Sustainable Environment Entrapment

Sustainable Environment Entrapment.

M. Gove MP, the cons governments duplicitous representation of a non expert on earth; not known for his knowledgeable political veracity or belief in experts, has announced today that from 2040 there will be a plan to stop the sale of cars and light vans that use diesel as the motivate power, from being purchased in the UK (not sure how Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland will think about this after the effects of brexit have run its course) but never the less it is one of the usual hyperbole statement that he makes to establish a media presence. Announcements made by him are especially now, are to position himself in the run up to chasing after the PMs job while he anneals himself into the malingerer occupational role as secretary of state for the environment. This pre-emptive statement is in line with the infamous government nudge technique pronouncements of the past, in this case designed to ‘encourage’ manufactures to invest in electric propulsion in their new generation of vehicle production over the next decade and also move people to soon abandon petroleum base fuel vehicles to electric. It is a crackpot idea, one that ignores better options that can be available to meet the challenge of improving global environmental pollution caused by fossil fuel.

As of today there is much wrong with this approach, the dash for electrics, leaving aside the unknown imperatives (one can make a guess at) of the next 20 years, the most obvious problems are related to the lack of infrastructure to accommodate a charging cycle for millions of vehicles that will require private or public charge points throughout the country. In this context consider the volume of vehicle using motorways and highways and the speed at which vehicles pass through and out of service fuel areas in a matter of about 5 minutes. This speed of service cannot be done with battery technology; there is no functionality available of a comparable ‘fast charge’ system! In addition the state of the current UK power system is not going to cope with the constant electric supply required to distribute nationwide. The generation system is already at around 90% load capacity with no new uninterrupted continuous capacity being built (apart from the nuclear Hinchley point – to be 10 years in build, which is not nearly enough new provision) and other systems; wind, wave, pv, domestic store/return are going to be too erratic to be certain of reaching a high level of national competency for security of supply.

High capacity storage / output battery technology may well improve but the scale of gaining the raw materials to build such a battery will come up against the production limitation of exhausted compounds and there is no sustainability infrastructure in place to avoid the pollution likely to be caused from the manufacture and reclamation of battery waste.

It may be a fore gone conclusion, given the range of transport parameters now, that there will not be battery technology that can match the output performance and flexibility of petroleum power. For example to be able to move say HGVs of some 44tons; when one consider that a family size EV car has a need for a battery pack of 600lbs to 1200lbs in weight, to travel 100 – 200 miles is doable, but for a HGV it could take a battery pack the weight of perhaps 23.9 tons to shift it; considerable more than the weight of the diesel engine alone! It is possible to see a light EV vehicles do short duration runs, returning to a central charge point after each trip, as is the case now however the potential to undertake a long range charged trip diminishes over time as battery micro thermal functionality diminishes resulting in rapid power loss then needing constant term charges to maintain usable time/distance/output runs. As it typically takes some 10 hours to fully recharge such batteries or 30min for a diminutive partial, dependent on the battery, it is a time consuming task. For example the new Elon musk car model 3:- ‘the base model has a battery with a 220-mile range, does 0-60mph in 5.6 seconds and has a top speed of 130mph. It can be fast charged to 130 miles of range in 30 minutes and charges at a rate of 30 miles per hour via a 240V, 32A home charger’. In these days of everything being ‘on tap’ and instant, it will take careful planning to undertake a long distance UK journey and if ones want to trip around Europe or USA - forget it.

Between 2000 and 2016 petrol station sites in the United Kingdom (UK) have fallen from 13,000 thousand to 8.5 thousand with approx 34% operating on a 24hr basis. That could equate to maybe some 25.5 thousand available fuel pumps and if one considers, as a comparison, the huge number of electrical recharge stations required with a greater number of charge points, (due to the time a charge takes and volume of possible users) which would have to be by a large measure many more to cover the whole of the UK and acknowledge the difficulty  many rural area have in still trying to get the cable infrastructure needed for internet broad band use; is it ever going to be feasible to have a national UK charge point coverage?      

   

It is a moot point to suggest that people do not realise that they are being taken for a proverbial ride. The ride consist of allowing the political agenda to be driven by unquestioned nor critically examined hyperbole that surrounds the environment agenda fostered by the government, green activisms and cohered local councils. Unusually the UK has had a high take up of diesel use, promoted in the early days by the government for the reduction of CO2 with a third of private vehicle now operating on diesel. America and most of Europe did not ‘encourage’ diesel uptake being more aware of NOx and the particulate issue. “Over the last 25 years, EU-wide emissions of NOx more than halved from 17.5 to 7.8 million tonnes. The largest reduction took place in road transport (4.4 million tonnes less) which is the main contributing sector to total NOx emissions. Emission reductions from the road transport sector are primarily a result of fitting catalysts to vehicles. The legislative standards known as 'Euro' standards have driven this move. NOx emissions in the energy production and distribution sector decreased by 2.7 million tonnes thanks to the introduction of specific abatement technologies (e.g. low-NOx burners, flue-gas abatement techniques), and switching fuel from solid to gas” (1)

This reduction only applies to information attributed to Europe and possibly overridden by emissions that stem from developing nation that cannot perhaps afford the abatement technology or a rapid switch of new motive power and do not have the sophisticated administrative structure to enact or enforce compliance; assuming that they even valued the dubious local benefit of reducing noxious gas emissions, if they argued the problem was one not ultimately of their cause.

One easy target for the environmental clash is the use of private transport. Private transport has been perhaps the greatest driver for economic and social achievement of the 20^th century around which everything in the west has been built and benefited immensely from. There is no aspect of modern living that has not been affected primarily beneficially from the spread and use of private transport. The speed and spread of developments has been achieved by the mobility that private transport has engendered, stemming from the use of the bicycle to the ubiquitous cars and mass transport. There is no evidence that suggest that the speed or spread of the post wars economic achievements could continue to have been made with the sole use of ‘public’ mass transport (given the way working locations/conditions have changed) which by its very nature is and will perhaps always be unwieldy, restrictive, not user friendly, and has inbuilt limitation when it comes up against personal life style convenience and continually falls short in gaining either public or private investment.

In addition to this, despite the fiddling of emission test results by some car manufacturers, with their engine management ‘fix’, NOx emissions are being brought down further by the use of the AdBlue technology which ought to be made a compulsory on all diesel vehicles and is an easy environment win against the ridicules proposed diesel use ban. 

There is a whole plethora of polices that are being enacted by councils at the behest of the government to which the local population do not have any effective say. These policies will begin to have a direct impact of people’s lives which at the very least will be a tolerable imposition and at worst will seriously financially affect them and have a minuscule benefit to the local environment. Impulsive environmental restrictive policies will also undermine the sustainability of the current social interactive life.

Take the pronouncement from (as an example) one local authority planning transport policies KMBC. It is not alone in adopting the vehicle constraining philosophy and is being used as the scape goat for the avoidance by governmental of its responsibility in developing an overall energy / environment strategy, at a time when it (the government) is intent on dismantling 40 years of European legislative integration that has been instrumental in pushing much of the Uk’s environmental improvements. 

“A key aim is to provide sustainable alternatives to the use of a car as a mode of transport, thereby increasing social inclusion for those who do not own, or have access to a car”  This is clear gobbledegook. What it means is forcing the already heavily tax car owner and those that have the resource for (a car / taxi or access to one) to coalesce with the public transport system for the ‘social inclusion’ of all, when public transport in the regions is being stripped continually of investment to fund vanity projects of London.

Or “Government plans require that major developments, link to attendance numbers of visitors, can be easily accessed by walking, cycling, and public transport.”

Or “Car parking standards will be set as a maximum (in order to encourage the shift towards more sustainable form of travel)” i.e. reduce the available space used for car parking.

Or “Consider the application of a ban or penalty use charge on diesel vehicles entering a designated city zones”.

Can one imagine the likely survival option of a whole range of leisure activities and dependent visitor attraction crucial to the wider disposable income economy like; theme parks, National Trust, English Heritage, garden centres, shopping malls, intermediate transport links to airports, train stations and pastoral isolated villages of the provinces; not to ignore also the tax revenue transfers that would be required from road and fuel duties to direct taxation to maintain overall public spending and on a range of indirect subsidies, if personal lucrative transport were to be seriously curtailed. And as a final point, in comparison to the internal combustion engine, the electrical and engine management facilities required to drive EV’s is of a less labour intensive nature than what is required to support the whole transport use sector. No government is giving any serious thought to the loss of proliferate skilled engineering and mechanical personnel employment; a different level of technical knowledge will be required in fields in which there is already a severe lack of.  

For many years councils have been forced to allow the installation of major out of town development, knowing that they are instrumental in the reduction of town centre facilities and their slow demise. They have in town centre also adopted a restrictive practice in the provision of car access and have only latterly conceded that a lack of car park spaces will sterilise small town centre. Pose the question why are out of town centre so successful, it is not just because they have a great variety of consumables under one or close adjacent roofs, is because they are conveniently accessible by personal transport in which to carry away a potentially large volume of the consumables goods, with free ample parking and are considered safer places to do so.

For many there is no realistic alternative to the car. If you doubt this just try a go at going to work for a month without the car! This might appeal to those evangelicals that draft up such daft proposals at the behest of political dictates but the impact on themselves and their families’ lives will soon have them seeing the impracticality of the days without access to a car. In looking at a councils recent UDP with environ impact, it is apparent that it and many others like it, are a complete fabrication in convoluted argument that do not reflect the actual needs of people and are simply a confabulation of untested ideas that are designed to meet the disingenuous environmental weak policy agenda of governments. Many people on who’s behalf such document are created and this means the majority, never get to read or appreciate that the policies being devised can have a direct or unintended consequential impact on the way they run their lives.

It is the slow incremental pressure of dictatorial actions that is driving a fragmentation of society into, so far as the ready accessible availability of mobility, two social fractions, those that will always have resources to gain independent travel at times of immediate convenience to themselves and probably the vast majority of others that will be financially and policy excluded from the same conformable mobility.

Modern economy is wedded to the idea of private individual transport means and long may it last. The pressure to shift from fossil fuel propulsion to some other means, will, due to its decreasing availability over the next century, be an unavoidable factor in seeking alternatives. On the basis of just reducing a number of emissions caused from fossil fuels, it is arguably a reasonable position to have but it is not a compelling environmentally sound one. The drive to adopt EV’s on say a global basis, is doubtful to materially resource sustainable, also it is unlikely to be the battery power output (recharge time vs. distance) or increased durability (life of battery) that will dictate this as the long term automotive power of the future. The scarcity of raw material and the environmental damage and waste, will likely to be an accumulating hazard that curtails a global shift to EV but as an interim measure to relieve raising CO2 and NOx; it has to help but to be reasonable and realistic for a sustainable transition of personal transportation into the future a mixture of automotive power has to be contended with. Yet much more can be done to make diesel and petrol power more efficient and considerable less pollutant. Unfortunately fossil fuel use for the automotive industry is an easy target for governments and environmentalist to pressurise. Even though there may be better options for dramatically reducing such gasses with alternative measures and the development of possibly better fuels like hydrogen, algae bio, or LENR (cold fusion) that may offer future sustainability. The force transition to EVs and the ban on diesel does not go far enough to really impact the emissions issue when there remains’ the two biggest polluters largely untroubled by any effective proscription.  

Shipping and Air travel pollution. Due to the international nature of these industries and the importance they have on the global and nation economies; the government of all countries that benefit from these sectors, are fraught with governance and vested interest difficulties to the extent that these sector are practically unrestricted in their air pollution emissions, being too international diverse and complicated to gain a unanimity of common purpose to clean their impact on the worlds environment. To appreciate the problem one can gain an insight by scanning publications that covers noxious gas emissions from these sectors and pick up illuminating comments. These are some:

“In 2000, in the seas surrounding Europe (the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the North-Eastern part of the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea), sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions from international shipping were estimated at 2.3 million tonnes a year, nitrogen dioxide (NOx) ones at 3.3 million tonnes, and particulate matter (PM) at 250,000 tonnes. In a business as usual scenario, these emissions are expected to grow by 40 to 50% by 2020”.

“One large ship alone can generate approx 5,200 tonnes of sulphur oxide pollution in a year, meaning that 15 of the largest ships now emit as much SOx as the world’s 760 million cars”.

‘There is no end in sight to rapid growth in CO₂ emissions from air travel and air freight due to projected continual growth in air travel unless market constraints are put in place. This growth in aviation's emissions will result in the sector's emissions amounting to all or nearly all of the annual global CO₂ emissions by mid-century’. (2)

So the unfolding prohibition on the use of fossil fuels for the automotive industry, as the soft target, is not the solution to obtaining a complete reduction in the noxious gases emissions when there is no realistic speculation on seeking a very long term solution that is viable for ‘developed’ or developing nations and which encompasses all energy users waste emissions from all sources. The west may be able afford and accommodate a moderate shift to EVs as part of a mixed fuel use however the best option would be to have a substantial public investment programme into expanding and vastly improving the range of public transport options and be much tougher on the form and environmental cost of bulk international transports which thus far are getting a free ride paid for by the public of the automotive use.  

© Renot

2707171946

(1) Eurostat Information.

(2)Various source extracts.

(1) Eurostat Information.

(2)Various source extracts.