New study: fully automating self-driving cars could actually be worse for carbon emissions

Vox: "Right now, driving involves a cost, in time, attention, and stress. Automation could reduce or eliminate that cost, leaving "drivers" free to do whatever they want. When the cost of a service declines, demand rises (this is known as the "rebound effect")."



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Capitalism's crazy schemes to reduce CO2. They will try anything but #freetransit and #degrowth

The suddenly urgent quest to remove carbon dioxide from the air - The Washington Post: "“If you want to balance the books at this point, I don’t think you have a choice but to pull CO2 back that has already made it out,” Lackner said. “Or is about to make it out, because we are not overnight shutting down all the coal plants.”

But that turns out to be very hard to do. There are a wide variety of ideas for getting carbon out of the air — from little boxes like Lackner’s to specialized power plants that burn renewable biomass and stow the carbon away. But they all have costs and downsides — and they’re all part of a race to see whether any such technology can really be big enough, and cheap enough, to make a difference."

The coming nuclear energy crunch

@NafeezAhmed - Guardian: "As the British and American governments signal their renewed commitments to nuclear power as a clean, abundant source of energy that can fuel high growth economies, a new scientific study of worldwide uranium production warns of an imminent supply gap that will result in spiraling fuel costs in the next decades."

The Biofuel Grind

Do the Math: "I have acted like we need biofuels to be able to completely replace our current oil consumption in the foregoing analysis. No one who is serious about the matter is proposing we do so, exactly. But I think it’s useful to appreciate limitations to ideas on our horizon so that no one is misinformed or simply assumes that any of the myriad solutions we discuss can plug the hole and make us whole. Don’t trust anyone who says that biofuels are the answer. Fine if they want to say “part of the solution,” but I’m not breathing easy at the claim that they’ll fix our wagon."

Solar PV increases energy use and greenhouse gas emissions

LOW-TECH MAGAZINE: "It's generally assumed that it only takes a few years before solar panels have generated as much energy as it took to make them, resulting in very low greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional grid electricity.

However, the studies upon which this assumption is based are written by a handful of researchers who arguably have a positive bias towards solar PV. A more critical analysis shows that the cumulative energy and CO2 balance of the industry is negative, meaning that solar PV has actually increased energy use and greenhouse gas emissions instead of lowering them."

Renewables do not solve the problem of growth

Solving solar power's problem - Agenda - The World Economic Forum: "“It is quite possible that the cost and availability of these critical elements will constrain deployment of otherwise game-changing technologies,” said Jaffe."



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Eight Pitfalls in Evaluating Green Energy Solutions

Our Finite World: "Green technologies, including solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, have pushed resource use toward minerals that were little exploited in the past. If we try to ramp up usage, current mines are likely to deplete rapidly. We will eventually need to add new mines in areas where resource quality is lower and concern about pollution is higher. Costs will be much higher in such mines, making devices using such minerals less affordable, rather than more affordable, in the long run."