Airbus reveals ‘zero-emission’ plane plan – maybe by 2035

Image credit: Airbus

Nonsensical climate virtue signalling takes to the skies. Hydrogen production is expensive, and operating two fuelling systems at airports also sounds costly. ‘Zero emission’ only applies if hydrogen is produced without burning any fuels – as the EU recently told the Netherlands – so the burden on renewables to power entire countries, plus all their vehicles, will have to extend to aircraft as well? Pie in the sky springs to mind.
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Aerospace giant Airbus has announced plans to build zero-emission aircraft using hydrogen power technology.

On Monday (21 September), the firm revealed three concept designs that are on the table and is targeting a 2035 entry-into-service, reports Euractiv.

Airbus is working on three designs for aircraft that could be zero-emission, which range from a conventional turbofan jet with space for 200 passengers to a ‘blended wing’ concept that is a significant departure from the current generation of planes.

“These concepts will help us explore and mature the design and layout of the world’s first climate-neutral, zero-emission commercial aircraft, which we aim to put into service by 2035,” said CEO Guillaume Faury.

EU’s stricter CO2 targets “impossible”, say automakers

Money to burn?

The EU pushes ever further into its climate fantasy land, where so-called targets can be raised at will and the victims of them miraculously obey, regardless of any real world obstacles like actually selling cars. It prefers noises made by teenage ‘activists’ to anything said by the wealth-creating vehicle makers. The bill for this insanity is now expected to top a trillion euros every three years. Where are such gigantic sums supposed to come from?
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The EU’s target to reduce its industrial emissions by 2030 should increase from 40% to “at least 55%”, European Commission (EC) president Ursula von der Leyen said in her State of the Union address.

That would seriously burden Europe’s auto industry, says Fleet Europe.

The cause of decarbonisation is better served by better policies rather than stricter targets, ACEA counters.

U.S. should launch a national energy innovation mission to reach climate goals, says report

If the U.S or anywhere else thinks it needs to spend a fortune on energy innovation to meet ‘critical needs’, which may or may not deliver anything useful, what does that say about existing technologies like wind and solar power? This report suggests they’re at least 50% short of reaching the pie-in-the-sky targets of climate alarmist dreamers with existing (zero emission) technology, so they must now try to invent their way out of trouble with what they call ‘advanced energy’. Good luck with that, if they still intend to shun nuclear power. Will the climate notice anyway, whatever they end up doing?
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Research released today recommends that the U.S. federal government triple its annual investment in energy innovation over the next five years to speed clean energy transitions around the world and build advanced energy industries at home, says TechXplore.

The Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia SIPA released Energizing America: A Roadmap to Launch a National Energy Innovation Mission, a detailed guide for federal policymakers to raise energy innovation as a core national priority.

Co-authored with scholars from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), Energizing America is the first in a series of volumes to kickstart a U.S. federal clean energy innovation policy agenda.

Green apartment blocks are a hit – with mosquitos

Chengdu green apartment block [image credit: yahoo news]

Another green dream turns out to be a disaster.
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An experimental green housing project in a Chinese megacity promised prospective residents life in a “vertical forest”, with manicured gardens on every balcony, says TechXplore.

All 826 apartments were sold out by April this year, according to the project’s estate agent, but instead of a modern eco-paradise, the towers look like the set of a desolate, post-apocalyptic film.

The problem? The mosquitoes love the plants too.

Only a handful of families have moved into Chengdu’s Qiyi City Forest Garden because of an infestation, state media have reported.

The project in the southwestern city was built in 2018, with every private balcony designed to provide space for plants to grow, according to local media reports.

Without any tenants to care for them, the eight towers have been overrun by their own plants—and invaded by mosquitoes.

Plants have almost entirely swallowed up some neglected balconies, with branches hanging over railings all over the towers, footage shot this month showed.

Full report here.

Council ‘sorry’ as energy company collapses

This scheme trumpeted: “Since July 2018 all of the electricity we supply to our customers is 100% green*. Whichever tariff you take from us all of the electricity we provide is certified as being sourced from UK based wind and solar generators.”
But now comes the real cost – a loss of many millions of pounds incurred by local ratepayers as it all goes pear-shaped. If anyone is surprised, they shouldn’t be.
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The council leader admits selling the customer base will not make back the millions it invested, reports BBC News.

Robin Hood Energy (RHE) is shutting with the loss of 230 jobs despite millions poured into it by Nottingham City Council.

British Gas will take on its customer base of thousands of homes in England.

The council said the sale will not make up all its losses, which leaked documents suggest are £38.1 million.

Radical new climate targets will save EU economy, Timmermans claims

credit: b3regions.eu

EU climate fantasy is about to move up a gear, it seems. Should ‘save’ in the headline read ‘sink’, or can the EU surprise us with evidence that spending big on offshore wind turbines is somehow going to deliver economic benefits?
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If the European Green Deal made economic sense before the COVID-19 crisis, “it makes even more sense now” because it will help reboot the economy, said Frans Timmermans, the EU Commission vice-president in charge of climate action.

In a speech on Tuesday (1 September), Timmermans confirmed that Brussels will forge ahead with proposals for new climate targets this month, saying the objective will be to align the EU’s 2030 objectives with the bloc’s long-term goal of becoming climate neutral by 2050.

“Very soon we will propose new emissions targets for 2030,” Timmermans said, announcing a raft of new policy proposals to come out in the autumn, including a building renovation wave and an offshore energy strategy to boost the uptake of renewables such as offshore wind, reports The Times (via The GWPF).

The proposal will be accompanied by a detailed economic analysis to evaluate the costs and benefits of reducing the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50 or 55% below 1990 levels by 2030, up from 40% currently.

Climate Elite Say Thee, Not Me, Must $acrifice For The Planet

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Climate virtue signalling is a popular sport among the uber-wealthy and glitterati, but hard-working taxpayers are left to stump up most of the cash for the futile pursuit of imaginary carbon redemption that they demand.

PA Pundits - International

By Peter Murphy~

The rich are different from you and me, as the saying goes. They have money. The super-rich have even more.

Some of the wealthiest people on the planet are driving and funding the climate change political agenda for more electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels, and eradication of nuclear energy and fossil fuels. Their message is clear: America and the world must reduce their reliance on traditional energy sources and adapt in order to save the planet. That means higher costs, less energy consumption and reduced living standards.

The problem with such people advocating these climate policies, with all their negative ramifications, is that none of them are leading by example, which calls into question their own sincerity and the validity of their cause.

One example among many is Michael Bloomberg, the successful former three-term mayor of New York City and spectacularly unsuccessful presidential…

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Europe’s climate goal: Revolution

As usual, EU leaders are long on rhetoric but short on commonsense. All their expensive plans will have no effect worth mentioning on the climate, but a big and unwelcome effect on the economies of their countries.
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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likes to compare her Green Deal to “Europe’s man on the moon moment.” That’s almost certainly a galactic understatement, says Politico.eu.

Cutting the Continent’s emissions to “net zero” — meaning Europe would sequester at least as much greenhouse gases as it produces — by 2050 will require a radical overhaul of nearly every aspect of the modern economy.

Can renewables fully sustain our current way of life? No chance

We’ve added the ‘no chance’ to the original headline, but this OilPrice.com article (extract below) confirms it right away. ‘Net zero’ climate obsessives, instead of trying to blame humans for changing the weather, need to stop running away from reality and face some inconvenient facts.
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“The reason renewables can’t power modern civilization is because they were never meant to. One interesting question is why anybody ever thought they could.”

Michael Shellenberger, Time magazine “Hero of the Environment,” wrote this commentary in an article in Forbes.

According to Shellenberger, president at Environmental Progress and an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), renewables are simply incapable of sustaining our current way of life.

California doomed to frequent blackouts due to battery shortage – Bloomberg Green

A self-induced shortage of reliable electricity generation is the real issue in California but its leaders can’t accept that, for mistaken ideological reasons supposedly related to the climate of the Earth. Instead they create their own problems due to unworkable energy policies, then discover they can’t solve them. Other leaders with similar ideas should take note and learn, but probably won’t, preferring to parrot ‘net zero’.

H/T The GWPF
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Problem is there aren’t enough of these massive batteries to go around right now, says Bloomberg Green.

As the threat of blackouts continues to plague California, officials are pointing to battery storage as a key to preventing future power shortfalls.

Big oil need not apply: UK raises the bar for UN climate summit – then all head for the airport?

What do these sanctimonious blowhards imagine all the journeys to the conference — without which it wouldn’t take place at all — will be powered by? The hypocrisy is epic.
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The UK government will not accept sponsorship from fossil fuel companies for next year’s UN climate summit in Glasgow, Climate Home News understands.

Like in previous years, the UK hosts of the two-week event are seeking corporate sponsors to shoulder some of the cost, initially estimated at £250 million ($330m).

Unlike in previous years, which have seen large polluters use such deals to bolster their green credentials, sponsors of Cop26 are expected to have a credible plan to cut their emissions to net zero by 2050, the official website states.

Renewable biogas from cow manure injected into grid in UK first

UK first or UK farce? Another consequence of the irrational fear of trace gases in the atmosphere.
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Renewable biogas made from cow manure has been injected into the National Grid in a UK first which will create enough energy to power ten homes for a year, reports yahoo! news.

The Murrow Anaerobic Digestion Plant in Cambridgeshire mixed the manure with straw and left it in an oxygen-free environment to produce methane, which has been sold to the grid so people can use it to cook meals and heat their homes.

Biogas is being increasingly looked at by energy companies as it offers far better carbon emissions savings than natural methane gas.

Study outlines five thermal energy grand challenges for decarbonization

Green dreamland

Only five ‘grand’ challenges? Better be quick — we keep hearing there’s supposed to be a climate emergency on. Yes, throw out existing successful energy solutions when there’s nothing of equivalence to replace them with. Then wonder what to do next, while muttering about climate change. Great plan! Or maybe not.
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Solar and wind power are an important part of solving the problem of climate change, but these renewable technologies on their own probably will never provide the energy for many industrial processes, like making steel, reports TechXplore.

Approximately 90 percent of the world’s energy use involves generation or manipulation of heat, including the cooling of buildings and food.

Maintaining modern economies and improving life in developing economies while mitigating climate change will require five major advances in how we convert, store and transmit thermal energy, according to a new paper in Nature Energy from Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The High Costs And Low Benefits Of Electric Vehicles

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Exposing some of the disconnects between carbo-phobe ideology, as expressed in (for example) UK private transport policy, and on-the-ground realities.

PA Pundits - International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

The rush to decarbonize every nation in the world in one or maybe two decades reflects the “I want it all NOW!” philosophy imbued through modern education systems. Current and recent former students – and their teachers – demand a perfect world (since they can envision one) and exhibit zero patience (hence the nationwide riots in the U.S.).

Hopefully the mad stampede to destroy the West’s ability to use fossil fuels at all will be sidelined by harsh realities of economics, logistics, and resource availability (including a hoped for reticence to rely on child slave labor to satisfy their blood lust). Yet the United Kingdom, formerly a bastion of sanity, has mandated, as part of its drive toward an all-electric society, the installation of electric vehicle charging stations in every home by 2030 and that all new cars and vans be hydrogen or electric vehicles (and…

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There aren’t enough batteries to electrify all cars – switch to plan B?

Tesla plant [image credit: Steve Jurvetson @ Wikipedia]

H/T TechXplore

But Plan B includes putting heavy batteries in already heavy trucks, making them too heavy for hauling goods — or reducing their payloads. But at least the fact that there aren’t going to be anywhere near enough batteries to replace all fuel-powered vehicles with expensive EVs is out in the open, leaving climate obsessives with yet another headache. Wade through the usual paranoid propaganda to see how big the problem is.
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We need to change our transportation system, and we need to do it quickly, claims The Conversation.

Road transportation is a major consumer of fossil fuels, contributing 16 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, which warm up the Earth’s atmosphere and cause changes to the climate.

It also pollutes the air, threatening health and costing taxpayers billions of dollars annually.

At the same time, electric vehicles are getting cheaper, and vehicle range and the availability of charging stations are improving.

This is exciting for many because it seems to suggest an easy and convenient answer to the problem of transportation emissions: if everyone swapped their fossil-fuelled vehicle for an electric equivalent, we could all keep driving, safe in the knowledge that we are no longer killing the planet by doing so—and all while enjoying a new car that is quiet, cheap to power and fun to drive.

Everybody wins, right? Unfortunately, it’s unlikely to be that simple.

UK needs hydrogen, carbon capture to meet net zero goal, National Grid says

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) [credit: cnet.com]

Aren’t they in effect spelling out why the target is unachievable, not to say ridiculous? Whichever way you look at it – cost, feasibility, technology, benefits (lack of?) etc. – it has failure written all over it.
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Britain’s goal of achieving net zero emissions by mid-century is achievable but immediate action is needed across a range of technologies including carbon capture and storage (CCS), electricity grid operator National Grid said.

Last year Britain became the first major economy to pass a law to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, compared with its previous target of at least an 80% reduction from 1990 levels, says yahoo!finance.

“Reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is achievable. However, it requires immediate action across all key technologies and policy areas, and full engagement across society and end consumers,” National Grid said in its annual Future Energy Scenarios report.

Searching for the missing link: the hole in the zero-carbon bucket

*Missing* being the operative word. Any article such as this one, showing power station cooling towers appearing to emit black steam – by careful use of dusk shadowing – instantly announces itself as human-accusing climate propaganda, like all the others before it using the same camera trick. But as Star Trek’s Scotty used to say: ‘Ye canna change the laws of physics’, which climate dreamers tend to forget. Outlandish costs and highly inefficient methods are not going to work on an industrial scale either. In short, there’s a massive hole in their renewables-based bucket.
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Governments and electric utilities are rapidly embracing the imperative to decarbonize energy use, says the Atlantic Council.

In the context of this effort, they have made substantial commitments to renewable energy generation and battery-based electricity storage through renewable portfolio standards and contractual commitments.

But while the costs of renewable energy generation have rapidly decreased, and their performance has improved, renewable generation is intermittent, and electric-system operators continue to rely on existing thermal resources, particularly natural gas generation, to fill in the gaps when renewable generation is not available.

Report calls for national delivery to decarbonise heating

Expensive heating [image credit: the Guardian]

Another day, another round of rampant evidence-free carbophobia. References to ‘carbon’ and ‘heat’ (amended in our headline to ‘heating’) show a dire lack of scientific understanding. They waffle about a ‘moral imperative’, but forget they rely on manipulated temperature data and failing climate models for evidence to support their lofty attitude.
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A new Heat Commission convened by the CBI and University of Birmingham has called on the Government to develop a National Delivery Body (NDB) to lead the development and implementation of a national strategy to decarbonise heat, reports Electronic Specifier.

Heat is the largest single source of UK carbon emissions, accounting for over one-third whilst decarbonising heat stands as one of the most significant challenges in reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

To overcome this challenge it is vital business, government, regulators and communities work together to shape the policies and delivery mechanisms that will be needed.

Lib Dems’ Ed Davey calls for zero carbon domestic flights by 2030

Experimental E-plane [image credit: Siemens]

If only batteries could lose some of their heavy weight during flight, matching the reductions achieved by burning fuel, he might be onto something. But as they can’t, this looks like more pie in the sky.
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Exclusive: Acting Liberal Democrat leader calls for green short haul flights to be UK’s next “moon landing mission”, reports i-news.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey is calling for all domestic flights to be zero carbon by 2030, arguing the target must become the UK’s new “moon landing mission”.

Commercial planes run mainly on fossil fuels, and engineers are struggling to design a zero carbon passenger jet to replace them.

40 Countries Discuss Depriving World Of Inexpensive Safe Energy

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Wind, solar and a few batteries are not going to propel less developed countries to any sort of prosperity.

PA Pundits - International

By Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris~

It should be no surprise to our readers that socialists across the world would recognize an opportunity in the china-virus pandemic to further handicap the use of inexpensive dependable fossil fuels to raise the standard of living of the poorest of the world by forcing them to use only undependable expensive wind and solar energy. The pandemic has allowed a world wide experiment in socialism where governments have been able to exercise tyrannical power over their citizens.

On Thursday, July 9, the International Energy Agency (IEA) convened a huge on-line event, pictured above, misleadingly titled the Clean Energy Transitions Summit. It brought together government representatives of 40 of the world’s largest economies as well as developing nations, accounting for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Although IEA executive director Dr. Fatih Birol called the summit “the most important…

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