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"Urgent action is needed to reduce transport, housing and agriculture emissions"

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  1. steveo
    Member

    The Soviets developed and flew a hydrogen-fuelled commercial airliner in the late 80s / early 90s;

    Cool, didn't know about that. Still not sure it'll catch on in the public imagination.

    Any one know how the Aberdeen bus depot generate the required hydrogen? Electrolysis, but where the energy comes from to fuel it.

    Posted 8 years ago #
  2. kaputnik
    Moderator

    @Steveo, no it was a dead end, but did do 100 test flights.

    From what I can see the eletrolysers in Aberdeen can run off AC or DC, so one assumes it's the mains. You could of course power them off a private Solar / Wind system but I don't think they have.

    Posted 8 years ago #
  3. chdot
    Admin

    Or to put it another way (geopolitics aside) what is the relative value (in energy output terms) of Hinkley v a Saharan solar array?

    Posted 8 years ago #
  4. steveo
    Member

    Tricky comparison, Hinckley is expected to produce 3200 MW compared with 377 MW at an operational plant in the US. The cost of that plant was USD 2.2b, Hinckley will cost what £25b call it USD 32b. So Hinkley using tried and test technology will cost $100 per nameplate MW, the CSP plant using fairly experimental tech costs $171 per nameplate MW.

    Scaled up to meet total demand its a lot more money, and a lot of surface area but thats one thing the Sahara has in abundance.

    This is ignoring the ongoing costs of running a Nuclear power facility, fuel costs, maintenance, risks in failure, clean up. I reckon with the will a CSP plant could be made more cheaply and in 30 years time when we finally crack cold fusion the CSP plant will still be operational, cheap to clean up and return to nature. Hinckley has a design life expectancy of 25 years and well whats the clean up of Dounreay cost £5b and is expected to return to a brownfield site in 2336.

    Posted 8 years ago #
  5. neddie
    Member

    Better demand management of electricity is also required.

    Internet-connected smart fridges & freezers that can turn themselves off for short periods during high-demand peaks e.g. when everyone takes a shower at 7am.

    That way you don't need to build expensive power plant capacity for the absolute maximum demand (which could be many times the average demand).

    Posted 8 years ago #
  6. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    Internet-connected smart fridges & freezers

    will be hacked and defrosted when you're away. No way I want my sofa or the carpet or anything else exposed to teenage bedrooms in Bratislava.

    Eigg generates all its own power from a community scheme. Each house trips if it goes over the agreed consumption, leading to a delay in reconnection. No house has yet tripped. Folk turn stuff off when it isn't needed.

    I like the idea of a central box that cuts the freezer when the cooker's on. Also those wax blobs that add thermal mass to fridge thermocouples so that the motor doesn't come on each time you open the door.

    Posted 8 years ago #
  7. chdot
    Admin

    "

    Flying to Bratislava or Bermuda for a stag weekend, shopping trips to New York, driving our gas guzzlers 300 metres to school, buying jetskis, leaf blowers and patio heaters, furnishing our homes with rare wood, eating tuna, prawns and salmon without a thought as to how they were produced: these ephemeral satisfactions, to judge by the reactions when you question them, occupy a sacred and inviolable space. The wonders of the living world, by contrast, are dispensable.

    "

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/14/extinction-let-others-kill-albatross-gorilla-whale-shark-conumerism

    Posted 8 years ago #
  8. chdot
    Admin

    "

    Scottish Government (@scotgov)
    06/09/2016, 2:19 pm
    We’ll halve the overall level of APD to support growth & improve connections with countries across the globe #sp5

    http://pic.twitter.com/ZcIq90efT1

    "

    Posted 8 years ago #
  9. chdot
    Admin

  10. neddie
    Member

    Internet-connected smart fridges & freezers will be hacked and defrosted when you're away

    Not sure how serious you were being, IWRATS, but it should be easily possible to design one that can't be defrosted even if it does get hacked.

    This could be achieved by simple means of a hardware timer, that prevents the fridge from being off for more than say 30mins, no matter what the "internet part" is asking it to do.

    Posted 8 years ago #
  11. kaputnik
    Moderator

    No-one has hacked our central heating. Yet.

    Posted 8 years ago #
  12. acsimpson
    Member

    Eddie, rather than a timer I would have a second thermostat set a degree or two warmer than the primary one so that it will always turn on at say -15 or 6 degrees.

    Posted 8 years ago #
  13. chdot
    Admin

    NS @ FMQs yesterday -

    "

    Very briefly, the member’s second point that I think should be underlined is the importance of our now upping our action in areas such as transport, housing and agriculture. Everybody, even our critics, will accept that we have seen considerable success, although there is still work to do on reducing emissions from electricity generation; however, we must now go into much harder areas such as agriculture, transport and the energy sector more generally. If we are serious—as we are—about not just continuing to meet our current targets but meeting the more ambitious targets that we intend to set in the new legislation, that is what we need to do, and I hope that when we put forward our proposals to achieve that, we will have support from right across the chamber.

    "

    http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=10520&i=96840#ScotParlOR

    Posted 8 years ago #
  14. Morningsider
    Member

    The Government is seriously, seriously, serious - about spending most of the transport capital budget on dualling trunk roads. Climate be damned - I need to drive to Inverness sharpish.

    Posted 8 years ago #
  15. chdot
    Admin

    Yes...

    Also (my bold) -

    "

    Mark Ruskell (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Green):

    This week, the UK Committee on Climate Change highlighted once again that emissions from transport are holding us back and that there are zero actions—zero actions—in the Government’s climate action plan to address that issue. Is it not time for some big and bold ideas? Does the First Minister agree that in order to help cut road casualties, protect the vulnerable and make our communities healthier, low-carbon places to live, we should be saying “Twenty’s plenty” on all Scotland’s residential roads?

    The First Minister:
    We would certainly encourage local authorities to consider that, where appropriate.

    First, though, I agree with the member. As I think I have just said, we have had considerable success. It has not been easy to achieve, but in the area of climate change and reducing emissions, the further we raise our ambition, the tougher it gets to take action and, indeed, the more controversial some of those actions become. That is where consensus and support in the chamber are going to be so important. There is no doubt that transport falls into that much more controversial area, partly because it impacts directly on the lives of many people, but if we are going to continue to meet our ambitious targets and see them stretched even further, we are going to have to address it.

    Finally, I do not argue for a second the fact that the member has real credibility on this issue, but the climate change report that was published this week lauded Scotland as a leader for having met our target ahead of schedule. Yes, it said that we had much more to do, but I think that we should concentrate on the positive as well as pressuring and rightly challenging the Government to go further. I hope that we get some positive endorsement from the Green members of the chamber of the progress that, often with their help, we have managed to make so far.

    "

    Posted 8 years ago #
  16. Stickman
    Member

    "The Government hope to begin discussions on a framework to put in place a plan to set out our ambitions on how we will aspire to define a vision of a long-term strategy to outline a blueprint for achieving its goals of getting another PR shot of Nicola Sturgeon sitting on a bike"

    Posted 8 years ago #
  17. chdot
    Admin

  18. chdot
    Admin


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