The Green Agenda

[Mark Bolam]

Yes, I’ve been cut off as well.

[sime42]

Let's look at this from another angle and forget any green agenda for a moment.
 
Fossil fuels are finite. When they are gone they are gone. Oil is an amazing resource that we make loads of things from so let's not burn it when we dont need to. We have near limitless renewables available to us in sun, wind, tidal etc so let's use them where we can and save the oil for the things we really need it for. 

Products made from petroleum | Ranken Energy Corporation

WWW.RANKEN-ENERGY.COM  

Yet another angle is that we make loads of not so useful things from oil. They quickly break or become obsolete and then end up being burnt anyway, or dumped in the ground or sea to pollute the environment for countless generations to come. (Or in our case, in the UK; we pay other countries like China to make the crap. So we can then say "it's not us governor")

[Macpherson]

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Edited April 2, 2022 by Macpherson

[devon TWiG]

9 hours ago, Richard 1234 said:

Who is it the right thing to do for? Not us that’s a fact. Not unless we build 25 big nuclear reactors. Yes we can have wind and solar but nuclear has the advantage that it always works.

to add to that why don’t we build massive solar plants on say the Sahara?

it would conceivably power Africa Europe the world? I’ve no idea how much power it would create never mind all the employment and money going into Africa to build and sell the energy 

The world's longest subsea cable will send clean energy from Morocco to the UK

ELECTREK.CO

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A 10.5 GW solar and wind farm is going to be built in Morocco, and it's eventually going to power 7 million homes in the UK.

The cable is coming onshore at Bude in North Devon ( I think it is already there but not sure )   or why do big businesses not locate energy heavy industries  to places like Morocco where solar power could be used then send to Europe on battery powered boats etc ??

Edited April 2, 2022 by devon TWiG

[sime42]

The world's longest subsea cable will send clean energy from Morocco to the UK

ELECTREK.CO

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A 10.5 GW solar and wind farm is going to be built in Morocco, and it's eventually going to power 7 million homes in the UK. The cable is coming onshore at Bude in North Devon ( I think it is already there but not sure )   or why do big businesses not locate energy heavy industries  to places like Morocco where solar power could be used then send to Europe on battery powered boats etc ??

Great ideas, both. Morocco and similar countries would do well to promote themselves on that front.

[Richard 1234]

21 hours ago, Big J said:

It's a point aside, but having calculated the heating needs of our house in the UK and the one we're moving to in Sweden, our Swedish house uses 8 times less energy to heat it, per square metre. Extrapolating from the bills we've had so far, we'll be using about 7,000 KWH to heat 240 square metres in Sweden, whereas our normal annual usage of firewood here of 28 cubic metres to heat 94 square metres equates to 28,000KWH (or 21,000KWH accounting for 75% efficiency of the stove). 

 

So that's 29kwh/sqm in Sweden where the average night time temperature for the last 4 months has been about minus 6-7 and 298kwh/sqm here in the UK (or 223kwh, accounting for stove efficiency) where the average night time temperature has been 4.4c over the same period.

 

Our house in Sweden is a totally normal 1957 built house with geothermal heating. Our house here is a totally normal little farmhouse, built in two stages in 1860 and 1930. 

 

I think that this is illustrative of the biggest issue we have in the UK. Our buildings are so thermally inefficient that we might as well be leaving the windows open. It's like driving a car with a hole in the fuel tank. 

 

50 years of north sea oil means 50 years of becoming accustomed to cheap heat and not having to think about insulation. Norway treated their oil and gas bonanza very differently.

That’s really good no doubt. We could certainly do better with our housing stock.

we don’t however have geothermal here at least not in the same sense they do up there.(though I could be wrong on that! Geothermal makes me think of hot springs in Iceland and the like) so if it as I’m imagining then your bill will be less as the water is hot/warm to begin with?

they learnt the lessons long ago out of need more than anything else I suppose

[Johnsond]

On 27/03/2022 at 08:43, Mike Hill said:

Yes its pathetic how the green movement changes its ideology on a whim. Over here now that we have a grumpy Russia over the border the government suggests every household has at least one fossil fuel vehicle incase Russia takes down the power grid.

 

Six months ago they were looking forward to banning fossil fueled cars by 2030.

 

They even mandated lead free bullets for the Army. Shame they didnt work but hey at least they wernt polluting.

I recently helped out one of the Norwegian crane ops on a vessel I was on to source some Barnes copper bullet heads here in the UK  for reloading as like you say due to recent legislation etc banning lead non lead reloading components have become virtually impossible to get. Needless to say he didn’t have a high opinion of the government department responsible. 

[trigger_andy]

It's a point aside, but having calculated the heating needs of our house in the UK and the one we're moving to in Sweden, our Swedish house uses 8 times less energy to heat it, per square metre. Extrapolating from the bills we've had so far, we'll be using about 7,000 KWH to heat 240 square metres in Sweden, whereas our normal annual usage of firewood here of 28 cubic metres to heat 94 square metres equates to 28,000KWH (or 21,000KWH accounting for 75% efficiency of the stove). 
 
So that's 29kwh/sqm in Sweden where the average night time temperature for the last 4 months has been about minus 6-7 and 298kwh/sqm here in the UK (or 223kwh, accounting for stove efficiency) where the average night time temperature has been 4.4c over the same period.
 
Our house in Sweden is a totally normal 1957 built house with geothermal heating. Our house here is a totally normal little farmhouse, built in two stages in 1860 and 1930. 
 
I think that this is illustrative of the biggest issue we have in the UK. Our buildings are so thermally inefficient that we might as well be leaving the windows open. It's like driving a car with a hole in the fuel tank. 
 
50 years of north sea oil means 50 years of becoming accustomed to cheap heat and not having to think about insulation. Norway treated their oil and gas bonanza very differently.

Norway did not treat their oil bonanza differently. They sold their oil at the going Brent Crude prices. Norway differs in how they spent (or saved) the revenue from O&G.

Norway has historically had cheap electricity due to a significant portion of their generation being from Hydro. Norway does not use gas to cook or heat their homes and rarely used oil. It’s generally always been electricity and wood burners. Their petrol and diesel prices are on a par with the UK.

I’ll assume Norway (Scandinavia) has historically had better insulation than in the UK is due to necessity long before saving the environment was a glimmer in greedy politicians eyes.

None of this has anything to do with Norways oil bonanza.

[trigger_andy]

 
That is what I meant. The Norwegian spent and invested their oil revenue wisely, whereas we (to coin a phrase popularised by our current dear leader) "spaffed it up the wall".
 
I agree that there is an element of necessity with warmer houses in Scandinavia, but I'm not sure that's it entirely. We had a house for a few years up by Aviemore that I used for work, fishing and holidays. We rented it, and it was an old crofters cottage with one of the best views in the Highlands. It was nevertheless actually unheatable in winter, and an Aviemore winter isn't a world away from southern Sweden. I remember being there one winter for work and with both fires roaring and electric storage heaters on max, not being able to get the bedrooms above 11c when it was about minus 6 outside. The cottage needed to be demolished, to be honest.
 
 

Well you did say 50 years of oil has had us accustomed to cheap heat. It was not cheap though, it was just the going global price.

Norway saved the revenue raised through selling their O&G to the UK and Europe.

I really don’t see the relevance of bring a country that does not burn much hydrocarbons into the picture?

I guess the Oil wealth generated in a country of 4-5million allows for the country to drag themselves out of relative poverty but similar oil reserves spread over 65 million people will have less than a 10th the benefits Norway has seen.

Should the revenue (rightly) stayed in Scotland then potentially we’d never see the rise of the SNP and maybe we’d be in a similar situation Norway is today.

[Woodworks]

2 hours ago, Big J said:

 

I may be confusing the issue with my terminology. It's a deep borehole, ground sourced heat pump. 170m down. The COP is 4, so for every 1kw of electricity fed into the system, you get 4 kw of heat out.

 

 

Not you who is confusing it J. Geothermal used to only be a term used for deep down heat in the earth . An example was the hot rocks project in Cornwall but it never came to anything sadly. In recent times the term geothermal has been used for ground loops and boreholes for ground source heat pumps but at these shallow depths the heat is in fact just seasonal solar heating.  Least thats what we were told when we installed the GSHP 10+ years ago

 

Edit. Found a good explainer. L 

Geothermal heat – remnants of the Big Bang - Celsius Initiative

CELSIUSCITY.EU

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Ground source heat pumps (GSHP) and deep geothermal heat can provide temperatures high enough for conventional DH.

Looks like boreholes are proper geothermal 

Edited April 3, 2022 by Woodworks