Germany Looking To Go Emissions-Free By 2030
10-05-16, 10:19 PM
#16
Lexus Fanatic
Even if by some miracle ethanol could replace all gasoline production (your main criticism is solar/water et al can't replace oil) that still leaves supply in the hands of the same cartels that control oil. Solar takes that away from them which is why they are fighting so hard to keep solar from becoming the standard in every home. If we are going to continue to burn fuel in a car (which is terribly inefficient) I'd much rather we go after algae fuel technologies.
10-05-16, 10:25 PM
#17
Lexus Fanatic
Even if by some miracle ethanol could replace all gasoline production (your main criticism is solar/water et al can't replace oil) that still leaves supply in the hands of the same cartels that control oil. Solar takes that away from them which is why they are fighting so hard to keep solar from becoming the standard in every home. If we are going to continue to burn fuel in a car (which is terribly inefficient) I'd much rather we go after algae fuel technologies.
10-05-16, 10:52 PM
#18
Lexus Test Driver
That's an interesting claim, considering how popular diesel is in Europe.
10-05-16, 11:10 PM
#19
Lexus Fanatic
What are these "clean sources" that are somehow supposed to be able to provide the energy needs to charge up electric cars every single day/night for millions of people as well as just about everything else electric. None of the so called "clean sources", solar, wind, dams have the capability to do that with a lower population country not to mention a heavily populated country or city and they cost a fortune. Government will waste billions if not trillions to try to do it only to find out it won't work and it just makes things worse. Solyndra ring a bell.
10-05-16, 11:15 PM
#20
Lexus Fanatic
You named some of them. All power sources have limitations if we wait for the perfect solution by then we'll have run out of oil. Battery and solar tech improves every year, cars and home battery storage preserve daytime captured energy. But okay let's say all of that is crap so what's your solution to getting away from burning oil.
10-05-16, 11:23 PM
#21
Lexus Fanatic
Because we are consuming oil, natural gas etc. at a drastically higher rate than it is being replenished. Why is this so hard for people to understand? And no the ICE is not efficient at all don't make silly claims.
10-05-16, 11:24 PM
#22
Lexus Fanatic
Even if by some miracle ethanol could replace all gasoline production (your main criticism is solar/water et al can't replace oil) that still leaves supply in the hands of the same cartels that control oil. Solar takes that away from them which is why they are fighting so hard to keep solar from becoming the standard in every home. If we are going to continue to burn fuel in a car (which is terribly inefficient) I'd much rather we go after algae fuel technologies.
10-06-16, 12:20 AM
#23
There's some truth to that. But, at the same time, my point was that you can't feed a herd of elephants with only a handful of peanuts. 
Well, I'm not necessarily saying it's crap.....just pointing out that their limitations (at least right now) would probably hamper them as potential petroleum replacements.
Right now, to save petroleum, I like the idea of ethanol. In addition to a gas/alcohol mix, Brazil has been running all-ethanol (E100) vehicles, with a good infrastructure to support it, for years. The closest we have to that in this country is the E85 fuel in the Midwest, and not all auto manufacturers produce engines that will run on it. I like ethanol because, even though it doesn't have as much energy as gasoline (resulting in the need for bigger fuel-tanks for the same cruising range), it runs clean, with virtually no pollution or deposits inside the engine, and can be produced/distilled from a number of sources......sugar cane, corn, wood, and even processed garbage in some instances. Ethanol, though does have the disadvantage of burning with a very light, almost invisible blue, almost smokeless flame....so, if the car catches fire for any reason, the flames will be much harder to detect at first than the bright orange and heavy black smoke of gasoline. But, in general, on a large scale, IMO the benefits of ethanol outweigh the disadvantages and risks.
Well, I'm not necessarily saying it's crap.....just pointing out that their limitations (at least right now) would probably hamper them as potential petroleum replacements.
Right now, to save petroleum, I like the idea of ethanol. In addition to a gas/alcohol mix, Brazil has been running all-ethanol (E100) vehicles, with a good infrastructure to support it, for years. The closest we have to that in this country is the E85 fuel in the Midwest, and not all auto manufacturers produce engines that will run on it. I like ethanol because, even though it doesn't have as much energy as gasoline (resulting in the need for bigger fuel-tanks for the same cruising range), it runs clean, with virtually no pollution or deposits inside the engine, and can be produced/distilled from a number of sources......sugar cane, corn, wood, and even processed garbage in some instances. Ethanol, though does have the disadvantage of burning with a very light, almost invisible blue, almost smokeless flame....so, if the car catches fire for any reason, the flames will be much harder to detect at first than the bright orange and heavy black smoke of gasoline. But, in general, on a large scale, IMO the benefits of ethanol outweigh the disadvantages and risks.
Now as for Brazil, their fleet does not run on 100% ethanol. Most cars there are "flex-fuel", which can run on E25 or E100(25% ethanol, 75% gas, or 100% ethanol). The price of ethanol depends on the year's harvest of sugar cane, sometimes its cheaper to go with the E25, sometimes E100 is cheaper, but then you have to factor in that E100 is 30% less efficient, so you can see how the math can get a bit complicated, sometimes the government interjects price controls or recommends which fuel for people to buy depending on the market. As for why Brazil can produce so much ethanol, sugar cane is more energy dense and produces more ethanol than corn. We can't grow sugar cane in the US except in a few parts of Florida and the deep south.
Perhaps my biggest objection to Brazil's ethanol industry is the sugar cane plantations themselves. They used to be rain forests. At the rate Brazil is going, I predict by the end of my lifetime there will no longer be a such thing as the Amazon rain forest.
This whole energy thing, there is no free lunch. Sustainable technology like solar, hydroelectric and wind just do not produce enough energy to meet demand. And there are downsides to those as well, like dead birds and no more salmon and other disruptions in fish populations.
10-06-16, 06:06 AM
#24
consuming faster than we can supply based on what? Have you seen what happened to oil prices in the past 18 months? We keep finding oil and natural gas all over the place. You only want to get away from oil for hippy feel good reasons, clearly not based on any economics. Worldwide oil demand is falling in relation to supply, hence the cratered price of oil.
10-06-16, 06:17 AM
#25
Lexus Fanatic
Marshall, personally I feel that ethanol is way more destructive to the environment and to the food supply than pumping oil out of the ground. If we were to run our country 100% on ethanol, we'd all starve because all of the arable land would be a corn field for making fuel, not feeding the population. I'm not going to get into the complicated politics of agricultural subsidies for corn/ethanol production and its effect on the price of food, but do know that the prices in your grocery store are higher because we are growing fuel instead of food on the farm.
Now as for Brazil, their fleet does not run on 100% ethanol. Most cars there are "flex-fuel", which can run on E25 or E100(25% ethanol, 75% gas, or 100% ethanol).
10-06-16, 06:36 AM
#26
Lexus Champion
As was pointed out in earlier posts, though (and those posters were correct) all-electric cars, in most cases, simply shift the pollution-load from the vehicle's tailpipe to the electrical-generating plant, where one still has to deal with nuclear waste or coal/oil burning. Only a small minority of electrical plants operate by solar, wind, water-power, or other non-polluting sources.
10-06-16, 06:44 AM
#27
Lexus Champion
You are correct when you state that the ICE is not efficient. The most efficient Toyota ICE runs about 40% but that is in a hybrid gas-electric powertrain; the most efficient standalone ICE runs about 35% (one-third efficiency, with the other two-thirds wasted as heat and noise).
10-06-16, 06:48 AM
#28
This is what I am referring to when I say that there has to be a societal change. Most of the contributors to this discussion are concentrating on ONLY the automotive aspects; there have to be other changes as well, including the change to cleaner sources of electricity generation.
10-06-16, 08:11 AM
#29
Lexus Fanatic
Thread Starter
iTrader: (20)
running out of oil has been the fear mongering claim made for decades and it has been consistently wrong over and over. with shale oil (from your own province 
as well as many other places), fracking, horizontal seam drilling, etc., the world has access to more oil than ever, and that doesn't even take into consideration places like the arctic which supposedly has more oil under it than all the oil ever discovered. we are NOT going to run out of oil probably in the next century at least.i'm certainly glad though that the world has developed alternatives for cars like hybrids and electrics and hydrogen. sadly we don't use CNG enough which is an insanely vast supply source.
running cars off solar for example though is ludicrously unrealistic for most places in the world.
gasoline engines may not be that efficient, but they're not going away any time soon.
10-06-16, 09:41 AM
#30
Formerly Bad Co
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Electric cars just shift the air pollution problem over to the electric grid. That means more power plants, more windmills(I know I'd hate to live next to those stupid things), more nuclear plants, more coal plants, etc. I don't know how green Germany's power grid is, but if you want to cut emissions, that is the place to start. And stop subsidizing diesel fuel for cars, as that policy has led to fouling Europe's air more than anything else in the past 20 years. Get your fleet back to running on gas, we have much cleaner air in the US due to this fact alone.
Also I agree with Udel, I don't see how this is possible without destroying the German auto industry. Hydrogen fuel for cars, we still haven't cracked the nut on how to make the fuel affordable, so I see the internal combustion engine staying around for A LONG TIME. Electric cars, unless the tech changes significantly in the future, are going to continue to be a novelty(keep in mind that the range with current batteries in freezing temperatures is cut anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2). Guess what, Germany is freaking cold in the winter, its not a paradise like California where it never gets cold and the batteries in your Tesla are a lot more effective.
Also I agree with Udel, I don't see how this is possible without destroying the German auto industry. Hydrogen fuel for cars, we still haven't cracked the nut on how to make the fuel affordable, so I see the internal combustion engine staying around for A LONG TIME. Electric cars, unless the tech changes significantly in the future, are going to continue to be a novelty(keep in mind that the range with current batteries in freezing temperatures is cut anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2). Guess what, Germany is freaking cold in the winter, its not a paradise like California where it never gets cold and the batteries in your Tesla are a lot more effective.
Roughly 27 percent of Germany's electricity is from renewables; the goal is at least80 percent by 2050. On July 25, 2015, it was very windy in the north and sunny in the south. For a few hours renewables yielded about three-quarters of Germany's electricity.oughly 27 percent of Germany's electricity is from renewables; the goal is at least80 percent by 2050.
Last edited by doge; 10-06-16 at 09:47 AM.