Petrol and Electric Heads
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I find it a bit funny and disingenuous that audi call it electric when it has a "range extender" attached to it!
Without starting a war why such a push towards electric when renewable alcohol makes sense and no mining of rare earth minerals and possibly in time a large stockpile of dead batteries that won't be recycled due to the costs associated with it
I still agree EV's have their place in society but when we are talking about how many private vehicles are in this world, we don't have the resources to replace them with EV's and if you have an older vehicle you don't have to ruin it's authenticity if you were to convert it
I still agree EV's have their place in society but when we are talking about how many private vehicles are in this world, we don't have the resources to replace them with EV's and if you have an older vehicle you don't have to ruin it's authenticity if you were to convert it
I think there is some logic in producing diesel fuel from oil seed crops - the broadacre farmer can set aside part of his land to grow the fuel for his machinery - but as I understand it, the energy consumed by fermenting grain (or sugar) and distilling the alcohol makes the whole process fairly pointless.
Also the feedstock for either ethanol or diesel fuel production is either actual food (suitable for humans and/or animals), or is grown on land that could otherwise produce food - in either case production of crops for fuel drives up the cost of food plus increases land clearing/deforestation and water use.
Solar panels and wind turbines are not really the answer - they use a lot of raw materials and occupy a lot of land. The sources of energy that seem to have the least environmental impact (barring "accidents") are nuclear fission or fusion, and then there's the problem of storing the nuclear waste safely for a very long time.
Never mind, we are only 30 years away from producing unlimited clean power from nuclear fusion - but it seems that it's been "only 30 years" for practically my whole life - never gets any closer.
We need something out of left field such as giant solar collectors in space which could beam energy back to earth as microwaves (just don't get in the way of the incoming beam). Presumably the raw materials could be mined on the moon...
Also the feedstock for either ethanol or diesel fuel production is either actual food (suitable for humans and/or animals), or is grown on land that could otherwise produce food - in either case production of crops for fuel drives up the cost of food plus increases land clearing/deforestation and water use.
Solar panels and wind turbines are not really the answer - they use a lot of raw materials and occupy a lot of land. The sources of energy that seem to have the least environmental impact (barring "accidents") are nuclear fission or fusion, and then there's the problem of storing the nuclear waste safely for a very long time.
Never mind, we are only 30 years away from producing unlimited clean power from nuclear fusion - but it seems that it's been "only 30 years" for practically my whole life - never gets any closer.
We need something out of left field such as giant solar collectors in space which could beam energy back to earth as microwaves (just don't get in the way of the incoming beam). Presumably the raw materials could be mined on the moon...
Speaking of the moon,what about motion of the ocean,wave power generators (allowing for a flat sea occasionally) that may contribute towards imminent overloads of electric automobiles wanting a feed.off topic a bit but how about these two victorians (oops our mob)going to high court regarding Dan putting a cents per kilometre fee on their said silent sleds.umm the roads you drive on were paid for by taxes,levies you name it from ice driving vehicles,how would electric vehicle owners expect to contribute to road infrastructure?… jim
A lot of alcohol can be made from waste product but then we would need to facilitate how much waste is needed to produce the amount of alcohol needed to propel the worlds fleets
THe other side of the coin is people can make it at home and it then cuts out profits made by oil companies and g'ments
Any water/soil that is used for growing, really needs to be used for growing food. We need something that works at an huge power plant level. If you have huge amounts of cheap power .... a lot of power hungry processes (such as creating hydrogen) become possible. The next step would be inventing massive batteries that could power industry (ie: shipping/transport).
None of this will happen in my lifetime I imagine
Making alcohol from renewable sources does make sense but a big problem is that some farmers might be difficult to convince to grow food then. If you have lots of land where you can't grow food anyway then sure, why not but I am not sure how many of these places exist and not sure how many are needed.
Sadly no worse than wasting arable land for solar farms when there are plenty of exisiting buidlings that can be used or even cover car parks thus also creating shade as well as creating power
So i'm not sold on the idea of sacrificing land to grow alcohol crops until the above issues are rectified
Putting the other matters of economics and technology aside, the amount of land required to house enough solar panels to usefully power the grid, is not even remotely on the same scale as that required to grow crops to make alcohol for fuels. Probably by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude, at a guess. Further, solar farms are more likely to be displacing grazing land rather than arable land, so the point is likely largely moot anyway.
There is a nearly completed wind farm close by in Dulacca western qld it would be without a doubt the most unsightly installation and has spoilt the rural area
More to the point I feel it will be a white elephant and the cost of power will go up when they attempt to recovery the subsidies used to construct it
More to the point I feel it will be a white elephant and the cost of power will go up when they attempt to recovery the subsidies used to construct it
Other than the deforestation, roads, train lines, rural buildings, coal mines, and so on....
Personally, I don't really care about those things, but nor do I find wind farms unsightly.
But anyone can credibly call all of it, none of it, or part of it 'unsightly' depending on how they are positioned on wind farms.
All said and done, the whole lot of it is collateral damage of the expansion of humanity, and we are all part of that.
Personally, I don't really care about those things, but nor do I find wind farms unsightly.
But anyone can credibly call all of it, none of it, or part of it 'unsightly' depending on how they are positioned on wind farms.
All said and done, the whole lot of it is collateral damage of the expansion of humanity, and we are all part of that.
Blight on the landscape
seriously there are more than enough buildings to put solar on top of to not have unslightly wind farms and acres are solar panels on arable land
Sorry but as for the grazing around panels. it's rubbish weed after a period of time where as normally the land would be cropped for feed for said livestock
Dulacca, farmers have cleared the land for broad acre farming, ruining the natural scrubby environment. Wind turbines and solar panels are not going to ruin the area any further.
Yes the land has been cleared of it's natural cover but that is for the need to feed an ever growing human population and not covered in solar panels to which a crop can then not be planted
I'll go back to my statement from earlier, there are more than enough buildings to place panels on to generate power without the need to take up land
I'll go back to my statement from earlier, there are more than enough buildings to place panels on to generate power without the need to take up land
Your complaint is about being "unsightly". Well, land clearing is "unsightly". Your justification for unsightly farming is that we need to feed people. Well, people also need electricity and into the future, that needs to come from wind and solar.
So just as you have a justification for something unsightly, but necessary, precisely the same idea justifies the unsightly, but necessary, land uses you don't like. You can't have it both ways.
The difference, however, is that the total land area required for unsightly solar and wind generators to power, say, NSW entirely, is a tiny fraction of the unsightly and destructive land currently used for farming. The only thing preventing that being done currently, is energy storage. But note my prior comment; whether any solar has displaced any arable land at all, is unclear, and likely not so. If only for the simple reason that non arable land would serve the same purpose, but cheaper. Obviously, wind turbines can, if required, be right in the middle of cropped land. On the farm my father operated, cropping worked its way around rock outcrops, water courses, contour banks, and the odd power pole, without any problem.
Re panels on rooves:
The economics of installing one block of 10,000 easily accessed and maintained solar panels, are quite different to placing and maintaining them in blocks of 100 on 100 buildings. Rooftop solar has its place, and Australia is, I believe, the world leader in rooftop solar. But for grid scale generators, that doesn't work. Which must be why solar farms exist, right?
And, one would have to say, the low and high tension power lines in the foreground, upon which farmers depend, are not exactly conspicuously attractive embellishments to this charming bucolic idyll.
Merino sheep grazing under solar panels produce better wool, trial shows
Two farmers running merinos on solar farms in NSW's Central West say their sheep thrive under solar panels, while wool quality has increased.
www.abc.net.au
Solar + sheep = improved wool clip