Thought Bubbles from Canberra – more useless energy policies

By Viv Forbes

The Australian Minister for Promoting Useless Energy thinks that hydrogen fuel, carbon capture and storage, soil carbon and biofuels are priorities for energy policy and greenhouse gas reduction.

If that’s the best our leaders can come up with, Australia should have voted Green last election to speed the inevitable recession and blackouts that will eventually kill this tsunami of energy nonsense.

Pixabay : https://pixabay.com/photos/soap-bubbles-bubbles-fun-colors-83758/

“Hydrogen” does not supply net energy – burning it can return some of the energy used to produce it from hydrocarbons or electrolysis of water. It is an expensive explosive gas that makes less sense than Snowy 2 – more energy in than out!

Moreover, we have no infrastructure that can safely store, distribute or use hydrogen in our transport fleet, energy network or smelters. Governments should not force energy consumers or tax payers to promote Canberra’s thought bubbles – let the “green hydrogen” entrepreneurs risk their own or shareholders’ money.

“Carbon capture and storage” is another dumb idea. To capture CO2 emissions from coal, gas or biomass power stations consumes a lot of energy to separate, store, pipe and pump it underground (hoping it will stay there). It would be far better leave non-polluting CO2 in the lower atmosphere and surround every power station with crops and forests hungry for the CO2 plant food so essential to their growth.

Trying to extract CO2 from the atmosphere is even dumber because the mighty oceans will quickly release CO2 from their huge stores to restore equilibrium between atmosphere and oceans. Even if it could be done, it is a bad idea – why steal plant food from grass, crops and forests?

“Soil carbon” is green-speak for what every sensible pastoralist tries to do – increase the humus and biological activity in soil. The quickest way to do this is via keyline/contour ripping to retain water in the soil (as shown in Australia by P A Yeoman), and by managed periodic heavy impact of grazing animals to promote pasture growth (as shown in Africa by Alan Savory). But it is total nonsense to turn “carbon farming” into a costly rural rort run by a bureaucracy of soil samplers and modellers who think it will cool the climate.

“Biofuels” are another way to waste energy, food crops and trees to do jobs better done by coal, gas and oil – a crime against humanity and the environment.

If our Minister for Promoting Useless Energy is determined to sequester and store carbon, there is only one sensible way – restore the forestry industry. Harvest mature forest trees for poles, posts, sleepers, paper, cardboard or dance floors. Then replant with new trees. Young trees grow rapidly and extract much CO2. But old trees reach a stage of carbon equilibrium when the CO2 they extract in summer is equal to what they lose as leaves, branches and trunks fall to frosts, droughts, bushfires and termites.

Reading:

Simon Benson “Hydrogen provides lift in post-Covid tech recovery”. The Australian – Page 1 & 4 : 21 May 2020
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/coronavirus-hydrogen-a-key-player-for-tech-recovery/news-story/5b32c19342c75b47aea1685dc6f7f79a [Paywalled.]

The Carbon Capture Con:
https://saltbushclub.com/?s=carbon+capture

“Livestock are the Solution not the problem”:
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change

Regenerative Farming:
https://carboncowboys.org/films

P A Yeomans, 1965: “Water for Every Farm”, K G Murray Publishing.
“The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all of the carbon dioxide within a metre of the ground in about five minutes.” Freeman Dyson – a prominent scientist specialising in physics, mathematics and astronomy.


Viv Forbes is a geologist, financial analyst, weather watcher and pastoralist with long experience at maintaining the health of pastures and soils. He and his wife have used a Yeoman ripper for about 30 years and have studied and practiced Savory animal management techniques for a similar time. He is Executive Director of the Saltbush Club.

27 thoughts on “Thought Bubbles from Canberra – more useless energy policies”

  1. It’s with a heavy heart that I have to agree with everything you say. It seems that climate “change” quackery is taking over the entire planet. That charming fairy story “The Emperor’s New Clothes” has become reality; the effusions from supposedly intelligent individuals such as Rudd/Turnbull/Bandt/Steggall/Kohler/Attenborough/Prince Charles et al. are beyond bizarre. And Australia has suffered particularly badly through being already in a “renewable” energy-caused recession when the virus arrived.
    Meanwhile, the steady cycle of the seasons continues…

  2. Hi Viv,

    What you say makes much common sense backed by knowledgeable people. Is nuclear fuel a solution,
    particularly if nuclear fusion is possible. What is your answer to supplying the need for energy?

    1. Jim
      Coal and gas are perfectly adequate to supply electricity for Australia. But nuclear would also do the job, but would take decades to gain approvals and the conditions would make it hideously expensive.

      Outback industry and heavy transport needs oil/gas to supply diesel, petrol or gas.

      Viv

  3. Carbon sequestration is alive and well, the Norwegians have been at it since 2015 (https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/sleipner.html ) but to be effective in the long run it has to stay buried and not leak or be exposed by erosion – for ever – a geological impossibility. At least radioactive energy sources and waste products have a half life and will eventually disappear – even if it is glacially slow. Interestingly, the MIT CO2 sequestration unit was shut down in 2016.

    1. Will somebody show me the evidence that CO2 is an issue.

      Every credible piece of science says that it is a benefit so why do you want to sequester it. Let the trees have it so they can convert it into oxygen and plant matter.

      Snoopy

  4. The widespread belief within Australia, indeed within the global community, that CO2 is an existential problem for humanity has been refuted by many scientists and others. Until and unless those CO2 activists can answer or scientifically dispute arguments like those presented in my paper at https://www.scribd.com/document/383385011/ then humanity will continue to be controlled by egos, not facts, not science.

  5. What is it with politicians who seem to have to leave whatever common sense they may have had at the door to Parliament House when they enter? We can forgive the Greens and journalists, both the products of left wing universities and sub standard humanities lecturers, but some pollies, including the Minister for Useless Energy are, or were, well educated. Before the minister was elevated Angus often spoke to Alan Jones and agreed that the CO2 scare campaign was based on extremely bad science promoted by fraudulent, grant hungry scientists and universities.

    Gladys may scrap the ridiculous move of the Powerhouse museum and defer the PS pay rise because the state is in debt. It would be smart for Morrison to dump the obsolescent submarines and Snowy 2.0 and use the savings for reliable energy to power a resurgent manufacturing industry. Promoting Snowy and hydrogen to provide reliable, CHEAP, energy is madness and a lie.

    1. I totally agree with Viv.
      Carbon dioxide is wholly beneficial and essential for mankind and all biota.
      Anyone who advocates or implements measures to reduce it is ignorant of the science and evidence of how greenhouse gasses work in the real world, because if they did they would understand that they are literally advocating an obvious impossibility.
      Why does no-one take the time to do their due-diligence to verify the science before championing such blatant uninformed bullshit. (a very mild, accurate description in this context). The verified scientific information is all readily available
      Most Politicians act the way they do because the mainstream media have for decades been selling the populist message of alarm, and are, with a few brave exceptions, afraid (gutless) to speak up and tell the truth.
      This is very disappointing but understandable because they want to gain / retain government at the next election. As a result they are unfortunately prepared to sacrifice truth and the welfare of the whole nation to achieve this end.
      I have compiled a Paper detailing this science and for those interested, I would be very happy to email them a copy. My contact details are: Ian@countrylivinginteriors.org – I think you will find it interesting and useful.

  6. Well said Viv.
    I agree 100%.

    … I suspect Snowy Hydro 2 is cost-effective and sensible for moving power from times of over-supply to times of under-supply. In today’s speak its ‘flattening the curve’ 😉
    Has anyone seen a cost estimates for 1 kWh of stored electricity?
    My rough calculations suggest a capital cost of a couple of cents per one kWh. Running cost should be dwarfed by the difference between buy price for storage and sell price of generation.
    I would love to see the same estimates for Big Batteries WITHOUT subsidies.

  7. Australia fared well against the COVID-19 crisis because our politicians deferred to the medical experts. Likewise we need to defer to the climate scientists- not to so called common sense. The case made by the climate scientists, under the umbrella of the IPCC, is solid. We need to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere if we are to limit global warming. Accepting that as our goal, it then becomes a matter of politics, economics, investment and engineering as to what we as a country do to contribute our share to a world-wide effort. As a wealthy mid-size country, Australia should contribute proportionally to that effort. And we should see it as an opportunity to capitalise on our abundance of sunshine. Of course there are serious engineering and economic issues to be overcome to wean ourselves off coal as our fuel for a firm electricity supply. And to create new home-based industries to create jobs to replace those lost by this process. We need the vision, imagination and guts displayed when the Snowy Scheme was conceived and built.

    1. Your comment is laughable. Every new IPCC climate report since the first has shown different so-called evidence to the previous report.

      For example, IPCC 4AR tried to claim that because temperatures were in line with what models predicted it was proof that the models were correct (although little was said about how climate models are tuned to match past temperatures as closely as possible.). IPCC 5AR showed, in text box 9.2, that 111 or 114 climate model runs predicted greater warming for the previous 15 years than recorded temperatures indicated.

      IPCC 5AR also showed that it wasn’t certain that temperatures had even risen in the previous 15 years, saying “… the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to 0.15] °C per decade) … ” [WG I SPM, page 5, section B.1, bullet point 3, and in full Synthesis Report on page SYR-6]. Although the IPCC didn’t dare mention it directly with this comment, elsewhere in that report it was shown that atmospheric CO2 had certainly increased during that time.

      An increase in CO2 but no warming is evidence that the IPCC has been making false claims for years. It also refutes your claim that atmospheric CO2 needs to decrease in order to limit warming.

    2. 99.96% of gases in the atmosphere are not carbon dioxide. Can you show that the remaining 0.04%, carbon dioxide and methane, are the primary driver of climate change? Also, from 1940 through World War 2, to 1975, carbon dioxide levels soared yet temperatures fell and scientists thought we were going into another Ice Age. Where was the dangerous warming then?

  8. The controversial nature of the topic leads both sides to trend to absolutism. Science is buried beneath opinion. I am sure that the ‘Working Group One’ faction of the IPCC did not enhance their popularity when they stated that atmospheric CO2 has to be doubled to get radiative forcing of 3.7 watts per square metre, the equivalent of a temperature rise deduced from Stefan’s law of 0.8 decrees C. Dig very deep in the report and you will find it. The effect is logarithmic, so a linear rate of warming of one degree per century accords with an exponential increase in emissions.
    A superstitious conviction that carbon is evil has been lodged in the public mind, just as they regard black cats as lucky. ‘Carbon’ and ‘climate’ have been taken to be synonymous. Even the E&T Magazine of the British IET, a bastion of green propaganda, has had to acknowledge research that shows that ‘climate change’ promotes the growth of vegetation. The release of carbon, sequestered since an age when life was much more abundant, must surely benefit the biosphere.
    The alarmism is based on what might happen, not what has happened. So the attempt to link bush-fires to climate change can only depend on the quarter-degree increase since the turn of the century. Perhaps a correlation with activist extremists would be more significant.
    As an automotive fuel, hydrogen would be suicide. It cannot be liquified and would be carried at very high pressure. But be careful of decrying hydrogen as a domestic fuel.
    Until 1970 or so, hydrogen (tainted with carbon monoxide) was the staple gas fuel in the UK. But it was not stored under pressure. Large gas-holders where a feature of every city. Of course it was derived from coal. With the irregularity of ‘alternative energy’, both solar and wind, storage has been seen as an imperative. The gasholders of old could be a low-technology solution that is preferable to expensive batteries.
    Instead of waging an emotionally fired ideological battle, both sides should look for common advantages. Spin-offs like LED lighting should be admired. Solar and wind energy are there to be harvested, but perhaps the vastly expensive imported technology is not the best way. Energy for domestic heating can be stored very effectively as hot water, harvested with no greater technology than polythene piping.
    There is truth on both sides and there are lies on both sides, Sensible action lies somewhere inbetween.

  9. BMW has a hydrogen plan… but not yet
    https://discover.bmw.co.uk/article/mobility-with-the-power-of-choice?cid=bmwDM166378&bid=329339980&nspid=%20c3dae9565069c3586582db532171553c|8e64e5058591033355e113cd4e5f8939|152be135d7459a0e7dc39d0a4365dc69&tl=eml:BMW%20eNews%20May%202020:Engagement%20%28ENG%29&ac_delivery_internal_name=bmwDM166378&ac_delivery_label=BMW%20News%20May%202020%20-%20Gen%20&ac_campaign_internal_name=bmwOP2907&ac_campaign_label=BMW%20eNews%20May%202020

    1. All, remember the Hindenburg! Imagine a neighborhood hydrogen filling station detonating!

      Hydrogen fuel cell cars store gas-phase pure hydrogen at 10,000 psi. The explosive limits of hydrogen are 4% to 75%. The explosive limits for gasoline are 1.2% to 7.1%. Within these ranges of concentration in air any ignition source will cause the material to explode!

      When I was a young boy, a family friend who had served in the Army during World War II, drove to our house in his war surplus Willys Jeep. My father asked him, “where is the fuel tank”. He replied, “under the driver’s seat so if it explodes it will blow you sky high”.

      One of the specifications listed on the HYUNDAI TECH Motor Group website is that three hydrogen fuel tanks are located under the driver’s seat perhaps copying the Willys Jeep design.

      WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG!!!!!!!!

      I am certain all of you already know these facts about hydrogen use as a fuel and storage issues. Perhaps it is worth calling out some of them again.

      1. Except for electrolysis using hydroelectric power or nuclear power, production of hydrogen requires the use of fossil fuels. SO THAT BLOWS AWAY THE GREEN ENERGY MYTH. This fact should end the discussion of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by AGW advocates HERE! But AGW advocates either ignore or are totally unaware of the reality that their wind turbines and photovoltaic cells require an abundance of fossil fuels be consumed producing CO2 to make their “renewable green energy”.

      2. Storage of hydrogen fuel is very difficult because hydrogen has very low energy density.

      Hydrogen can be stored in three ways: As a compressed gas in high-pressure tanks. As a liquid in dewars or tanks (stored at -253°C). As a solid by either absorbing or reacting with metals or chemical compounds or storing in an alternative chemical form.

      Hydrogen is difficult to store because has very low volumetric energy density. It is the simplest and lightest element – it’s lighter than helium. Hydrogen is 3.2 times less energy dense than natural gas and 2700 times less energy dense than gasoline. … Hydrogen can be compressed, liquefied, or chemically combined.

      Notwithstanding the fact that hydrogen’s low energy density is an insurmountable fact, there are novel storage technologies under development.

      a. Review of hydrogen storage by adsorption in carbon nanotubes, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319901001033
      b. Hydrogen storage by adsorption on activated carbon: Investigation of the thermal effects during the charging process, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319906005155
      c. Hydrogen storage by adsorption in porous materials: Is it possible?, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092777571530306X

      3. General Atomics predicts that hydrogen produced in a High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) would cost $1.53/kg. In 2003, steam reforming of natural gas yielded hydrogen at $1.40/kg. In 2005 natural gas prices, hydrogen costs $2.70/kg. Note that current commercially available technologies to produce hydrogen require fossil fuels as the feedstock.

      4. How much does a tank of hydrogen cost?
      Hydrogen fuel prices range from $12.85 to more than $16 per kilogram (kg), but the most common price is $13.99 per kg (equivalent on a price per energy basis to $5.60 per gallon of gasoline), which translates to an operating cost of $0.21 per mile.
      Please note California Fuel Cell Partnership ignores how much tax is placed on $16 kilogram of hydrogen

      5. Is hydrogen cheaper than petrol?
      Hydrogen cars employ the power of fuel cells that run on hydrogen gas and the air we breathe. … It then has to be compressed from a gas into a liquid, and it is about 5 times less energy dense than gasoline, meaning cars need 5 times as much of it to go the same distance as ⅕ that amount of gas

      6. Can I buy a hydrogen car?
      Why aren’t we all driving hydrogen fuel cell cars then? … Firstly, their technology makes them expensive: the only hydrogen cars currently on sale in the UK are the Toyota Mirai and the Hyundai Nexo, which both cost over £60,000 and are now exempt from the government’s £3,000 Plug-in Car Grant (PiCG).Mar 18, 2020

      7. 10,000 pounds per square inch
      Tank Capacity
      Due to its low energy volume, most automakers store hydrogen in high-pressure tanks that typically hold roughly 5 kg of compressed hydrogen at up to 10,000 pounds per square inch of pressure. Just like in gasoline cars, there’s a fuel gauge that tells you when you’re low on fuel.Jul 19, 2016

      Wayne

  10. Kevin Barry’s comment assumes two things.
    1: The experts the government rely on are correct, and that there are no scientists who disagree. These favoured experts have been threatening climate catastrophe since the 70s, only then it was a new Ice Age; Global Warning only became popular in the 80s; but stopped happening during the Y2K panic.

    2: Warming is ongoing; There has been no significant warming since Y2K, even IPCC call this The Pause, and struggle to explain it. Nor can they explain why half of the total warming of around 1.25OC since the Industrial Revolution, had arrived by 1943, well before human emissions began to accelerate. A second warming period from 1978-98 triggered the IPCC declaration of Global Warming. Then there are two periods of little or no warming both with increasing CO2: the so-called Nuclear Winter, between 1943 and 1998 when scientists were predicting a new Ice Age, and the current pause which followed the 1998 el Nino, with saw slight cooling rescued – for the IPCC, by warming from the 2016 super el Niño, a climate factor which IPCC models cannot hindcast or predict.
    1810-1910: +0.15 degC increase with 18 ppm CO2 increase over 100 years
    1910-1943: + 0.5 degC increase with 12 ppm CO2 increase over 33 years
    1943-1978: – 0.1 degC decrease with 20 ppm CO2 increase over 35 years
    1978-1998: + 0.5 degC increase with 30 ppm CO2 increase over 20 years
    1998-2020: +0.2 degC increase with 43 ppm CO2 increase over 22 years

    How does this data support the IPCC claim that human CO2 emissions drive Global Warming? Yes, the 21st Century is the warmest it has been since the Industrial Revolution, but the IPCC’s AGW hypothesis says it should be much, much warmer as CO2 grows more and more. So if human CO2 emissions are not causing Global Warming, they can’t be causing Climate Change, so why do we need to cut emissions?

  11. Viv, I love your work and I agree with you 100 percent.

    Unfortunately you are appealing to the converted. This is obvious and is reflected in your reply comments, with the exception of one clown, which he is also obvious.

    How to get the point across to the Australian public is so important but can only start when the right people are elevated to the federal ministry. By that I mean the likes of Hastie, Kelly, Canavan and the like, who appear to be now hidden. Our Prime Minister seems surrounded by Yes men and women who speak only what Prime Minister wants to hear and particularly when in comes to energy. Angus Taylor should be first and formost listened to by the Prime Minister. He has shown where and what his plan was. The PM obviously has told him to shut up and stand over there in the corner, instigated by the renewable energy financial recipients, closely followed by the spectre of the threat of Green Preferences. The PM must fess up and show where he sits. Pretence is unacceptable. He was for coal but now just who knows? If he truly believes in an Australian Financial Recovery, then he cannot sit on the fence. The Power Bubble must be burst and proper base load power out number one priority.

    1. You are spot-on, Tony. Until we can get our message spread widely we will be ignored. This problem extends to the elevation of the politicians you mention. Only when a significant number of the population agitate for change will politicians act. Even our large businesses, like BHP and the ANZ, kowtow to populist demands, presently that CO2 is the devil.

  12. Another viewpoint on hydrogen cars
    Hydrogen does not occur naturally on planet Earth and has to be created using hydrocarbons as an input, or by electrolysis, so it is not a source of energy in itself so thus cannot be considered an alternative. It has to be delivered at a temperature of – 253degC and even at a pressure of 700 bar, which requires very strong pressure vessels, its energy density of about 22% of gasoline’s. It also leaks out of any practical container. In the CUTE project (Clean Urban Transport for Europe), which was intended to demonstrate the feasability of fuel cells and of the hydrogen economy, fueling hydrogen buses required 80 – 2000% more energy than diesel buses. One transport expert has said that he knows of “no form of land transport whose [overall] energy consumption is worse than the hydrogen car”.

  13. Hydrogen is one of the most dangerous elements, highly explosive and delivers only about 22% of the energy of gasoline. When Germany was unable to obtain helium in the ’30s they turned to hydrogen to inflate their air ships. This resulted in a horrifying explosion and loss of life when The Hindenburg exploded on arrival at Lindhurst, New Jersey, USA.

    My grandparents, father, and aunties had driven to Lindhurst from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to witness the arrival of the giant airship and were there for the explosion. They never forgot this real-life demonstration of the folly of using hydrogen in daily applications.

    Hydrogen is an extremely corrosive gas and requires extreme measures to transport. Even with everything working exactly right, there is still leakage and the potential for a single spark to set off a devastating explosion.

    Compared to using hydrogen, nuclear power is incredibly safe. There has been only one disaster involving nuclear power, Chernobyl, which was the fault of poor design and lack of redundant safety features. Nuclear has been powering France and many of her neighbors for some time now. It is clean, quiet, and affordable.

    Given the choice of having a hydrogen generator or a nuclear power plant in my neighborhood, I choose nuclear hands down!

  14. Yes, it is true that the earth is warming right now and has been since the end of the Little Ice Age. But something that is never mentioned by the Climate Change crowd is that compared to the Minoan Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and the Medieval Warm Period, we are quite cool.

    All of these warm periods since the end of the last global glaciation have been significantly warmer than this modern warm. And humans did just fine, thriving during these warm times. The Vikings were able to grow forage for their livestock and food for themselves in southern Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period, something that is not possible today.

    My question for Al Gore, the IPCC, and all the other warming alarmists is WHY, if we are cooler now than in historic times, is it so catastrophic? If catastrophe loomed for us in our cooler time, everyone would have been wiped out a few thousand years ago when it was much warmer and we would not be here today to have these conversations.

  15. Here is another view of the same problem
    “I am certain all of you already these facts about hydrogen use as a fuel and storage issues. Perhaps it is worth calling out some of them again.

    1. Except for electrolysis using hydroelectric power or nuclear power, production of hydrogen requires the use of fossil fuels. SO THAT BLOWS AWAY THE GREEN ENERGY MYTH.
    2. Storage of hydrogen fuel is very difficult because hydrogen has very low energy density.

    Hydrogen can be stored in three ways: As a compressed gas in high-pressure tanks. As a liquid in dewars or tanks (stored at -253°C). As a solid by either absorbing or reacting with metals or chemical compounds or storing in an alternative chemical form.

    Hydrogen is difficult to store because has very low volumetric energy density. It is the simplest and lightest element–it’s lighter than helium. Hydrogen is 3.2 times less energy dense than natural gas and 2700 times less energy dense than gasoline. … Hydrogen can be compressed, liquefied, or chemically combined.

    Notwithstanding the fact that hydrogen has very low energy density, there are novel storage technologies under development.

    a. Review of hydrogen storage by adsorption in carbon nanotubes, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319901001033
    b. Hydrogen storage by adsorption on activated carbon: Investigation of the thermal effects during the charging process, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319906005155
    c. Hydrogen storage by adsorption in porous materials: Is it possible?, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092777571530306X

    3. General Atomics predicts that hydrogen produced in a High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) would cost $1.53/kg. In 2003, steam reforming of natural gas yielded hydrogen at $1.40/kg. In 2005 natural gas prices, hydrogen costs $2.70/kg. Note that current commercially available technologies to produce hydrogen require fossil fuels as the feedstock.
    4. How much does a tank of hydrogen cost?
    Hydrogen fuel prices range from $12.85 to more than $16 per kilogram (kg), but the most common price is $13.99 per kg (equivalent on a price per energy basis to $5.60 per gallon of gasoline), which translates to an operating cost of $0.21 per mile.
    5. Is hydrogen cheaper than petrol?
    Hydrogen cars employ the power of fuel cells that run on hydrogen gas and the air we breathe. … It then has to be compressed from a gas into a liquid, and it is about 5 times less energy dense than gasoline, meaning cars need 5 times as much of it to go the same distance as ⅕ that amount of gas
    6. Can I buy a hydrogen car?
    Why aren’t we all driving hydrogen fuel-cell cars then? … Firstly, their technology makes them expensive: the only hydrogen cars currently on sale in the UK are the Toyota Mirai and the Hyundai Nexo, which both cost over £60,000 and are now exempt from the government’s £3,000 Plug-in Car Grant (PiCG).Mar 18, 2020
    7. How much does it cost to fill a hydrogen car?
    Hydrogen fuel prices range from $12.85 to more than $16 per kilogram (kg), but the most common price is $13.99 per kg (equivalent on a price per energy basis to $5.60 per gallon of gasoline), which translates to an operating cost of $0.21 per mile.

    Please note California Fuel Cell Partnership ignores how much tax is placed on a $16 kilogram of hydrogen
    8. 10,000 pounds per square inch
    Tank Capacity
    Due to its low energy volume, most automakers store hydrogen in high-pressure tanks that typically hold roughly 5 kg of compressed hydrogen at up to 10,000 pounds per square inch of pressure. Just like in gasoline cars, there’s a fuel gauge that tells you when you’re low on fuel.Jul 19, 2016

  16. There was a need to protect the forest in Europe when only small patches of forest were left because firewood was the only source of energy. Since the time when firewood has been replaced by coal, even in Europe, the areas under forest have expanded. Protection of forest does not make any sense in Siberia, or in the Amazon region, or in Australia. At the very least, wide firebreaks should be established by cutting down all trees along roads to prevent the uncontrolled spread of bushfires.

  17. Carbon storage
    1. Actively growing forests

    In the late 1990s when the prospect of carbon storage in actively growing forests was being considered, I did some back of the envelope calculations at the request of the late W.C. Wentworth.

    The best prospect for Carbon accumulation and storage (as wood) I could think of was Hoop Pine which could give you about 10 t of Carbon/ha/annum for 60 to 80 years. After this senility and decay would increasingly reduce this rate. To absorb Australia’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuel would require a plantation on the NE coast of Australia 1000km long by 100km wide of Hoop Pine plantation!
    There is another uncommon forest type in tropics which have lower efficiencies in terms of carbon capture but are much more efficient at Carbon storage and these are the swamp forests which build up great layers of peat. A real engineering challenge to replicate!

    2. Carbon capture and storage by burial

    Simple calculation based on atomic weights indicate you would have to compress and pump underground about 4x the weight of the coal burnt. How efficient will that be?

    3. Carbon storage by modifying land management

    Several schemes are currently supported by tax payers. The one of which I should be most critical is early savannah burning in North Australia. Up until this time I have not expressed my opinion because I believe that while this program is almost useless in meeting its prime objective of reducing carbon losses during late high intensity fires, it has some significant environmental and cultural benefits. The main problem which seems to have been overlooked is the role of soil and litter fauna in breaking down dead grass and tree litter and the amount of methane these organisms release into the environment with this land management practice

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