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Cake day: November 28th, 2023

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  • Well, wind, sun and fossil free heating spells the terms of divorce with the oil industry. No wonder they fight so hard to block it.

    What happens when a nation like Norway goes 92% EV? There will not be any demand for the oil infrastructure, so within the time these last fossil fueled cars goes to the scrap yard, so will the market for fuel stations etc.

    Don’t get me wrong, the market for rest stops and charging will be the same, but the costs of servicing the pumps and the risks of varying fuel prices will not cover itself. So it will not be carried along.

    What about heavy transport? It will take longer, but in time it will go the same way. And prices will increase. With falling demand, perhaps not the price of the fuel, but the costs of keeping the service running. That will be a big upheaval in the automotive service industry.

    Geopolitically? Unless you can produce your own oil, it’s a big win on independence. It is also a big win in regards to availability. Instead of knocking out 1 plant, an aggressor would have to knock out 10000 small, private production facilities on roof tops. Also a big win.

    And if you are able to produce your own oil, it will instead become a liability when those still dependant on oil needs to secure their supply…











  • Tobberone@lemm.eetoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldBillionaires gotta go
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    16 days ago

    She is known for giving these people bonuses that surpass anything I’ve heard about outside corpo management, though. The occasion that made the press mention 100k USD for truckdrivers for one tour and while I dont know how much a truck driver makes a year, it’d sure make my life easier for a couple of years.

    Not saying she isn’t good at making money, but I’d say the jury is still out on the issue of hoarding all of it for herself.




  • It was more the relation between them (40x) that struck me as bigger than I expected given the relative performance between photovoltaic and photosynthetic efficiency.

    If they compare 1-year crops for human consumption, there will be a lot of tilling, sowing etc. but then we compare two different use cases with different purposes.

    Wood intended for burning for district heating, where the heat is taken care of with high efficiency, would be an energy usage more akin to electricity. In that case I would expect the harvesting and transportation part to be different.

    As a swede, energy usage in the winter is warm at heart which is something that is hard to compare and muddles the numbers. In Dec-Jan energy (kWh) output from solar is at best 9-10% of their peak output during summer at my latitudes, (further north, this goes towards zero as there is no sunlight in winter), so with that in mind, the stored 20MWh/hectare, available round the clock, looks apetizing until we find a better solution to store energy.



  • Aye, it corresponds with the numbers I’ve seen for photosynthesis efficiency as well. However, and here I believe we return to the root of the discussion, A: vertical solar panels in a field of crops both produce electricity and increase crop output (due to heat shelter and better moisture retention) and B: solar isn’t abundant during winter, so we need some sort of energy storage and biomass is pretty good at that.

    So, while it is not enough to offset that 40x, it will go a pretty long way of evening things out. Besides, if we produce more electricity than what is needed, the final solution, today, is to lower a heating coil into the ocean to burn off excess electricity. We will need to find energy users at the same pace we install solar, so leaving some ground for crops might not be a bad idea.

    As for the energy plan, it’s a requirement in the EED, it’s the same here.


  • I’m learning a lot about energy in Germany this way. Thanks! So basically farmers in Germany grow food to make fuel for cars? Like ethanol? Thats an abundance of agricultural lands!

    Pumped hydro is great, but will only cover that much energy. Of course, there are no alps in the Nordics, but even so.

    The batteries available today cover the need for an hour of the city they are situated in. That’s not enough. So for seasonal storage you’d need to store energy as heat, as chemical energy (wood/methanol) or as H2/bio, which I think is what you describe. H2 has much of the problems of batteries in terms of storage space and the risk of fires/explosions, which limits the possibilities somewhat. But if I’ve understood correctly from the TEN-T directive, Germany and Switzerland has invested pretty much in H2?

    Heat pumps are great, and are indeed well used, they run out of steam when its below -5C, which isn’t rare up here. And it’s seldom used in cities. Heat pumps collecting hear from the bedrock (through a drilled 100m hole in the ground) is more common, but most common is district heating. (I got the name wrong in translation earlier)

    Instead of one boiler in every house, there is one boiler per 50-100000 inhabitants or so. Efficiency is great and heat is pipes to where it is used. When it’s cold (-20 or so) those boilers go through tens of semitrucks of wood every day. And as I said, it’s a fairly common set up in parts of Europe, although i understand its not common i Germany.


  • That’s a whole lot of extra steps you added there. Why not simply go harvest -> burn for heat. It’s not complicated and it’s been done for the last 10000 years or so😊

    As for energy storage: Electricity can not practically be stored between seasons. Wood can. So sunlight from summer will not be able to power a EV in winter, but it will heat your home. And it is a way better solution than trying to produce electricity to heat your home, even if it’s just recycling CO2. At least it will not add CO2, unlike the coal that would have been used instead.

    68 million Europeans heat their home with some kind of central heating system. It not common in west, or central Europe, but it is in the Nordics and in the eastern part. Energy forests will be important going forward.