Just Stop Oil ....

[naomi24]

A cry we hear daily.... but without viable, effective and instant alternatives, how can we 'just stop oil'?

... but if we 'just stop oil' what do we replace it with? I did hear a suggestion that we return to sailing ships but is that really a viable way forward? Imagine the millions of tons of freight being transported worldwide under sail - not to mention the effect it would have upon all the passenger ships and ferries across the globe. Just pondering here.

All suggestions welcome.

[douglas9401]

Oh no you're not. :-)

[jourdain2]

Z-M 12.33 I assume that those cars were already in production. It was only a couple of weeks ago that they made the announcement about not doing down the electric car route. Maybe trying to build the ones you mention has made them aware of the problems. Anyway, that's what they said.

[jourdain2]

^^^not 'going' down grrrr

[Spungle]

They might as well campaign for Just Stop Oxygen

[mushroom25]

at the moment there's no economical design of electric HGV, as the batteries needed would sacrifice too much of the available payload capacity. using today's technology the only viable solution would be to electrify the motorways so trucks could draw grid power for trunk hauls, then use batteries for the final local run. (it's being trialled in Germany and Sweden and if successful will see off railway freight forever).

the biggest transport problem, though, rests with international shipping, which accounts for 3% of all global emissions. again at this time there's no credible alternative to diesel powered ships, other than possibly to run them on LPG, which isn't much less polluting.

[sp1814]

mushroom25

The key point is ‘at the moment’. Alternative fuel sources have to be developed. What is impossible today, what is impractical next year May be everyday by middle of the century. This is why energy companies need to develop brand new thinking (as evidenced by the link I posted earlier).

There are so many things we take for granted today that we couldn’t have even *imagined* in the 70s - I’m sure human ingenuity will win out.

[DTCwordfan]

The future is what is happening in Chile with Porsche, Siemens and ENAP et al in having just opened a plant to make 650 mln litres of petrol and diesel from CO2 in the air. I have written about this several times before.

Take CO2 in, react it with green or white H2 with lots of hydro-electricity and create a methanol molecule and then synthesise the hydrocarbon you want - at $0.74/litre cost - when refined products come in at about $0.65/litre.....and before subsidies and real scale-up though the project is already a healthy size.

Ideal for places like scotland, Wales, Norway, the Alps etc....and the CO2 becomes a huge sink once it is sucked into the system and emerges from the car tail-pipe, and keeping the existing car park, garages and jobs - and given all the gas and pollutants it took to make them.

No wonder the Germans have had the EEC step back from the 2030 cliff for hydrocarbon cars but what do our dithering idiots in the HoP do, efffing nothing.

By the way, this is an old process called Fisher-Tropsch that I studied for my chemistry O-level and the Germans and South Africans used in WW2 and Apartheid respectively - using coal gas to synthesise up into hydrocarbon fuels.

Spead the news!

[Zacs-Master]

‘ I assume that those cars were already in production’

The BZ range is pretty new so I’m not sure where you’re getting your info from, Jourdain.

[jourdain2]

It was on the news and also in car mags. that Mr. J2 gets.

[ToraToraTora]

mushroom: "at the moment there's no economical design of electric HGV, as the batteries needed would sacrifice too much of the available payload capacity. using today's technology the only viable solution would be to electrify the motorways so trucks could draw grid power for trunk hauls, then use batteries for the final local run." - if only there was a system of electric vehicles like that, that run on some kind of electrified track with huge hauling capacity.......

[tomus42]

They've chosen a stupid name. It gives the wrong impression.

[douglas9401]

Electrify the motorways.

Now stop for a minute and remember where you live and how massive infrastructure projects are mismanaged on a daily basis.

There are some countries in which this might be a goer, the UK is not one of them. We like to think long, hard and small, have a half-hearted go at it then scrap the whole thing.

[andres]

They need to be concentrating on stopping some of the air traffic .It's the disturbance to the troposphere, stratosphere etc. that is causing a lot of atmospheric problems .

[jourdain2]

Z-M I've just remembered that it was a headline in the Financial Pages of the Telegraph a few weeks ago as well.

[Zacs-Master]

Strange. Maybe this is the reason:
https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/04/16/how-japan-is-losing-the-global-electric-vehicle-race

The article has a paywall but you can read enough to glean that Japanese car makers have been slow to embrace the EV market. Maybe they don’t want to miss the hydrogen ‘bandwagon’ as well?

[William51]

The whole idea of just stop oil is unworkable. If the world stops using oil today there would be no - vehicles, engines, machines, airplanes,trains, ships, anything with moving parts that needs a lubricant, and countless thing in our lives made from petrochemicals. We would instantly turn the clock back two hundred years. The only alternatives are new green energies and newly developed energies which are still in their infancy.