new EU energy targets...

[Arwin]

I really don't believe the CO2 emission goals are achievable or even relevant (emission != budget).

The next Prius has already been announced to have a 1.8 liter engine besides the electric one, and would double the current model's already respectable mpg. It's not inconceivable that this combines with at least a halved CO2 emission, so that would put it at 52. With the current proposed limit being 120, that allows for some pretty decent-powered Hybrid engines for your BMW. And that's presumably not even using diesel fuel, which should allow for even bigger improvements.

The German / American car companies are working on their own Hybrids though as well as fuel cell and so on, diesels can run on ethanol, etc. - it's all coming, but a push in terms of such legislation can make sure it comes sooner rather than later. We've seen this in the past with all manner of other requirements, unleaded fuel, rear safety belts, air bags, etc. etc.

 

[Rainbow Man]

Gone are the days where you'd occasionally get someone babbling on about experimental hydrogen cars, or hand-wave at a farm of (butt-ugly, inefficient, unreliable waste of space POS) wind-wheels

That's a load of crap if ever I saw one.

A modern large-scale windmill powerplant in an off-coast location can generate up to 5MW of electricity per unit. It's certainly not impossible ot build them even larger and conversely more powerful. And there's a lot of windy coastline on this planet.. Resources just waiting to be harvested.

All of a sudden we're back in the realm of reason and have public debate about farmed fuels. Last week I've seen a thirty-minute feature about Brazil's ethanol power economy and its role in a booming international ethanol market.

Yeah ethanol manufactured by slashing and burning rainforest. Way to go for sustainability and envionmental awareness/concern!

Peace.

 

[Rolf N]

That's a load of crap if ever I saw one.

A modern large-scale windmill powerplant in an off-coast location can generate up to 5MW of electricity per unit. It's certainly not impossible ot build them even larger and conversely more powerful. And there's a lot of windy coastline on this planet.. Resources just waiting to be harvested.

The problem with wind energy is its tendency to unpredictably fluctuate with the seasons, the time of day, and quite obviously the weather. That may be acceptable for a 5% addition into your power grid (but then IIRC wind energy has even at these levels already been instrumental in the worst European power grid failure since World War II), but you don't bank your core economy on such a wild source!
If you need a constant base amount of power in your electricity grid -- and it looks like western countries rarely go below half their daily peak consumption at any time -- wind just isn't reliable enough to provide it.

Yeah ethanol manufactured by slashing and burning rainforest. Way to go for sustainability and envionmental awareness/concern!

Peace.

You've got it backwards. Ethanol exports require less farm-land per dollar than beef, which is South America's "traditional" large-scale export product. Sugar cane production and refinery is pristinely green in comparison to cattle. It's a big chance for these countries to switch over to a chain of production that reduces their farm-land requirements.
We fat Europeans are really in no position to blame them for going after money. But I do know I appreciate a change in approach, and if it makes economic sense for them, all the better.

 

[Gubbi]

A modern large-scale windmill powerplant in an off-coast location can generate up to 5MW of electricity per unit. It's certainly not impossible ot build them even larger and conversely more powerful. And there's a lot of windy coastline on this planet.. Resources just waiting to be harvested.

The biggest commercially available wind turbine today is Vestas/NEG micon's 3 megawatt v90. And while not impossible to build them larger it's certainly not easy.

To increase the power a wind turbine generates you increase the size of the blades. Unfortunately every time you make a blade twice as long you effectively make it eight times as heavy: twice as long=twice as wide and twice as thick. Since the area the wind turbine extracts energy from is only proportional to the length of the blade squared you get an unsustainable n^(3/2) relationship of weight-to-length ratio.

Thus breakthroughs in materials and blade design is needed to increase the size of wind turbines further.

Cheers

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Gubbie 5MW is pretty well much here http://www.repower5m.com/index_flash_uk.htm

 

[Gubbi]

Gubbie 5MW is pretty well much here http://www.repower5m.com/index_flash_uk.htm

Not commercially available though, there's a fairly long time from field tests to mass production.

Edit: btw here is a nice overview over blade characteristics, including data for the 5MW turbine in your link. The weight of a blade for a 5MW turbine is twice that of a 3MW turbine, despite only producing 66% more power.

Cheers

 

[Gelanin]

Another fuel source thats has started to being pretty interresting is bioethanol, which reduces CO2 emission a fair bit (from what i remember), and also actually increases the effectiveness of the engine. Lotus had a test version they used on Top Gear or 5'th Gear, that produced 20% more bhp, but had 50% less CO2 emission or somesuch (i dont remember the exact details).


One thing that i think could help alot in general on Global Warming and CO2 emissions etc, is to build large-scale proper mag-lev (or similiar) trains. That way you'd probably be able to reduce air-flights with 50%, and limit them mostly to long-distance flights.

Atleast i certainly would choose to spend say 3hours in a train to get from A to B, instead of spending 3hours+ getting to the airport, checking in, flying, waiting for luggage, then get to B from the airport etc ....

Obviously building an extensive mag-lev transportation service wouldn't be cheap, but it should reduce CO2 emissions quite alot.