There are Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

MichaelG.

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https://www.transportenvironment.org/about-us/

A campaign group 

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 08/01/2023 14:12:49

I think the man with the welly boot expressed something along those lines too !

One can "prove" almost anything with "statistics", as we all know.

Example, With nuclear power, electricty will be so cheap that we will not be able to give it away ??????????

I think we all know how that worked out !

The most obvious limitation of the comparison it assumes efficiency matters, and perhaps it doesn't.

Electricity produced by Green methods is dirt cheap, the problem being it depends on the weather. So it has to be stored in some way. But efficiency may not matter because the clean cheap energy can be used wastefully.

One possibility is a battery, the disadvantage being size, weight, cost and limited capacity. Their efficiency only matters in the context of a vehicle.

Another possibility is Hydrogen, the disadvantage being it's a difficult to compress gas needing careful handling. The advantage is it's not a battery! For example, waste heat produced by a fuel cell is a good way of keeping a car warm in cold climates. As soon as the heater is switched on in a battery vehicle, it's efficiency goes to pot because the power isn't turning the wheels. Hydrogen needn't be used to generate electricity either. It can be burned in an internal combustion engine: still cheap and low pollution, but with the extra stamina needed for earth moving or heavy transit. Another good use is central heating. Hydrogen is much safer when mixed with Methane much as it was in coal made town gas, and it can piped to homes much in the same was as we get Natural gas. Doing this with chemically made Hydrogen is insanely expensive, but electrolytic Hydrogen made with surplus Green energy (Bright windy days), is cheap as chips.

Efficiency isn't the be all and end-all. Cost is the driver.

Dave

I'm sorry if you're offended but if you're going to further a pressure-group's agenda onto a forum that's unrelated to the topic you'll have to accept that some people might take exception and give you an undesirable response. Your smiley face at the end of your sentence suggests that you knew it might be contentious and you were posting for effect.

Bottom line is, if you don't want an emotive response, don't start a thread on an emotive topic on an inappropriate forum.

Statistics don’t lie they are just a way of displaying a data set. Providing the information about how the graphs or numbers are arrived at and a full disclosure of the data set statistics are very helpful. So how about this if the input is renewable electricity and the output is transport then all methodologies are 100 % efficient at reducing carbon emissions if just the fuel cycle is taken into consideration. Adding in emissions from the production of the infrastructure such as the vehicle and the wind farm etc will lower this and should be recognised.
People can however obscure stats by not telling the whole story. Don’t blame the maths though.

regards Martin

I dunno what people are arguing about. A case of the readers not understanding what is being demonstrated?

This table is a simple comparison of how renewable energy (in the form of electricity) can be used.

EITHER directly stored in, and used from, the best Lithium ion battery (and using the most efficient electric motors around).

OR used to first produce Hydrogen (by electrolysis of water) with eventual use in an automotive, via energy conversion in a fuel cell.

OR using renewable energy to produce liquid (hydrocarbon) fuel, by carbon capture and chemical synthesis of the liquid fuel, before using that synthesised fuel in an ICE.

If it is about people thinking this has anything to do with burning fossil fuels, in vehicles, they are completely off their heads.

Please can someone elaborate on the ‘bun fight’ going on. I see nothing, particularly incorrect with that table and would like to know what the ‘issues’ are, or might be.

Edited By not done it yet on 08/01/2023 18:11:20

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Thanks for the link, Bill … I have downloaded the document, to read this evening

Meanwhile, for more convenient reference, here is a decent image of Figure 9

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[ click to enlarge ]

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MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 08/01/2023 18:29:23

The importance of Resources to how "Rich" you can be in a closed system like Earth. Very little is talked about the deap down important factors to humanity.
Whatever powersource the world come up with to replace coal, must be cheap(relativity game) or due to money's relation to basic resources, if its whatever it is too expensive everything upwards is influenced, and that will lead to an exponential degrading of any monetary system, Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, it does not matter the ideology that goes with money & resources, it will destroy the monetary system eventually exponential as it gains speed, like a runaway diesel engine.
At 8 billion the world has a real problem regarding resources available to give every body at least a reasonable living lifestyle…..So think a bit about the relation of Money to Resources like Water, Oil, Gas, etc & the man made ones like Electricty & the new one(1992+) Digital(Binary code living=Extremely expensive already and embedded everywhere already by 2023). If these are expensive, the population must go down from 8 Billion to 3 Billion(1950 ties) or the poor and middleclass + upper middleclass will be wiped out financially, and then the ultra rich will consume each other(It is axutually happenning already) till theres no workers and no food and drink, then a reset is possible by natural force…….Or some other miraicle must happen, like an undenyable cheap resouirce powerwise, then we can deal with Digital costs..

One has to distiguise between steering vision over the horison and being caught up in complicated knowledgable holes vertically down as deep as you can go(Abstract).

Edited By Chris Mate on 08/01/2023 18:49:39

Due to the small size of the H2 molecule hydrogen diffuses through metals and also causes hydrogen embrittlement.

does this or did it cause leaks when mixed wih methane or carbonmonoxide (as in town gas) and also when its stored under pressure?

Hubertus