Pontevedra – Spanish Car-free City
[politico.eu] – The city that pioneered Europe’s car-free future
[theguardian.com] – ‘For me, this is paradise’: life in the Spanish city that banned cars
[wikipedia.org] – Pontevedra
[Google Maps] – Pontevedra
DeepResource
Observing the renewable energy transition from a European perspective
Archive for the category “environment”
China-EU – Energy & Emissions Comparisson
China & EU27: more than 3x more inhabitants; almost 2.5x more energy consumption; and almost 4x more CO2.
NB: a lot of stuff is made in China for the EU.
Is There a Point in Carbon Capturing?
YouTube text:
Can we solve our atmospheric carbon problem AND get something useful from it at the same time? Sounds better than just shoving it underground like Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects are planning, doesn’t it?
Carbon – in the form of carbon dioxide – is something that we have way too much of in the atmosphere at the moment. And carbon is also in a whole bunch of useful products ranging from diamonds to plastics to fuels. People are starting to figure out how we can make all kinds of products from captured carbon… but should we?
In this video I talk with Dr Jessica Allen about all the things you can make out of captured carbon, and assess each one in terms of their potential to be cheap, valuable, scalable and permanent.
Bookmarks:
0:00 Intro
0:23 What is Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU)?
1:26 What makes for the perfect CO2 uses?
2:19 Introduction to Dr Jessica Allen
2:54 “Trendy” uses of CO2: Beer, Carbonation, Diamonds, Graphene, etc
5:22 Fuels: Synthetic Fuels, Syngas, etc
7:46 Methanol and Plastics
9:43 Mineral Carbonation, Carbonated Materials, Building Materials, etc
11:21 Biochar – Slow Pyrolysis Process, Possibility of Being Carbon Negative?
14:20 CCU’s Current Progress and Jess’ Thoughts
15:24 Summary and Rosie’s Thoughts on CCU
16:27 Outro
Bright Green Lies
There are environmentalists among us, who are so radical, that they are attacking the renewable energy transition, as adopted by many governments, first and foremost in Europe (EU). This is most of all a North-American movement, that combines its fundamentalist environmentalism with anti-capitalism, feminism and hard-left social policies. This is a fringe movement, that has no chance of becoming mainstream, certainly not in Europe. Not even the German Greens are this radical, let alone this site (I voted CDA in the last Dutch national elections; if I had had a German passport, I would have voted Laschet-CDU). In fact, it is already a miracle that Europe has adopted the Green Deal, that seems to be supported by the majority of the population (wait until the first black-out arrives, or gas shortages become prevalent, perhaps later this winter).
But, as proponents of free speech, here they are. It is always good to look at a problem from all angles.
[brightgreenlies.com] – “Bright Green Lies”, the book
[wikipedia.org] – Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen (born December 19, 1960) is an American ecophilosopher and radical environmentalist in the anarcho-primitivist tradition. Utne Reader named Jensen among “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World” in 2008.
Dubbed in Austrian German
Ocean Cleanup Update
[wikipedia.org] – The Ocean Cleanup
Lignin – Plant Based Plastic Substitute
If current developments in plastic consumption aren’t curbed, at some point there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. One solution could be the replacement of fossil-based plastics with plant based materials, that are biodegradable. A key material is Lignin, a class of complex organic polymers.
[avantium.com] – Company site
[wikipedia.org] – Lignin
[nl.wikipedia.org] – Avantium
[twitter.com] – “Bio Roads”, substituting 30% bitumen with lignin
[avantium.com] – Avantium and Roelofs construct the world’s first test road with lignin produced in the Netherlands
DeepResource 