sea investments or enormous wind/tidal projects?
Posted 8 years ago # -
The Soviets developed and flew a hydrogen-fuelled commercial airliner in the late 80s / early 90s;
Posted 8 years ago # -
"places where it is hot and dry (where few can live) "
So, apart from Sahara, Arabia, Syria, Iran, probably Australia, parts of southern US and Mexico. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, parts of Inner Mongolia...
Posted 8 years ago # -
So, apart from Sahara and Arabia, probably Australia, parts of southern US and Mexico. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, parts of Inner Mongolia...
Hypothetically plenty of places, few of them "stable", but the oil industry is already geared up for moving very large volumes of energy from production centres (Saudi) to demand centres (every where on the planet)
Posted 8 years ago #
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