I misremembered the actual value, but that doesn't change the overall point that the whole process from power generation to the wheel (in the case of vehicles) have a very poor efficiency, not significantly better than traditional diesel cars and much worse than battery powered vehicles. Plus my opinion appears unpopular in marketing and financial circles, but relatively popular among engineers. Conclude whatever you want.
I sincerely believe we'll reach 0% carbon by civilisational collapse, so that's not exactly that I'm against green power, either.
It is not about wheel. Engineers operate with facts.
World should be Zero Carbon yesterday to keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C [1].
> The Russian Federation supplies a significant volume of fossil fuels and is the largest exporter of oil, natural gas and hard coal to the European Union.
> Part of the aim of the Energy Union is to diversify the EU’s gas supplies away from Russia, which has already proved to be an unreliable partner, first in 2006 and then in 2009, and which threatened to become one again at the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine in 2013–2014 [2].
Natural gas is both climate and political issue. How much is 40 GW in bcm (Billion cubic metres of natural gas [3])?
40 GW year / 40 petajoules
31.54 [4] bcm
That and wind may help with 50 bcm / month winter time [5].
I am all for nuclear energy but it costs way more [6].
I don't think that Russia is an unreliable partner, on the contrary in fact. Anyway I'm not arguing for natural gas at all, but for syngas, which should be carbon neutral. I never said "we shouldn't diversify", however I think we should diversify towards things that work.
H2 is hyped at the moment but can only be at best a very small part of the solution. Synthetic zero-carbon methane is almost certainly more interesting because the infrastructure is already there, most things working on oil can be converted to methane, etc.
I sincerely believe we'll reach 0% carbon by civilisational collapse, so that's not exactly that I'm against green power, either.