Tag Archives: transport

Inconvenient data about electricity generation

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Decorative infographicI like a good infographic and this one showing annual energy flows for a country  is one of my favourites [see ‘Energy blending’ on May 22nd 2013].  Some governments produce them annually.  The image shows the latest one for the UK [2021]. It makes interesting but perhaps depressing reading.  Transportation using fossil fuels accounts for 31% (41.6/134.1 million tonnes oil equivalent) of the UK energy consumption while electricity output accounts for only 21% (28.6/134.1 million tonnes oil equivalent).  This implies that if all vehicles were powered by electricity then the output of our power stations would need to increase to 70.2 million tonnes oil equivalent or between two- and three-fold (excluding conversion & transmission losses).  You can perform a similar analysis for the USA [see 2021 Energy flow chart from LLNL].  Fossil-fuelled transportation accounted for 25%  (24.3/97.3 Quads) and electricity output 13% (12.9/97.3 Quads) so converting all transportation to be electrically powered requires a three-fold increase in electrical output from power stations. It is more difficult to find equivalent data for Japan; however, in 2014 [see Energy flow chart from I2CNER Kyushu University] fossil-fuelled transportation accounted for 32% (3.03/9.52 EJ) and electricity output 38% (3.66/9.52 EJ) so converting all transportation to be electrically powered requires a two-fold increase in electrical output from power stations.  None of the above takes account of space heating mainly via fossil fuel or that many existing power stations are fossil-fuelled and need to be replaced in order to achieve net zero carbon emissions.  Hence, the required scale of construction of power stations using renewable sources, including nuclear, solar and wind, is enormous and in most countries it is barely discussed let alone planned or started; leading to the conclusion that there is little chance of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 as called for by the Paris agreement.

Happenstance, not engineering?

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okemos-art-2extract

A few weeks ago I wrote that ‘engineering is all about ingenuity‘ [post on September 14th, 2016] and pointed out that while some engineers are involved in designing, manufacturing and maintaining engines, most of us are not.  So, besides being ingenious, what do the rest of us do?  Well, most of us contribute in some way to the conception, building and sustaining of networks.  Communication networks, food supply networks, power networks, transport networks, networks of coastal defences, networks of oil rigs, refineries and service stations, or networks of mines, smelting works and factories that make everything from bicycles to xylophones.  The list is endless in our highly networked society.  A network is a group of interconnected things or people.  And, engineers are responsible for all of the nodes in our networks of things and for just about all the connections in our networks of both things and people.

Engineers have been constructing networks by building nodes and connecting them for thousands of years, for instance the ancient Mesopotamians were building aqueducts to connect their towns with distance water supplies more than four millenia ago.

Engineered networks are so ubiquitous that no one notices them until something goes wrong, which means engineers tend to get blamed more than praised.  But apparently that is the fault of the ultimate network: the human brain.  Recent research has shown that blame and praise are assigned by different mechanisms in the brain and that blame can be assigned by every location in the brain responsible for emotion whereas praise comes only from a single location responsible for logical thought.  So, we blame more frequently than we praise and we tend to assume that bad things are deliberate while good things are happenstance.  So reliable networks are happenstance rather than good engineering in the eyes of most people!

Sources:

Ngo L, Kelly M, Coutlee CG, Carter RM , Sinnott-Armstrong W & Huettel SA, Two distinct moral mechanisms for ascribing and denying intentionality, Scientific Reports, 5:17390, 2015.

Bruek H, Human brains are wired to blame rather than to praise, Fortune, December 4th 2015.