victorian/edwardian houses or new houses?

[Andrew]

And then you die of dioxin/pcb poisoning :-)

[Franz Heymann]

[snip]

True. On the other hand, you must admit that your typing is every bit as bad as mine.

Franz

[Franz Heymann]

The report was quite recent, like a couple of years old.

But if it is true that a conventional power station can in fact run at over

60%, why were folk so pleased with that fuel cell power source of which I spoke, when it ran at only somewhat above 46%?

In viiew of the latest newspaper reports, that is not to be counted as being on the side of the angels.

It would be most surprising if that could be done at more than a minority of the power stations of the world.

I am truly surprised that some such object has not yet been developed. I wonder if anybody has reckoned the energy economics in my case, where I have to take my newspapers and junk mail by car to the nearest collection point.

Franz

[Franz Heymann]

Actually, I did not write any of the words above. Somebody has screwed up the attribution marks and the headers yet again.

Franz

[The Natural Philosopher]

No argument thier :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

*shrug* maybe people aren't too bothered about efficiency and still build cheap gas powered sets.

In these things enegy efficiency is not the onbly cost benefit tro analyse.

Because fuel cells have not been able to match even a victorian steam engine until recently?

Beacause they need more funding and that was the best thing they could find to say?

I don't know: In all these thngs bullshit abounds.

Only when you actually try and buy something and get

quoted a price, and test it and get some figures, do you

know wherher its all BS or whether the thing actually works.

Guess who is pissed off cos they have mad cow diseae, and whose trying to export wild salmon...C'mon now. The French did it to use with mad cow, we did it to them with listeria hysteria cheese, weve done it to teh tyabkls with mad cow and GM crops.

They are just getting their own back. FUD.

Not really. Most are in or near urban areas and have excellent transport links. Most are on large sites with spare land, or could be bult on farmland. Most need colling water so riverside or lakeside locatns arepreferred.

Yes, they have, but everyone shouted them dnw. The greens felt threatened having been in to 'recycling' for years. The power boys want to sell you power, and the heating boys want to sell you oil...

In short no one saw any personal advantage to it at all.

I ou want to get a handle on some eco bullshit there is a book - scpetical ecologist - or somesuch.

Big industry and teh greens are both lying hypocrites apparently.

[IMM]

inefficient

It is obvious that I know that, as I have already said that.

Not quite right. The overall mechanical efficiency of the unit has to be up to it. Also in road engine, the power to weight ratio is one of the most important factors.

..and use less fuel cleanly.

I did say in the short to medium term the diesel and gasoline engines will have to do, but there are far more efficient versions around than the abomination we all currently use.

It is the loses at generation and transmission losses. This can be reduced by having smaller local power stations, the UK had, using natural, using CHP to heat the local district. Transmission losses then are low and overall energy efficient is very high. Sweden do this.

"woefully inefficient in terms of space used"? You see cows grazing under them. They can be in the middle of fields and only occupy a small footprint. There are windmill farms being built off-shore all over the UK right now, Out of sight.

Wet solar panels generally inefficient per squ foot, but have the whole of a south facing roof being a solar panel and the by shear size you have an efficient collector, that will virtually provide all of the houses needs if you can store the heat in a large thermal store

Put PV cells on every south facing roof and most of the power generation station will not be needed. The solutions are there. It needs political will to force it through.

On the domestic and commercial build front, insulation levels to superinsulation, passive solar design of homes, as Germany as doing with Passiv Solar regs, south facing roofs having integrated wet solar/PV cells, boiler with integrated CPH elec/gas Stirling boilers and soon to be introduced. The Stirling CPH boilers cut the peaks of electricity usage. All this is right now, and can and should be implemented. Doing so will drastically cut fuel usage and emissions and prevent fuel poverty. And more efficiency is on the way...

What looks promising and appear likely to be introduced is the Zeolithe heat pump, which runs on natural gas for the provision of domestic heating and hot water. Currently these units are floor mounted and resemble a typical boiler in appearance. Zeolithe heating appliance's use less energy and are more environment-friendly than electric heat pumps and gas boilers. It provides considerably higher output levels than the current conventional and condensing boilers. Carbon-dioxide emissions are reduced by approximately

20 to 30%.

On the vehicle side, matters are more complex. Of course, local CHP power stations drip charging electric car overnight is very sensible, but we do not have the infrastructure for this, as yet. Also what do you do in a city, when you car is parked on the road? How do you charge it?

There are far more efficient diesel and gasoline engines around, and are running. These can be developed fully and integrated into a hybrid setup. Another method suggested is waste heat from an advanced rotary engine (not an inefficient Wankel design) which has well over 50% efficiency, driving a small Stirling engine from its waste heat, which drives a compressor, which charges an air tank. The compressed air assists drive via an air motor in a hybrid setup. This is a fine stop gap, and around town the car can run on non-polluting air, which is generated from what would have been wasted heat. The whole setup can be small in size as rotary engines are small and a compressor/air motors is also small. The compressor can also be the starter motor too.

[IMM]

Why isn't every new and rennovated houses built to superinsulation and passive solar standards, virtually eliminating a heating system? Not rocket science and many examples are all over the world right now, so not airy fairy ideas at all. It would cost the taxpayer nothing to implement.

[IMM]

It's called a wood stove, and some of these are very efficient.

[IMM]

independent

Using fully synthetic oils also reduces emissions and prolongs a CATs life.

[IMM]

Friends of The Earth have been accused of being a front for large landowners in an attempt to keep people out of the countryside, keeping their lucrative acres (by taking in rent).

[The Natural Philosopher]

Hang a cable out of the window, or *gasp* build undergroung parking areas with electrical sockets?

Or charge them up in supermarket car parks etc etc.

You CAN fully charge a lithium car in about an hour, but you need specailsed charging facilities to do it safely.

Sadly these would require huge changes in engine factories, costing huge amounts of money.

hugely complicated and expensive.

You could simply have a smaller engine that charges the batteries.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Because super insulation is useless without other means to reduce ventilation losses.

You need things like heat exchanges on ventilation - this gets very expensive.

It is arguable that the energy used to build all this stuff doesn't

get paid back in a sensible timescale.

Curemnt insulation levels are at around ten times what they were in say the 1950's, with windows being perhpas 3 times better.

We are reaching teh law of diminishing returns on insulation.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, its not. you need more than a wood stove to burn wood and paper cleanly.

You need forced draught and VERY high temperaures to break down the pollutants properly, and some way to remove solid particles and various noxious things out of the flue gases.

Such things do exist, but they are rare.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I don't think that one stacks up really.

However there is no doubt that planting more trees is a good way of fixing atmospheric carbon.

Suburban sprawl adds energy to the atmosphere, stops rain getting into the ground water,

and leads to loss of green ares.

[IMM]

These new engines require no more than existing technology and engineering tools.

No more complicated than an existing hybrid. Expense will be cheap when production is up and running.

Been tried. Not feasible as yet.

[IMM]

Kevin Cahill in his book Who Owns Britain, made a full frontal attack on Jonathan Porrit of Friends of The Earth.

Or making houses with timber frames, or SIP panels, using planned forests.

Not if it is resigned right. Gardens account for about half of a suburban area anyhow. Gutters can empty into soakaways, as they do in some areas. Also in newer developments, the gutters empty into a separate drain which the water compy use to re-cycle the water. Nothing is lost.

Green area can be incorporated within the housing, especially trees. Green areas for the sake of it, with no public access, are pretty useless and serve no purpose. Land should be used to the benefit of the people.

[IMM]

It is not useless. As you know, superinsulated and air-tight homes have heat recovery and vent in them, rendering your criticism rather silly.

As there will be no full heating system this serves as the heating system too, to top up the heating when it is rarely required. Not expensive at all, when looking at the total cost of a house.

It is arguable, but an argument lost. And as the topic is emissions etc, from a global view, this is a way of drastically reducing emissions, reducing fossil fuel usage and eliminating fuel poverty, besides the comfortable environment it creates.

Insulation was only mandatory in the UK from 1974. The insulation levels currently are dire, but are being ramped to something acceptable soon. We need a quantum leap, not staged pussy footing. Superinsulation and passive solar can be implemented right now

We are reducing the emissions drastically, eliminating fuel poverty, and reducing millions of damp and cold related diseases, which is what counts.

[Dave Plowman]

If you're going to build underground car parks for all city cars that haven't their own off road parking, wouldn't it make much more sense to spend the money on extending the tube network and making it cheap/free? An electric car is only suitable for city use and will do nothing for congestion.

I only go to the supermarket on a day when I can be in and out in an hour.

Apart from the fortune needed to buy and replace such a battery for car use.

[Franz Heymann]

The indirect transmision losses involved in shovelling large numbers of loads of small amounts of fuel to thousands of small power stations all over the country are vastly greater than the transmission losses in power cables.

I bet they have not looked carefully enough at the costs and energy efficiencies of such a policy, unless they are in a position in which the fuel is naturally available dispersed all over the country.

Sadly, incapable of producing anything more than a negligible amout of power.

You should not use such a meaningless term in a discussion which is more or less scientifically based. Efficiency is defined as power out/power in. There is no room for a subsidiary phrase "per square foot".

Unfortunately the economics are still wrong. Very wrong. Otherwise they would have been in use by more than the afficionados.

You should not have a car if having one means the appropriation of public highway space for your exclusive use. Or do folk who misuse roads in this way pay rent to the local authority?

And how many folk are gong to be trained to be proficient in servicing such a vastly complicated object?

Franz