Comment on Know thy enemy

skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• UsernameHere@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  We aren’t consuming batteries anywhere near the rate we consume oil and coal. Hydrogen even less than batteries.

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  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    not now, but if hydrogen were to be used as an energy source/storage, then it’d be used plenty. same with batteries

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    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      While true, it’s very unlikely we’ll use hydrogen. It’s very impractical for this use compared to alternatives

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    • DogWater@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      If you have water you have hydrogen.

      there’s no reason to transport hydrogen if they build infrastructure to use it as a fuel they will build a process to make it on site

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• ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  the argument for renewable energy isnt that we should stop using oil, its that we shouldnt burn it. why turn our limited supply of oil into CO2 and water when we can turn it into plastics, medicine, solvents, etc? around 3/4 of crude oil is used as fuel, but if renewable energy was used, the number of oil tankers would decrease by more than 75% bc local supplies would generally be sufficient for industrial, non-fuel uses

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  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    ikr, but that tweet implies that all of oil/gas/coal ships would be unnecessary

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  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    bc local supplies would generally be sufficient for industrial, non-fuel uses

    this is assuming that its not just cheaper to import that needed oil? This is always going to be a fundamental problem, though maybe we already happen to produce plastic with native oil idk.

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• IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  That is true, but part of improving our environmental impact will be decreasing that transport of raw materials, localizing chemical industries near the sources of their raw materials.

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• someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  And oil for Styrofoam. And met coal for steel.

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  • jonne@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    There’s alternative processes, and if you avoid burning oil for fuel you can basically do all that with the amount of oil that’s in easy reach instead of using tar sands or drilling into even more difficult to reach places.

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    • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      You have to be careful when talking about steel because coal is both an ingredient (steel is iron + carbon) and used for heating afaik. You can take coal out of the heating step (confusingly called steel making) but not out of the ingredient step, unless you want to find a different carbon source.

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      • jonne@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        There’s (admittedly comparatively expensive) alternative processes, and even if you stick to the old process and just stop using coal for electricity generation you’d cut coal use by 75%.

        Not to mention, the carbon that stays in the steel doesn’t actually go into the atmosphere, so there’s less CO2 emissions for that specific use if you can substitute the fuel used for heating.

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      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        you’re probably talking about direct reduced iron and it’s really a problem that can be dealt with easily, just chuck a piece of coke when it’s molten for the second time in electric arc furnace (and maybe electrodes introduce enough carbon)

        maybe there’s a way to make electrowinning iron economical, and it’d be pretty green too, but i don’t know if it is workable

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    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      the problem with tar sands is a fundamental energy conversion issue. It’s really hard to refine because you don’t get nearly as much energy out as you put in, compared to something like fracking.

      It may become reasonable in the future with really cheap renewable energy and higher oil prices for example, but as of right now, it’s economically unviable.

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  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    coal can be substituted to some degree with processes like direct reduction. hydrogen works but syngas from biomass or trash also works

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  • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Everything that comes out of a petrochemical plant can be made without oil, in fact BASF had recipes in place for decades now and is switching sources as the price shifts. Push come to shove they can produce everything from starch. It’s also why they hardly blinked when Russia turned off the gas.

    The carbon that actually ends up in steel is a quite negligible amount (usually under 1%, over 2% you get cast iron), you can get that out of the local forest, and to reduce the iron hydrogen works perfectly, the first furnances are already online.

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• auzy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I’m guessing most countries would try to recycle batteries locally

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• ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  That wouldn’t really need to be shipped around though, domestic supply can cover those needs almost everywhere.

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