"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again."

SaparotRob said:

Could it be that's what Ukraine had been waiting for? I follow a YouTuber named Jake Broe, he covers investing and the Russian invasion of Ukraine as of late. He mentioned that new lists of equipment to be sent to Ukraine from the U.S. seem to be announced each week now.
He has an economic take on the war. He mentioned that Putler's biggest enemy is Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. By aggressively tackling inflation, Powell will bankrupt Russia by bringing down the price of oil. If oil gets to about $60 a barrel, Putler's Russia is doomed. India and China will still get a discount on Russia's tainted oil. So that's no help for Putler. There's just so much oil those two countries can take. Especially since there aren't enough/any pipelines to those two.
I hope this doesn't get political.

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Any kind of serious US effort to reduce fossil fuel use will cause oil prices to drop.

swampyankee said:

Any kind of serious US effort to reduce fossil fuel use will cause oil prices to drop.

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Oil prices are very high, but I strongly doubt that Russia is gaining much from it. Almost every report I have seen says that Russia is only able to sell its oil at a significant discount. It is true that every country has to take every step it can to reduce the dependency on imports but that will take political will, which is seriously lacking in the UK. We have significant deposits suitable for fracking, but lack the courage to take those steps.

Lets hope others have more spine

The point being made is that western governments are damaging Russia's ability to fight on by the raising of interest rates. War or not, dealing with inflation is painful.

swampyankee said:

Any kind of serious US effort to reduce fossil fuel use will cause oil prices to drop.

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We can thank Russia for giving us all a kickstart on fossil fuel reduction. I imagine the oil dependent Arabs and Persians are none to pleased.

Admiral Beez said:

We can thank Russia for giving us all a kickstart on fossil fuel reduction. I imagine the oil dependent Arabs and Persians are none to pleased.

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It's been happening for a while, now.

But until someone comes up with a reliable alternate power source, fossil fuel fuel will be the go-to.

Pixie farts?

Greg Boeser said:

Pixie farts?

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Close - Hydrogen power would be the best avenue.

GrauGeist said:

It's been happening for a while, now.

But until someone comes up with a reliable alternate power source, fossil fuel fuel will be the go-to.

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Wind and utility scale PVs are already cheaper than fossil fuels in many parts of the world (even with storage needs).
The problem is liquid fuels.

Sustainable alternative fuels (SAF) are in the pipeline for road and air transport, but are expensive (2-6 times fossil fuels at present) and lack volume (second/third generation SAFs are about 0.5% of total air travel needs, for instance). Scale up is happening, but will take 5-10 years. There have been more SAF deals for aviation this year alone - both in number of deals and total volume of offtake - than all deals previously announced. New SAF pathways are coming as well (more F-T process and power to liquids) but these will take a little longer.

Hybrid-electric systems are there for the road and are coming for air and shipping. For commercial aviation these offer potential 20-30% fuel savings. Technology is maturing now and almost ready for commercial use. It will be on ATR's 'EVO' turboprop re-engine and the new Embraer turboprop about 2028 to 2030. Assuming no programme delays, which is unlikely.

Fully electric is a non-starter. Battery weight and energy densities are prohibitive for commercial flight. Electric engines are coming though - Rolls-Royce, Collins Aerospace, Honeywell, NASA/GE Aviation and some others are all testing 1-2 megaWatt engines at the moment (1500-3000+ hp) for use in sub 100 seat regional airliner designs post 2030.

Hydrogen is about 15-20 years off from the big time in commercial aviation (at least). Even if Airbus or Boeing decided today that they wanted to do a hydrogen powered aircraft, I'd say the earliest it would get into service would be about 2032 to 2035. The in-aircraft technology is actually maturing quite quickly, the problem is the infrastructure around it. Fossil fuel infrastructure has had the last 100+ years to be put in place. Providing a completely new network of fueling infrastructure, with lots of novel challenges around production, storage, handling and fueling, is going to take a long time to build.

GrauGeist said:

But until someone comes up with a reliable alternate power source, fossil fuel fuel will be the go-to.

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That's nuclear fission combined with hydroelectric (where possible) solar, tidal and wind power along with advancements in batteries. The first annoys the Greens, but pragmatism will prevail - nuclear is the only non-GHG power source that can reliably replace the horsepower and electricity generated by fossil fuel.

The main problem with hydrogen technology, is that hydrogen is readily available, meaning it cannot be easily monopolized by corporations. The byproduct of hydrogen power is water - something else that would be difficult to control and make money from (in Oregon, it's against the law to collect rain water in your property).

Currently, the media mantra is "Hydrogen is extremely dangerous" and "hydrogen engines would cost more than an electric vehicle", which is not true.

Back in 1965, a guy converted a Model A Ford engine to run on hydrogen and it's been done several times since - and these are direct fuel conversions from gasoline.

A hydrogen power cell can power anything from a laptop computer to an electric vehicle.

But as I mentioned above, the powers-that-be will be slow in adopting the technology. If it ever will.

I think geothermal has a lot of untapped potential as well. Not for motor vehicles, exactly, but for electrical generation. Also for heating. But it could run into the same roadblocks as fracking.

GrauGeist said:

The main problem with hydrogen technology, is that hydrogen is readily available, meaning it cannot be easily monopolized by corporations.

...
But as I mentioned above, the powers-that-be will be slow in adopting the technology. If it ever will.

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The internet just ate my lengthy reply, but the above just isn't true. Once you get beyond small-scale/experimental use, hydrogen becomes expensive and difficult to work with. The aviation sector is putting $ tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) into hydrogen R&D right now, on both sides of the Atlantic. The first one to crack hydrogen is going to rack up sales of airliners like nobody's business - the future market is valued in the $ trillions.

Issues with hydrogen are:

Price per tonne is about 2-4 times that of traditional hydrocarbons (assuming oil at roughly USD100 per barrel). Even with better energy densities (2.5-3 times better), hydrogen still needs to come down in cost by AT LEAST 50% to make it economically competitive. Hydrogen production is a ~$150 billion a year industry, so it's not like they're not trying hard on that front either.

Delivery and storage are expensive and difficult. Hydrogen needs to be stored in pressurised containers, or cryogenically frozen to keep it a liquid. Hydrogen is also much more expensive to pipe than oil or natural gas (about a two thirds premium), and much harder to transport physically via ship/road/rail than traditional fossil fuels as well thanks to the storage issues.

Weight is a problem for aviation. For a commercial aircraft, hydrogen power is hampered by the weigh of its storage apparatus. Currently, Jet A1 powered aircraft have a 60-70% advantage in terms of total fuel/fuel system weight when compared to a hydrogen powered aircraft. That's a HUGE disadvantage that needs to be overcome - an A380 on Sydney-Los Angeles will burn around 210 tonnes of fuel (on a 520 tonne aircraft) and the fuel system in total weighs about another 30 tonnes. If you powered the same aircraft with hydrogen, it would need to weigh somewhere in the region of 145 to 160 tonnes more.

There's also hydrogen's lack of volumetric efficiency. Given how bulky pressurised storage containers are, current designs would need to store hydrogen in the rear of the cabin, eating into passenger areas that could otherwise be used for revenue generating seats. A 150 seat narrowbody (A320 or 737) redone with hydrogen fuel cells to power it would lose about 30-40 seats - which would make it totally uneconomical to fly. Commercial airliners need a total rethink in terms of design if hydrogen is to be successful.

Well, the good news there is that the population curve is bending downward, so, by the time these systems are fully developed, you won't need as much capacity.

My house uses propane for heating and such. The fuel is transported in bulky, pressurized containers to my house and is then stored in a bulky, pressurized container.

Of course, I don't intend to fly my house anywhere (and I'm not in Kansas), so that's a non-issue.

My point about hydrogen versus battery-storage is aimed at motor vehicles, which currently consumes a large portion of oil production annually.

Battery powered vehicles store electricity, which is generated by various means, the large portion of that generation is via fossil fuel. Their batteries are composed of minerals which have a finite source, difficult to recycle and their mining has a negative environmental impact on the region's where it's extracted.

It's the 21st century, we can do better than that.

GrauGeist said:

Close - Hydrogen power would be the best avenue.

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yes if you will discover endless, clean supply of the hydrogen - in this moment all we are doing in this matter is based on converting hydrocarbons in hydrogen, by the way creating even more CO2

The Second Law of Thermodynamics will always kick your ass.

The 3 laws of thermodynamics:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't quit the game.