Day: December 6, 2023

Turning Food into Jet Fuel

From Watts Up With That?

Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen — 6 December 2023

One of the absolutely nuttier ideas to come out of the climate change / anti-fossil fuels mania of modern times comes from the international airlines business.  They are being pushed by governments and getting  unending pressure to signal their virtue by visibly climbing aboard the “Stop Fossil Fuels Now” bandwagon.  The hitch is, as we all know, is that airplanes need fuel to fly and currently, fossil fuels are the only choice.

But, thanks to the venerable Old Gray Lady, we are now informed, with interactive media,  that:

“Airlines Race Toward a Future of Powering Their Jets with Corn”

“Carriers want to replace jet fuel with ethanol to fight global warming. That would require lots of corn, and lots of water.”

The headline is simultaneously literal and tongue-in-cheek – the (I am fighting the urge to use the phrase “corny idea”) concept is to replace the more usual jet fuels  with ethanol made from corn. 

“Ethanol (also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound with the chemical formula CH3CH2OH. It is an alcohol, with its formula also written as C2H5OH, C2H6O or EtOH, where Et stands for ethyl. Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with a characteristic wine-like odor and pungent taste. It is a psychoactive recreational drug, and the active ingredient in alcoholic drinks.”  [ source The Wiki ]

 Ethanol is “alcohol” of the same type one finds in their whiskey, vodka, gin, moonshine, beer and now fruit drinks.  

Ethanol is a fairly simple hydrocarbon composed entirely of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen.   Products of its complete combustion are CO2 and H2O.

“Wait,” you say, “replacing fossil fuels with ethanol will still produce CO2?”  Of course it will, they are both, jet fuels and ethanol, primarily hydrocarbons. 

So why make the switch?  Already, in the U.S.A., “Today, nearly 40 percent of America’s corn crop is turned into ethanol, up from around 10 percent in the mid-2000s. This was largely because of government mandates that began in 2005 requiring gasoline to be mixed with minimum amounts of renewable fuel.” [ NY Times, linked article – hereafter just NYT ]

How much ethanol are they talking about for automotive gasoline each year?  “14 billion gallons”.  “….the 135 billion gallons of finished motor gasoline consumed in the United States contained about 14 billion gallons of fuel ethanol.”  [ source – US EIA ]

How much fossil fuel-based jet fuel is burned each year?  In 2019 commercial 95 billion gallons of jet fuel were consumed. [ source ]. The Covid panic reduced that somewhat, but the total is expected to reach that again this year.

To replace all of the fossil-fuel-based jet fuel would require, if all things were equal (which they are not) another 95 billion gallons of ethanol.

The U.S. already uses up to 40% of its total corn crop to produce the measly 14 billion gallons of ethanol mixed into gasoline.  It would take 250% of today’s total U.S.  corn crop [ something wrong with my math here – a little help? – kh ] to produce the 95 billions gallons of ethanol to replace jet fuels – not even considering the number of additional ethanol plans that would be needed.  Of course, the U.S. need not carry the whole ethanol load necessary to replace worldwide jet fuel use, but it gives us some idea of the magnitude of the suggestion.

In acreage of land planted in corn, that would be an increase from 100 million acres to 250 million acres.  Much of that acreage would have to be irrigated and aquifers in the mid-west corn belt are famously overtaxed already.

Other sugar crops such as sugar cane and sugar beets can be used to make ethanol using the same processes as for corn.  Ethanol can also be produced from almost any plant materials even  cellulosic feedstocks, such as crop residues and wood—though this is not as common. 

But wait, there’s more:  ethanol does not contain the same amount of energy per gallon as jet fuel. 

Jet Fuel contain approximately 135,000 BTUs per gallon.  Ethanol contains only 76,330 Btu/gallon which is only 56% of the energy in jet fuel.  Thus, many more gallons of ethanol will be needed – around 130 billion gallons of ethanol to replace the 95 billion gallons of jet fuel.

On the CO2 emissions side, burning 1 kg of jet fuel produces about 9.3 kg of CO2 whereas burning 1 kg of ethanol only produces 5.7 kg of CO2.  That’s about 2/3s as much CO2 per kg….but, as above, ethanol doesn’t have as much energy per kg (or BTUs per gallon) as jet fuel – only about 2/3s as much, to the actual reduction in CO2 has to be calculated taking into account the extra ethanol that has to be burned or the same energy return. 

Then there is the idea of burning food to power jet airplanes.  Of the world’s current 8 billion humans, just under 10% do not get enough food to eat – do not get enough basic calories, not to mention vitamins, proteins, micro-nutrients – they just plain do not get enough food.  Corn is good food.  Land used to grow corn for jet fuel could grow other food or other basics grains which, if transported to areas of need, would help resolve that problem.  Corn and other grains are also food for animals raised as food – chickens, pigs, cattle, sheep, rabbits and goats that provide high quality protein around the world. 

Remember, because this idea touches on the topics of fossil fuels, the environment, agriculture, animals as food and fresh water use, there is and will be a great deal of controversy.

Bottom Lines:

1.  It is my opinion that it is ill-advised, bordering on criminally negligent, to convert much needed food into fuels for cars or for airplanes, when so many people are in want of basic calories.

2.  Whether or not any real world net reduction in CO2  would result from a shift from jet fuels to ethanol in air transportation is questionable.  

3.  Arable land is just too precious to be wasted in the misguided effort to grow corn in order to replace jet fuel with ethanol – given that arable land could be used to grow better food for the underfed peoples of the world.  

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

In short, growing five times more corn so that it can be turned into ethanol is just a stinking rotten idea when there are plentiful fossil fuels.

Revisiting the idea if and when fossil fuels ‘run out’ might get my vote – but I doubt it.

If we must, for some as yet unknown reason, restrict emission from airplanes, then forbidding our governments from flying politicians around the world all the time would be my first suggestion.  Junketing businessmen and women would be next on the list – let them have video conferences. 

OK, in truth, whole books and journals full of research would be needed to cover this topic and do it justice.  I’m just sticking with “Bad Idea”.

Thanks for reading.

Wind & Solar Rent-Seekers Rage Against Communities Saving the Environment

From STOP THESE THINGS

The wind industry’s social licence looks increasingly like a licence to destroy everything in its path, including prosperous rural communities and precious ecosystems.

Wiping out huge tracts of pristine forests – habitat to rare and endangered critters of all kinds – and slicing and dicing avian predators, like hawks, falcons and eagles and bats is also apparently included in their so-called ‘licence’. And, when they spear them into the ocean floor, the license is taken to extend to the lawful killing of whales, porpoises and dolphins, and an endless trail of mangled seabirds.

So, when local communities and the politicians that attempt to represent them seek to curb or limit the scope of their self-issued ‘licence’, the wind industry and its propaganda wing descend to their very own form of indignant apoplexy.

How dare anyone object to the pointless habitat destruction, community disruption and the mindless slaughter of birds, bats and whales?

Remember this is all about saving the planet, right?

Giles Parkinson from Ruin Economy heads up the wind and solar propaganda team for rent-seekers Downunder.

Here he is in unbridled outrage mode, railing against planning controls that seek to limit the destruction these things inevitably cause on all of the accounts identified above.

NSW blots out nearly entire state for wind projects – few areas deemed “desirable” for turbines
Renew Economy
Giles Parkinson
14 November 2023

The NSW government has blotted out nearly the entire state as “less suitable” for wind farms, with few if any areas deemed “desirable” for new projects under new draft planning guidelines issued on Tuesday.

The guidelines, which include hefty new fees for wind and solar projects to provide funds to local communities as a way of overcoming social licence issues, are ostensibly about fast-tracking the planning process for new projects.

Some developers, however, have deemed the new fees as a form of tax. But the maps published with the new guidelines present an even greater problem.

They highlight huge swathes of the state deemed “desirable” or suitable for solar farms – mostly on or close to existing or proposed transmission lines – but few or no areas deemed desirable for wind projects.

Particularly noticeable is the New England area, where federal Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has been leading a raucous campaign against wind farms in particular, but also solar projects and new transmission lines. There is no part of New England deemed “desirable” in the guidelines.

The new map provided by the state government (above) shows only a tiny amount of sites deemed “suitable” west of Goulburn – ironically in the Hume electorate of one of the most vocal anti-wind campaigners of all, former energy minister Angus Taylor – and near Dubbo.

The suitable sites are highlighted in yellow. “Desirable” areas are highlighted in red, and “less suitable” in green.

“It seems wrong … a tiny amount of sites near Goulburn and Dubbo. Ouch!” said one renewable energy developer. “It must be a mistake.”

But apparently not. The document notes that “it is challenging” to find any sites for wind turbines that do not have “significant conflicts”. Industrial wind farms have proved particularly problematic in the NSW planning pipeline, with only one project approved in the last four years, according to the industry.

More recently, apart from the Joyce-led campaign against onshore wind projects, local groups have been fuelling opposition to proposed new offshore wind zones in the Illawarra and Newcastle, including emphasising the threat to migrating whales.

The renewable energy industry has already had a set back with the delay to so-called “access rights” – which were to be offered to new projects hoping to secure a place on the grid that would not be constrained. The first tender for access rates has been cancelled and pushed back another six months.

The planning guidelines published by the state government say the map shows “the most desirable areas for wind energy development considering key commercial factors and high-level environmental constraints.”

It says these wind resource potential, the proximity to existing and planned transmission infrastructure, access to major energy users, available network capacity, development and land use, land value, land use zoning, areas of high biodiversity value, and distance to major towns and population centres, national parks and reserves.

The guidelines – the first since 2016 – also include more clarity about setbacks, including a 2km setback for homes with visibility of the turbines, and 500 metre setbacks for recreational areas and national parks.

“Due to the large scale of wind energy development, it is challenging to find sites that do not have significant conflicts,” the document says.

“Projects must also be designed in a cost-effective manner to provide benefits to energy consumers and reduced electricity costs.

“Overall, the site selection process should avoid impacts as far as possible. Projects should then be designed to strike an appropriate balance between competing environmental, commercial, and social factors.”

See the contrast with the solar map below.

Renew Economy

Climate Czar John Kerry Deserves A Lump Of Coal For Christmas

Climate czar John Kerry, who must have nightmares of everyone’s carbon footprint but his own, dreams of outlawing coal-fired power plants across the world. Doing so is “how you can do something for health,” he said from the United Nations 28th global warming cocktail party in oil-rich Abu Dhabi. Avoiding blackouts and holding down electricity … Continue reading “Climate Czar John Kerry Deserves A Lump Of Coal For Christmas”

Climate czar John Kerry, who must have nightmares of everyone’s carbon footprint but his own, dreams of outlawing coal-fired power plants across the world. Doing so is “how you can do something for health,” he said from the United Nations 28th global warming cocktail party in oil-rich Abu Dhabi.

Avoiding blackouts and holding down electricity prices are also good for health, but health is not what the warming activists are interested in. Issues & Insights has the story.

After declaring that “​​there shouldn’t be any more coal power plants permitted anywhere in the world,” the White House’s climate hector in chief admitted “the reality is that we’re not doing it.”

How dare India, with a growing population of 1.43 billion, displease the imperious Kerry by asking “​​private firms to ramp up investments in new coal-fired power plants to meet a dramatic rise in electricity demand and bridge nearly 30 gigawatts of additional requirement by 2030.” How dare the Chinese unleash “a massive coal power expansion” to meet its needs.

It’s as if they want to get a small taste of the sweet life Kerry has enjoyed for all of his now nearly 80 years on Earth, the advantages that come only when cheap and plentiful electricity is available at the flip of a switch. He won’t stand for it.

Neither will others of his despicable ilk. The administration that Kerry represents has committed the country to halt new coal plant construction while killing off existing plants.

“We will be working to accelerate unabated coal phase-out across the world, building stronger economies and more resilient communities,” Kerry said in a statement crafted with nothing at all in mind but a blind, dead-end agenda. 

“The first step is to stop making the problem worse: stop building new unabated coal power plants.”

And replace them with what? Solar and wind power? As we and others have argued so many times before, the renewables transition is a fantasy, certainly on the timetables policymakers and bureaucrats have forced on the rest of us, and likely well beyond those.

We’re fully aware of the drawbacks of burning coal to produce energy. It’s far from a perfect energy source.

But unlike solar and wind, which for the climatistas are effectively the only acceptable alternatives to coal and natural gas, it is 1) economical, and it 2) produces energy when it’s dark, when it’s cloudy, and when the wind isn’t blowing, both of which are necessary components of prosperity. These are important points either lost on, or ignored by, climate activists, who are willing, and in many cases eager, to curb prosperity and condemn the West to a pre-modern existence.

Read the full story here.

Congress Spent Billions On An EV Charging Network.

By Joe Cunningham

There is ample evidence out there that the electric vehicle market isn’t growing the way the Biden administration wants it to.

What Biden wants is for half the country to be driving electric vehicles within the next decade, but even with direct government interference in the marketplace, there is no desire from at least half the population. RedState has the Story.

What’s more, there are still technical issues, like a lack of charging stations across the country, batteries that lose efficiency in the colder months, a power grid that can’t sustain a mass transition to EVs, and more.

Of those problems, POLITICO is focusing on the first this morning. 

Congress at the urging of the Biden administration agreed in 2021 to spend $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, aiming to appease anxious drivers while tackling climate change.

Two years later, the program has yet to install a single charger.

States and the charger industry blame the delays mostly on the labyrinth of new contracting and performance requirements they have to navigate to receive federal funds. While federal officials have authorized more than $2 billion of the funds to be sent to states, fewer than half of states have even started to take bids from contractors to build the chargers — let alone begin construction.

It appears that bureaucratic red tape isn’t conducive to building and manufacturing, whether the government wants you to be making things or not. Quite the conundrum!

POLITCO refers to vague federal reports that EV demand is growing in the country, but most EVs remain out of the average American’s price range. Even with tax breaks, the Biden administration expects you to pay upfront and just wait around for a tax rebate later, which is not how Americans actually behave when it comes to money most of the time – especially when those same Americans are terrified of the current state of the economy.

Congressman Chip Roy of Texas did an excellent job recently in tearing apart the Biden administration’s foolishness on this.

It’s not just the cost of the vehicle, as Roy points out. It’s a lot of side costs. It’s insanely expensive to replace the parts and do any repair work on an EV battery and engine. These are vehicles that are “more expensive, more expensive to maintain, may not serve their function if they’re in the freezing cold,” and more, Roy said.

But even as we’re in the middle of trying to convince Americans to spend the money on the vehicles, we’re nowhere near ready to get them on the road and keep them there, POLITICO admits.

The United States has around 180,000 chargers today, according to the Energy Department. That includes 41,000 of the type of fast chargers that can alleviate the dreaded “range anxiety” of a long-distance road trip in an electric vehicle.

In a June study, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory projected the U.S. will need 1.2 million public chargers by 2030 to meet charging demand, including 182,000 fast chargers.

Read the full story here.

UN Climate Summit Includes Session On ‘Responsible Yachting’

From The Daily Caller

NICK POPE

CONTRIBUTOR

The United Nations (UN) climate summit, known as COP28, featured a Tuesday discussion on sustainable yachting.

The discussion centered on finding “a variety of technical solutions developed to make the yachting experience more responsible and sustainable,” according to its official COP28 website. The event, titled “Responsible Yachting. Today & Tomorrow,” was moderated by Nico Rosberg, a yacht-owning former race car driver, and organized by Sunreef Yacht, a company that builds custom yachts and luxury vessels.

The discussion also included “a conversation about electric, hybrid and hydrogen propulsion, battery technology, plant-based composites, bottom paints, modern photovoltaics, sustainable interior finishing, water management, energy management (and) air conditioning,” according to the event’s COP28 website. (RELATED: Wagyu Burgers, Asian-French Fusion And More: Here’s What’s On The Menu At The UN Climate Confab)

The conference has already drawn criticism for being perceived as elitist and hypocritical, as thousands of  politicians and businesspeople have flown to an oil-rich state to find ways to advance a global green energy transition and alter peoples’ habits to better protect the environment.

“It just goes to show you that, at a time when these people are talking about telling poor countries to switch over to renewable energy, and people are starving, we also have folks driving the climate movement hosting ‘environmentally-friendly yachting’ panels,” Dan Kish, a senior research fellow for the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s absolutely classic… they tell everyone else to sacrifice while they host discussions on ‘sustainable yachting’ among themselves.”

Representatives for the UN did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

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New Study: The ‘Global Tropics As A Whole’ Were As Warm Or Warmer Than Today 10,000 Years Ago

From NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard on 4. December 2023

“…by about 10 kyr ago, regional MST values consistently approached or exceeded today’s value of about 23°C” – Baxter et al., 2023

According to a new temperature reconstruction published in Nature, the Horn of Africa and “global tropics as a whole” were “1.6°C warmer than today” throughout the Early and Middle Holocene. This is “consistent with compilations from the global tropics.”

This region’s mean surface temperature (MST), 23°C, is nearly the coldest in the last 10,000 years. It was as warm or warmer than today not only 10,000 years ago, but also from about 55,000 to 30,000 years ago, when Earth was experiencing glacial conditions and CO2 concentrations were said to be below 200 ppm.

Image Source: Baxter et al., 2023
s41586-023-06272-5Herunterladen

What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?

Another day, another potentially dubious climate change story in the Guardian. According to the headline, “The Roman forts near Hadrian’s Wall are full of historical riches – and the climate crisis is destroying them”. The sub-heading is almost as sombre: “It isn’t just our planet’s future that’s at risk: soon the artefacts buried deep in our soil may be lost for ever”.

Apart from the Roman Climate Optimum?

From Climate Scepticism

BY MARK HODGSON

Another day, another potentially dubious climate change story in the Guardian. According to the headline, “The Roman forts near Hadrian’s Wall are full of historical riches – and the climate crisis is destroying them”. The sub-heading is almost as sombre: “It isn’t just our planet’s future that’s at risk: soon the artefacts buried deep in our soil may be lost for ever”.

So what’s the story? According to Richard Hobbs, the senior curator of the Romano-British and late Roman collections at the British Museum:

To the long list of destructions wreaked by the climate crisis, we now have to come to terms with the loss of our own shared heritage within the untold archaeological riches beneath our feet.

The claim, basically, is that the anaerobic soil at Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall, which has served wonderfully to preserve leather, including shoes, textiles, and fragments of wood, is changing irreversibly. The wood fragments include wooden leaf-tablets, which have opened a window on life at Vindolanda during the Roman occupation. Over 1,500 have been discovered so far, mostly dating to around 100AD. But now, apparently:

…the climate crisis is irreversibly altering these [anaerobic] conditions, destroying Vindolanda’s buried treasures faster than archaeologists can get to them…

…much of the archaeology that makes Vindolanda so unique will be gone long before then. During the drought of 2022, it became clear that the site was drying out at an alarming rate. The damage being caused had already been indicated by the diminishing number of tablets being recovered: only a handful in recent seasons and about a dozen this year, whereas in those early days it was not uncommon to find hundreds in a single excavation season. Textiles have fared even worse. About 700 pieces have been recovered since digging began, but only a single piece in the past decade.

What is happening? Probes providing live data on conditions deep below ground have detected something troubling: oxygen in the previously anaerobic layers. Oxygen allows bacteria that break down organics to thrive. It is believed that extremes of weather characteristic of the changing climate are causing the problem. During dry periods the topsoil dries and cracks, allowing rainwater during wet periods to penetrate deeply, carrying oxygen and bacteria with it.

The claim is made so repeatedly and so earnestly that one can’t help feeling that it is categorically true. Climate change is wrecking the archaeology of Vindolanda. This is a very worrying claim. I have lived within reasonable driving distance of Vindolanda for most of my life and have visited it – and its excellent museum – on many occasions. The thought that the treasures waiting to be discovered may be lost before they can be unearthed is a deeply troubling one.

The thought does occur to me that the recent shortage of finds might be because the low-hanging fruit has already been picked, so to speak, and that oxygenation of the soil might be explained in other ways than simply “it was climate change wot dun it”. After all, as anyone knows who has visited Hadrian’s Wall, most of it and its hinterland, including locations such as Vindolanda, is in a wild and wind-swept location, where it is often cold and damp. Certainly my recollections of many visits to the site are of being well wrapped-up against the weather, and often wearing waterproofs, even when visiting during the summer. It does seem odd that artefacts that have survived burial in the ground for almost 2,000 years, many of them during the Roman Climate Optimum and the Climate Optimum (times which may have been warmer and drier than today) are now falling foul of “climate change”.

To discover more, I thought the best thing I could do would be to visit the website of the Vindolanda Charitable Trust, and specifically to read the section dealing with steps taken to monitor the buried treasures, to see what they have to say about these worrying claims.

Thankfully the Vindolanda Trust website is rather more circumspect than is the Guardian article, basically saying that if the waterlogged soil is damaged by rapid climate change, then the artefacts within it could be lost – the claim is not made that this is happening, rather that due to the possibility of it happening, the situation is being monitored. Specifically:

Those deposits are preserved in waterlogged or reduced oxygen environments but these are sensitive to environmental changes and could be lost forever if they become affected by rapid changes to the climate. To help the Vindolanda Trust preserve and manage the buried remains its archaeological team, working with world leading ground monitoring specialists at Van Walt have installed a series of deep probes into the ground to measure environmental conditions.

The buried probes monitor several different variables including water level, water quality, soil moisture and pH. An important parameter is how much water is in the soil at different depths, with potentially sensitive archaeology known to lie between about 0.5 and 4 metres. If the soil dries out completely, or is subjected to natural drying and re-wetting cycles, the sensitive buried environments can rapidly change, leading to decay and destruction of artefacts. In this scenario organic materials – writing tablets, leather, wood and textiles – would rot away before archaeologists can rescue them and even the generally more robust inorganic remains – bone, pottery and metals – would also be badly affected.

All the monitoring probes are linked to a Vindolanda weather station. This meteo station gives us live data on wind, temperature, rain and atmospheric pressure at the site, providing accurate updates every 15 minutes. As the seasons change and the months roll into years, this ground monitoring system will silently and diligently report back to our scientists and archaeologists and provide an unparalleled picture on what is happening below the ground at Vindolanda.

The monitoring probes will allow us to see how much climate change can impact our buried past as well as our present and future.

Concern from the specialists is evident from reading those paragraphs. Nevertheless, they are subject to several caveats – “ifs” and “could”, rather than “is”, “are” or “will”. As an amusing aside, the team from Van Walt has written a blog about their adventures at Vindolanda while installing the sensors. My takeaway quote from it (which is so reminiscent of my own memories of visits to Vindolanda) is this:

Field work in a humid and cold climate is not the ideal therapy for dodgy limbs.

It sounds as though there may well be hope for the Vindolanda artefacts after all. Fingers crossed.

Postscript. The Guardian isn’t really reporting news; rather it’s regurgitating a claim made almost two years ago – see, for instance this report on the BBC website back in January 2022.

Vast Village Pump Will Cost £40,000 Per Household

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Tallbloke

SWAFFHAM PRIOR, England, Dec 6 (Reuters) – In a quiet field in eastern England a vast heat pump generates enough warmth to supply houses throughout a historic village, a pilot project testing ways to spur renewable energy use in a country that is falling behind its net zero targets.

Resembling a large agricultural site, with gleaming silver water vats, the heat pump produces water hot enough to feed existing domestic systems, removing the need for costly home retrofits. A 60-year funding scheme removed upfront costs.

Supporters say the network, the first of its kind in rural Britain, not only shows one way for the UK to catch up with Europe on heat pump adoption, but addresses how it can fund the wider net zero transition when household finances are tight.

“The truth is getting to net zero is going to cost money,” said Miles Messenger from Bouygues Energies & Services, which helped design and build the heat network in Swaffham Prior, near the university city of Cambridge.

“What this project brings in particular is a demonstration of how to do everything in one go for a village community.”

The government’s official climate advisers have said Britain is not doing enough to meet its net zero target.

If it is to hit the goal by 2050 it will need to decarbonise 28 million homes – a major challenge when 85% rely on piped natural gas for heating and hot water, and when that gas is significantly cheaper than the electricity used by heat pumps.

In Swaffham Prior, where a majority of homes were heated by oil, the team tested multiple scenarios to drive uptake. They found one large network would be more efficient than individual heat pumps, while the community approach and lack of upfront payment meant residents were more willing to sign up.

The 12 million pound ($15 million) cost was covered by a 3 million pound government grant and a loan secured by the local council which will be repaid via household bills over 60 years. To help the switch, bills are index-linked to be in line or less than the cost of heating oil and will in time be indexed to the price of electricity.

So far in a village of two churches, two windmills and around 300 houses, more than 60 are connected to the heat pump which uses both air and ground heat sources. More than 35 are ready to be added, and others are weighing whether to join.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/vast-village-heat-pump-tests-one-route-net-zero-rural-britain-2023-12-06/

£12 million divided by 300 houses equals £40,000 each. That’s probably double the cost of installing them individually.

And the cost for 28 million homes adds up to £1.12 trillion!

“The truth is getting to net zero is going to cost money”, says the berk behind the project.

He was not kidding!

COP 28: Exclusive interview with Dame Ellen MacArthur: Limit access to clothing

By Marc Morano

UN COP28 – Climate summit event on December 5, 2023 – “Pathway to Paris goals: Runway to net zero in the fashion industry” December 5, 2023, Dubai interview

Watch: Morano attends UN climate summit’s ‘Runway to Net Zero in the fashlon industry’ event

Dame Ellen MacArthur exclusive interview with Marc Morano: Founder – Ellen MacArthur Foundation 

Morano: The C40s report for mayors recommended three new items per person per year by 2030 to fight climate change.

See: 2019 report on a ‘1.5C World’: ‘Reduce number of clothing’ to ‘3 new clothing items per person per year’ by 2030 ‘to avoid climate breakdown’ – Affiliated with WEF, Michael Bloomberg, Soros, Google, FED EX & IKEA

Also see: Mayors’ climate initiative calls for limits of 3 new items of clothing per person, per year & car, dairy & meat bans by 2030

MacArthur: We need to redesign the fashion industry, the materials, and how they

Morano: Should there be limits to what clothing people can buy?

MacArthur: It’s how they have access to the product as much as the product itself. And there are different ways to have access to clothing products.

Morano: But should people be limited in what they can buy in terms of clothing to 3 new per year?

MacArthur: It depends on how they get access to that clothing.

It’s not about the clothing itself; it’s about how much you have. It is about how you get access to that clothing in addition to the design of that clothing. Many labels have different clothing in different ways, which doesn’t mean we have to own everything we want.

The post COP 28: Exclusive interview with Dame Ellen MacArthur: Limit access to clothing appeared first on CFACT.