RichardL Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 Green investment funds are already a thing (am I missing the point @SteamyTea ? I guess you're saying legislate for balanced investment... the trick is hearts and minds to balanced investment or you drive the investment offshore and a race to the bottom to get the $. Chances of a global agreement (on anything) are inversely proportional to the oportunity for $ or tax $ increases. Investments via funds are reasonably remote - i.e. the firms invested in will only really see their share price & investment outlook as input as a measure of doing the right thing. The closer you get to choosing which firms might/will add benefit - the closer you get to the risk until you're actually on the board! (No pension fund manager wants to be on the board of an individual firm - far too close to the edge) -so- Perhaps a green bond - funding a ring fenced gov. / country level investment - but then gov. isn't going to be anywhere near efficient or agile enough to use that money wisely. -or- venture capital as middle ground - but again - they tend to look at the bottom line and assets vs. profits & will - depending on your point of view - asset strip or - better - trim/lean out a firm to its core function. -left with- the philanthropist angle - Gates/Musk/Demos etc - are they different from the above options? - I guess theres potential for a single decision maker - Gates is focused on medecine, Musk on batteries and rockets, Demos - who knows? (Happy to be corrected on the above - its been a while since I was even remotely in finance) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Thomas Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 There are organisations attempting to tackle retrofit. Carbon Co-Op and People Powered Retrofit especially come to mind, for instance (other retrofit providers are available). Without political will, they're not going to make a huge difference, is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 I guess the old poor housing stock issue could be tackled another way. If you really can change all our electricity generation to carbon neutral, and provide lots of it, then perhaps the thinking is, it does not matter if old houses use a lot of energy to heat them, as long as it really is carbon neutral generated energy. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 1 minute ago, RichardL said: Green investment funds are already a thing (am I missing the point I initially thought you were, but then read the rest. I think you are on the right track. I don't think it needs to be compulsory, just the choice of a dual investment and taking away the stigma of investing in old technology if you want to. A basic example would be buying into a new coal fired power station. Let us say that it produces 850 kg/MWh. To offset that via an investment, you could invest, at the same time, in a solar farm. To produce 1 MWh via solar would cost around £700. So basically matching generation capacity in that instance. If investing in a goods manufacturer, you look at the embodied carbon your investment will add to the company i.e. your investment will increase the CO2 output by 2% of the 1000 tonnes a year (or whatever the carbon audit shows), so 20 tonnes. Taking the UK grid as an example, ~200 kg/MWh, you would have to invest in generation capacity to offset that. So 10 MWh of low carbon. The idea is not to stop exiting generation or manufacturing, but to add on extra clean generation, which will in time totally replace old generation technology. There would need to be an agreed set of figures on embodied CO2, but the exist already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 2 minutes ago, ProDave said: If you really can change all our electricity generation to carbon neutral, and provide lots of it, then perhaps the thinking is, it does not matter if old houses use a lot of energy to heat them, as long as it really is carbon neutral generated energy. Exactly, and that is where we are heading. It is much easier to build new generation capacity that retrofit a million houses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patp Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 Are we wasting our time when middle America still drives gas guzzling cars, still use their tumble driers on hot sunny days (the neighbours would complain if I hang washing outside - only trailer trash do that), put the heating on and then clear off to Florida for the winter to avoid the sub zero climate they live in, nip outside to start the gas guzzler half an hour before a journey so that the air con has made the car comfortable even though it is parked in the communal garage that is also heated and air cooled! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardL Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 6 minutes ago, patp said: Are we wasting our time It's got to start somewhere - trying a coordinated approach at country level is hard enough, let alone global/above country. If you wait until everyone is aligned you'll be signing the contract on the day before the end of all things (too late) Who ever has access to the technology should move forward - stretch that envelope of what is possible and what is normal... UK is catching up with central European continent on insulation and heat pumps for heating - someone has to go first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonD Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 2 hours ago, ProDave said: If you really can change all our electricity generation to carbon neutral, and provide lots of it, then perhaps the thinking is, it does not matter if old houses use a lot of energy to heat them, as long as it really is carbon neutral generated energy. I think this is the thinking, even if it is a disastrous one - it fails to consider the material impact of over-sizing power generation to such an extent, which is likely to cost us all dearly in the long run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonD Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 2 minutes ago, RichardL said: It's got to start somewhere - trying a coordinated approach at country level is hard enough, let alone global/above country. If you wait until everyone is aligned you'll be signing the contract on the day before the end of all things (too late) Who ever has access to the technology should move forward - stretch that envelope of what is possible and what is normal... UK is catching up with central European continent on insulation and heat pumps for heating - someone has to go first. I listened to a solar entrepreneur in an interview the other day. He said that governments are just too slow so as a business they're just getting on with it without them. He's involved in a load of projects around the world including large scale projects in Africa. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 29 minutes ago, patp said: Are we wasting our time when middle America still drives gas guzzling cars, still use their tumble driers on hot sunny days (the neighbours would complain if I hang washing outside Oh good, I am going to start driving in a very inconsiderate manner and hold up loads of people, maybe injure a few. It is okay for me to do this as other people do as well. I shall ask for schools to be closed down because there have been the occasional unschooled millionaires. Hospitals, pah, most people don't have anything wrong with them, why bother. The law enforcement and legal system, pointless, it is a modern invention, hunter gatherers never needed it. Worst of all Ishall start to listen to Europop as my neighbour listens to it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pocster Posted June 13, 2023 Author Share Posted June 13, 2023 I use to own a property in Florida ( very nice it was ) ; until the recession (expletive deleted)ed me . I could never understand in the sun shine state no one had solar yet even at that time a few early adopters existed in the U.K. ( not a sunshine state ) had pv . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 (edited) 36 minutes ago, pocster said: could never understand in the sun shine state Natural gas at 2 cent a kWh. But go back a few years and the oil state of Texas invested in renewables. In the 1988 movie Rain Man, Tom Cruise drives past a wind farm. Edited June 13, 2023 by SteamyTea 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Jones Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 dont confuse the two issues, green is bs politics. Insulating homes is common sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Jones Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 1 hour ago, pocster said: I use to own a property in Florida ( very nice it was ) ; until the recession (expletive deleted)ed me . I could never understand in the sun shine state no one had solar yet even at that time a few early adopters existed in the U.K. ( not a sunshine state ) had pv . they dont need it, limitless virtually free natural gas (waste product of their massive oil reserves). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 14 minutes ago, Dave Jones said: limitless virtually free natural gas (waste product of their massive oil reserves). Generally, natural gas and oil don't come out the same hole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnMo Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 50 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: Generally, natural gas and oil don't come out the same hole. Not sure about that, worked in the oil & gas industry for 30 years, and they do come out of the same hole. You generally in an oil field get a 3 phase flow out the well - oil, water and gas (it can be loads of gas). Its the gas in the oil that makes it flow under its own pressure. An oil field that has no gas, requires pumps in the well to pump the oil to surface and are generally not that economical. On a gas field you just have a lot of gas than oik, but you will still get some oil or condensate or both and again water. You will use some gas for power generation on an offshore platform, maybe 20-40MW of gas turbine driven generators, reinject some gas into the oil field, and export some via to pipeline to onshore, you will also inject water, mostly seawater but also produced water. In the 70s they just flared the gas, i.e. burnt it - many 10s or 100s of million standard cubic feet per day. Until they had export facilities to get the gas onshore or to a processing terminal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 6 minutes ago, JohnMo said: and they do come out of the same hole Yes, but as you say, in very different proportions. Why there is very different infrastructure for the two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnMo Posted June 13, 2023 Share Posted June 13, 2023 Not really that different, as the same equipment is used in both cases, a gas platform I just did a project on has 3 phase separation and gas compressors, it doesn't have water injection though. An oil field will have 3 phase sepereration, gas compressors and possibly or likely to have water injection. Very similar on a process flow diagram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 14, 2023 Share Posted June 14, 2023 @Johan Clearing out my Mother's house I picked up this paperweight I made in the early 80s. The Brent System. I liked the old naming convention for platforms AUK, BUK, CUK, DUK, EUK. I think they stopped before they got to F. All for the birds now. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HughF Posted June 21, 2023 Share Posted June 21, 2023 Boilers and rads in the bin, air-to-air mini splits for everyone, direct unvented cylinder…. Cheap, easily turn-off-and-on-able, reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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