Ep 142: Beyond Zero Emissions

Beyond Zero Emissions is a not-for-profit, volunteer run organisation whose core goal is to develop blueprints for the implementation of climate change solutions. In partnership with the University of Melbourne's Energy Research Institute, BZE are undertaking the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Project, which puts together fully costed transition plans for getting Australia to zero emissions in ten years using commercially available technology.

Last year I attended their launch event for the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan which goes into detail about how Australia can reach 100% renewable energy within a decade. Speakers at the launch included former NSW premier Bob Carr, member for Wentworth Malcolm Turnbull, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam and Matthew Wright, Executive Director of BZE. The event was hosted by journalist Quentin Dempster.

In this podcast, with permission from Matthew Wright, I bring you Matthew's speech at this launch which details the science behind their proposal. I also chatted to BZE volunteer Petra Liverani at the recent Say yes to a price on carbon pollution rally in Sydney.

Click play below or listen to this show here:



If you'd like to hear what Turnbull, Carr and Ludlam had to say, check out the full video of the launch below, reproduced here with permission.

Biofuels debate - The UK Report in The Helix

Here is another UK report I wrote for The Helix, Australia's premier science education magazine since 1986.

UK Biofuel Debate:

The UK has embarked on an audacious new scheme to lessen the country’s fossil-fuel dependency and to minimise climate change. But not everyone is in favour.

From April 15, all petrol and diesel sold in UK pumps must contain at least 2.5% biofuel. The target is set to rise to 5% by 2010, with the motive to make Britain's 33 million vehicles greener. But critics argue that the benefits from the scheme may be outweighed by the negative effects of biofuel production, which results in forest clearing, the loss of habitat, and may indeed speed up climate change.

Biofuels are made from renewable biological sources such as sugar cane or maize, and can have advantages over traditional fossil fuel sources as, when they are burnt, they only release the carbon dioxide they absorbed from the atmosphere during their lifetime. In contrast, fossil fuels release massive quantities of carbon locked out of the Earth’s carbon cycle for millions of years.

Whilst burning biofuels adds less carbon to the atmosphere than burning fossil fuels, biofuels require extensive land clearing. This could involve cutting down established forests that absorb much more carbon dioxide than the newly planted biofuel crops. Additional carbon dioxide may escape from the soil or peat, where it was trapped by the roots of trees.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota published a study in February arguing that converting Brazilian, Southeast Asian and US rainforests, peatlands, savannas, and grasslands to produce biofuels will release 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuels they replace.

Apart from the climate change implications, there may be catastrophic conservation consequences for not only virgin forests, but also animal species. In South America, sugar cane production for biofuels has wiped out the habitat of the large Alagoas curassow, making it extinct.

The other major problem with the move towards biofuels is food security. Poorer countries are now switching land previously used to grow food crops to more profitable biofuel crops. The UK, which sources much of its produce from overseas, has already seen food prices rise.

Iceland in G Magazine

This travel/science article of mine about Iceland was recently published in G Magazine, the world's only monthly environmental publication.

Read the article here.
And you can read more on this site on Iceland in this Iceland article and in this Iceland video.

Many of my photos of Iceland can be found here.

Short little video about Iceland

Here is the promised video from Iceland - a spectacular place that the video in my still camera, or the quick time in which I edited this together, does not do justice to.

You can watch the youtube video here:



If you can not see this, it is at this link:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BMivvyA8JIA

The mp4 for downloading in itunes is here

Iceland - The coolest place on Earth

There is a sure fire-way to cure yourself of boredom, joblessness and that nagging feeling that you should possibly be doing more with yourself and engaging with reality, and that's by doing the exact opposite of that and escaping reality.

And for an Australian, there really isn't anywhere further away you could go than Iceland - actually, from this cool little page, the exact opposite side of the Earth to Sydney is in the middle of the Atlantic - the opposite to Iceland is down near Antarctica below New Zealand - but my point remains... It has been a dream of mine to go to Iceland for many years - partially because of this escapism, but also because everything I had heard of this place suggested that I may like it - forward thinking, a little bit socialist, very clean (although ironically, because it only has around 300 000 people and a large aluminium industry, it has one of the largest carbon foot-prints per capita in the world), attractive and reserved Nordic people, stunningly beautiful and interesting scenery, as well as a bit of a science novelty. For me, I find it fascinating that of the 103 000 square kilometres of land that makes up Iceland, 11% is covered in glaciers, 64% in wasteland (cooled lava flows mainly, giving it a desolate "moon-like" appearance) and 2% by lakes, leaving only around 23% for vegetation. This fact, and its isolation, mean that there are relatively few people living in Iceland.

Perhaps it is a virtue of the amazing geothermal activity in the country, mainly due to its position straddling the Eurasian and American plates which are slowly moving apart, but Iceland has very progressive policies regarding energy usage. Perhaps it is also because if our worst fears of global warming come true, then it wont be long before the massive Icelandic glaciers melt (within 200 years our tour guide mentioned), which would not only be an environmental catastrophe in itself but could cause unknown flooding, avalanches and displacement for Icelanders.

The country is setting itself up to be "Carbon Neutral". Renewable energy makes up 72% of Iceland's energy portfolio, well ahead of the next best in the world, New Zealand, on 57%. The importation of coal stopped more than 50 years ago after the 2nd World War. The energy economy is based around hydroelectricity and geothermal power plants, and whilst it is fortunate that Iceland is in a position to take advantage of its geography for this purpose (perhaps things would be different if they were on top of oil like Norway or the Middle East, or Coal and Uranium like Australia - although Australia does also have a lot of sun for solar power...), at least it is aiming to be a world leader in other renewable sources. In a world where oil security is becoming more and more important, firms such as Icelandic New Energy Ltd are aiming to create the world's first hydrogen economy, with a number of buses in the country's capital Reykjavik already powered by the renewable source. The aim is eventually to power the country's large fishing fleet with Hydrogen, and this is quite difficult as many of the ships are quite old. As the technology is new, it is also quite expensive, and being a small, isolated country, it may be difficult for the Icelandic Hydrogen industry to compete internationally, and so therefore it will take a while before the costs reduce enough for Hydrogen power to be common place.

The government even offsets each of its overseas trips by planting trees to soak up the CO2 through the Iceland Carbon Fund. Can you imagine how many trees the Howard Government would have to plant to offset all the Prime Minister's trips to the UK to see the cricket at Lords? Imagine how many trees Tony Blair would have to plant to offset his recent farewell tour to Africa?

Iceland are aiming to minimise their carbon footprint through renewable energy developments, and through programs such as the "Green Flag Program" in which schools are awarded prizes for meeting their own environmental goals. One primary school on the Snaefellness peninsula - a day trip from the capital Reykjavik - built a dam to generate electricity to provide renewable power for local greenhouses. They also built windmills and captured solar energy. I think the most environmentally conscious thing that my primary school did was plant a couple of trees in a new garden - but this was after it lost half of its area for a new motorway.

87% of Iceland's heating comes from geothermal energy, and the exportation of geothermal know-how is one of the largest ways that Iceland contributes to foreign aid. The slight smell of sulphur in the bathrooms is the only downside.

One of the really fascinating developments in Iceland in recent times has been the interest Internet giants such as Yahoo! and Google have shown in moving server farms to the country, due to the fact that the energy is cheap and renewable. Server farms use up enormous amounts of energy, mostly because the computers consume ridiculously large quantities for cooling. This is a real problem, as if the servers go down, this has the potential to produce catastrophic results for world business and commerce. With the world linked up through the Internet, there would be no problem locating server farms in Iceland, although a new submarine cable will need to be laid. The fact that much of the land is not occupied also helps. This is being seen by locals as a much more environmentally friendly way of making money and creating jobs compared to the aluminium industry which currently generates much of Iceland's wealth and creates the surprising effect that per capita, Iceland is one of the world's largest carbon emitters.

Iceland was not always so forward thinking. Studies have shown that at the time of settlement, around 1000 years ago, the country was 30% covered in forest. These days, due to erosion, farming, grazing and other human uses, the figure it closer to 1%. However, around 1 million trees are being planted each year through the Icelandic Forestry Commission.

Another really interesting feature of the landscape is the presence of geysers - the English word actually comes from Geysir - an erupting spring in Iceland. A geyser is a hot spring that erupts periodically, shooting a column of hot water and steam into the air. About 1,000 exist worldwide, and they are formed by surface water gradually seeping down through the ground until it meets rock heated by magma. The heated water then rises back toward the surface. As the geyser fills, the water at the top of where the water is reaching the surface cools down and presses down on the hotter water beneath. This superheats the water at the bottom due to the pressure from the top, and eventually temperatures near the bottom of the geyser rise to a point where boiling begins and the steam rises explosively to the top, giving us the geyser show.

It is not quite as cold as you might expect for somewhere very high up in the North. The North Atlantic Current keeps temperatures high. When I was there, the sun was going down at around 2 am and rising again at 4 am, and I had the very strange experience of buying ice-cream at midnight with the sun still out! I have some Iceland video that I will put up the site once it has all been edited.

OK, that's about it for now on Iceland, but I am hoping to do some more stories on this fascinating country and will post some video soon. Something for a future story is the absolutely fascinating island of Surtsey, an island that was formed when a volcano off the coast of Iceland and 130 metres below sea-level started to erupt. We might also tackle the hot springs, Gulfoss waterfall, I'm sure we'll think of something!

Many of my photos of Iceland can be found here

The podcast can be found here and the individual episode here

The Beer Drinking Scientists Podcast is now Official!

Originally uploaded by westius.

The Beer Drinking Scientists is now a stand-alone podcast, with a new format from our earlier short pilots (episodes 1, 2 and 3) and its own new website (http://bds.podbean.com).

Join Darren Osborne and myself for a drink and a chat as we take a look at the science issues affecting us all. In each episode, we will have a chat to the locals and see how science influences them, their opinions on the scientific topics of the day and how these topics influence us culturally, politically, and any other relevant way of which you can think.

In the first episode, we tackle the biggest scientific topic at the moment - Climate Change. What it is, who’s responsible and why we should care.

You can subscribe to the podcast here (or add http://bds.podbean.com/feed to itunes or your feed reader). The first episode can be directly downloaded here.

You can subscribe directly through itunes here.

Each podcast episode will come out roughly every 4-6 weeks, be about 30 minutes long and contain interviews, news and views, beer glass chinking, informed and not-so informed opinion and plenty of good fun. You can contact us at beerdrinkingscientists@gmail.com.

The science and costs of diesel cars

Sorry for the delay in this post - but I have a very good reason....

For the second time in the last month, I was stranded in different city, this time Australia's capital, Canberra.

But it wasn't turbulence or aircraft delays that kept me there. It was car repairs, and these car repairs not only taught me a little about the science of diesel engines, but about how expensive diesel cars can be.

So this week's post is about the science and costs behind diesel cars.

The story begins with a lovely weekend away with the girl, staying at a great hotel, eating nice food and generally having my one decadent weekend for 2007. Having taken in Little Britain Live, I headed out of the gravel car park, not knowing at the time of the troubles that lay ahead.

To put this in context, I drive a VW Golf, and its a diesel car. Its a good car, and two reasons I quite like it are:

• I do a lot of driving, long and short distance, and diesel cars are more fuel efficient than petrol cars,
• Even though when you burn diesel it produces more greenhouse gases per litre than petrol, the fact that diesel engines are so efficient means that per kilometre you produce less greenhouse gas output than petrol.
  

Diesel itself is heavier than petrol as it is less refined. It weighs about 850 grams per litre, compared to around 720 grams per litre for petrol as it contains longer chained organic molecules (typically C14 vs C9). Essentially, these longer chained molecules release more energy when burned in the presence of oxygen, and this means that for the same volume of fuel, you get more energy and more carbon dioxide output (15% more in each case). Combined with the fact that diesel engines are intrinsically more efficient than petrol engines (~20-40%), you get lots of kilometres per litre (miles per gallon for our US readers) and less greenhouse gas output per litre.

Diesel is less refined that petrol. This means it is easier to isolate the heavier diesel from the crude oil that comes out of the ground than the lighter, more volatile petrol. One would think therefore that diesel should be cheaper, and it is in many parts of the world. Strangely, in Australia at the moment, diesel is more expensive than petrol. It seems to be because much less diesel is sold in Australia than petrol and so there are less competitive demands, and because it is not subject to the discount cycles that affect petrol - for a good explanation, see here.

Anyway, enough science and commerce and back to my story.

Driving through the gravel car park, a rock has flicked up, smashed the guard on the bottom of the car (see the gaping whole in the above picture), punctured something called the fuel cooler, which in turn bent the connection to the return fuel line, meaning that the plastic undercarriage of the car, the fuel cooler and the fuel line needed to be completely replaced, to the tune of $860 including labour costs.

Now this had me a little confused. What is this fuel cooler? What is a return line?

The first thing I discovered is that diesel coursing through the lines in a diesel car is under extremely high pressure, and so special plastic tubing must be used. This means that you can not simply cut out the part of the hose with the hole in it and clamp the two ends back together - you need to replace the whole thing. This is essentially why it cost so much - every damaged part needed to be replaced in its entirety (and imported from Germany I guess....)

There are a few differences between diesel and petrol cars. A petrol engine compresses the fuel at a ratio of 8:1 to 12:1 - this ratio is the ratio between the volume of a combustion chamber when the piston is at the bottom of its stroke and the volume when the piston is at the top of its stroke. The higher the compression ratio, the more energy that can be obtained, as there is more fuel and oxygen crammed into the same space on ignition. Diesel engines use a compression ratio of 14:1 to 25:1. This higher compression ratio leads to increased efficiency.

Hole in Car
Originally uploaded by westius.

Unlike a petrol engine, a spark plug is not needed to ignite the fuel, as this compression raises the temperature above the flash point of the mixture - when a gas is compressed, its temperature rises. Diesel is directly injected into the combustion chamber, where compressed air is injected and the highly compressed mixture ignites. This is unlike a petrol engine where fuel and air are mixed before entering the chamber, and then the mixture is ignited by a spark plug. Petrol can not be compressed to the same extent as diesel as the compression would raise the temperature above the flash point well before this ratio was reached. This is why diesel engines are intrinsically more efficient than petrol engines.

I believe the return line returns diesel that is not used in the combustion back to the fuel tank. It would seem that this diesel is at extremely high temperature and pressure, and so needs to be cooled. This is where the fuel cooler tube comes in. A punctured fuel cooler and broken return line meant that about 20 litres of diesel leaked into car park, but luckily there was enough diesel floating around in the lines to get me to the nearest service station.

A couple of days later, after many phone calls to the service people and to VW, I got my car back. Unfortunately, this does not fall under warranty as it was an "accident" - fair enough in theory as no parts failed (one could argue the plastic on the bottom of the car really should be able to sustain the impact of rocks in a car park when travelling at low speed however...), but very annoying in practise as it was completely accidental with no one at fault. It also meant I didn't qualify for free towing - so I'm avoiding paying that remarkably large bill too! ($200 for towing across 2 suburbs??)

Anyway, enough whining, its a good story and I must be zen about it - I am lucky to have a car at all, and just recently have heard some horror stories about car damage. It taught me some nice science and gave me another opportunity to chat to my insurance company! I am sure I have got some of the science of diesel cars wrong, so if you can correct anything I have said in this post, please do. I would like to know more myself! Let me know if anything similar has happened to you.

This will be out on the podcast - mp3 here.
For some more info on diesel engines, check out How Stuff Works.

The Beer Drinking Scientists - Promo 1

Join myself and Darren Osborne as we bring you a new series called The Beer Drinking Scientists. In these podcasts, Darren and myself talk all things beer and science topics of the day.

In this very first episode, we visit the James Squires Brew House in Darling Harbour, Sydney, sample the local ales, give them a good discussion and rating, before tackling the scientific topic of how humans perceive the temperature.

The theory behind these podcasts is, as Darren says, that the beer might kill off some of the slower brain cells and allow the smarter ones to get down to business on the weightier scientific topics. And, we have a great time talking science in a social context.

Enjoy - listen to the show directly here.

Global Warming

What is Global Warming? Are humans creating it and is there anything we can do about it?

Listen to this show here