Re:Mining robot stranded on Pacific Ocean floor in deep-sea ...
by moistbar on Thursday April 29, 2021 @03:44PM
(#26985757)
Electricity can come from whatever source you need. You're not tied to a specific fuel with batteries like you are with an ICE or would be with the alcohol/generator system you proposed. You can charge a Tesla off of an alcohol generator and have it drive the same as if you charged it with a diesel or petrol generator. The same can't be said about alcohol- or petrol-powered vehicles.
Global catastrophe blocks out the sun? Fine, charge off nuclear. Nuclear generators destroyed by war or terrorism? Just use wind. The flexibility is what makes electric cars superior, and being able to store energy is what makes intermittent renewables like solar and wind viable when it's not sunny or windy outside.
Most importantly, in a perfect world you'd only have to make the battery once. Some means of recycling dendrite-ridden lithium back into usable material would go an exceptionally long way as well.
We gotta store excess power somewhere, though.
E.g. an electric car should use alcohol fuel and a small generator rather than fancy batteries.
You can grow sugar crops, convert them to fuel (reclaiming the non-fuel parts), and then use that to power your infrastructure. It's carbon-neutral, environmentally sound (waaaaaaay more than batteries), and you can do it today. No sea mines required.
The only downside is that you have to live within your solar power budget, but we have to do that anyway to counter global warming (until cheap fusion becomes a thing.)
Here's a video of Václav Smil at Driva Climate Investment Meeting 2019 giving a talk called "Investing in a changing climate – what we can learn from historic energy transitions". https://youtu.be/gkj_91IJVBk The presentation is IMO very interesting, and the conclusion is sobering: "Only absolute cuts in energy use would work." ( https://youtu.be/gkj_91IJVBk?t=2283 )
We are going to have to use less energy. We don't have to endure lower QoL but we do have to achieve our Quality of Life more efficiently.