This is a bit tangential, but it is a well-framed commentary which applies when we think about CDR.

cross-posted from: https://aus.social/users/ajsadauskas/statuses/111062337668091472

Right now, could you prepare a slice of toast with zero embodied carbon emissions?

Since at least the 2000s, big polluters have tried to frame carbon emissions as an issue to be solved through the purchasing choices of individual consumers.

Solving climate change, we've been told, is not a matter of public policy or infrastructure. Instead, it's about convincing individual consumers to reduce their "carbon footprint" (a term coined by BP: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook).

Yet, right now, millions of people couldn't prepare a slice of toast without causing carbon emissions, even if they wanted to.

In many low-density single-use-zoned suburbs, the only realistic option for getting to the store to get a loaf of bread is to drive. The power coming out of the mains includes energy from coal or gas.

But.

Even if they invested in solar panels, and an inverter, and a battery system, and only used an electric toaster, and baked the loaf themselves in an electric oven, and walked/cycled/drove an EV to the store to get flour and yeast, there are still embodied carbon emissions in that loaf of bread.

Just think about the diesel powered trucks used to transport the grains and packaging to the flour factory, the energy used to power the milling equipment, and the diesel fuel used to transport that flour to the store.

Basically, unless you go completely off grid and grow your own organic wheat, your zero emissions toast just ain't happening.

And that's for the most basic of food products!

Unless we get the infrastructure in place to move to a 100% renewables and storage grid, and use it to power fully electric freight rail and zero emissions passenger transport, pretty much all of our decarbonisation efforts are non-starters.

This is fundamentally an infrastructure and public policy problem, not a problem of individual consumer choice.

#ClimateChange #urbanism #infrastructure #energy #grid #politics #power @green

tldr several BILLION tons per year by 2050! Roughly equivalent to the total mass of all the cars in the world - every year.

At Laguna Cartagena, near Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico (red bird with black chest and mask, perched on green leaves, lit by sunrise)

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/2421501

There seems to be a huge number of miscellaneous projects for a specific type of environmental restoration or some other activity that is specifically aimed at carbon sequestration. For example, seagrass restoration alone has a plethora(1,2,3). Is there a decent list of these projects? I found this cool list of CCS projects(4), but that’s different.

If such a list exists, I have another question: Is there an objective way to compare their effectiveness?

https://www.projectseagrass.org

https://www.medseafoundation.org/index.php/en/portfolio-ita-2/a-sea-forest-to-save-the-planet/34

https://www.seegraswiesen.de/en/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_carbon_capture_and_storage_projects

This is a video of my off-grid house in the Dominican Republic, which is featured in this community's title background. It is for sale, so buy it and you can be famous! lolz https://drive.google.com/file/d/16s22L6fgJRtxPQ-a6_aEWy8QJsgsWexN/view?usp=sharing

Net Zero is when the bathtub quits overflowing, CDR is how we mop up the water and pump out the flooded basement.

These EG4 batteries from Signature Solar look like a pretty good deal to me; $265/kWh according to their calculation. I paid a little over $500/kWh for some 12V form-factor lithium batteries at the start of the year and thought those were a reasonable price.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/2196737

Like many of you, birds are very special to me. I connect with them like I don’t any other living creature, save my wife and kids. I photograph them. I’ve covered my body in nothing but bird tattoos.

To see that a THIRD of them have disappeared is like a knife to the heart.

Today's adventure: a couple of rainy days caused low battery levels, but not too low I thought - still 30% or so; these are lithium batteries and can deep cycle. They are "smart" batteries and if one is full in series, none can charge further - so they should all be at the same charge level all the time. But a couple had gotten out of step somehow and when they reached zero everything shut down.

How to bootstrap it? With no battery output (since a zero battery turned itself off and would not let the battery bank show any voltage!) - there is no way to activate the inverter and let street power run the battery charger. With no battery power, there is no way to turn on the MPPT controller and charge the batteries!

I could rearrange the banks to put four batteries with remaining charge in series because I have an 8-battery system, and get things restarted; but if there had been only four like when I first installed the system - I'd be in trouble.

Another thing that happened. Before I figured out the battery problem, I was trying to switch back to street-power. Because power from the street comes to the inverter first and then the inverter powers the distribution panel, when the batteries are down, I cannot get street power to the distribution panel. I could install a manual bypass, but it is not a commonly needed item and it is a large amp switch. So I removed the inputs and outputs at the inverter and bypassed manually. That worked fine. But in the process of disconnecting or reconnecting, I must have loosened the neutral connection to the inverter. So when the inverter was working again and I checked voltage, I only checked across the two hot legs - yay, 240V. I did not check that each leg was 120v from neutral! They were not: one leg was at zero and the other was at 240. I found this discrepancy fairly quickly after only destroying an outlet strip, the oven control electronics from a very old stove we were wanting to replace, and the controls of an old Sharp microwave oven with the 4, 7, 9 and Clear buttons not working. Woohoo we have a new stove out of the deal!

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/611077

I have been thinking on how to claim every energy that comes on my plot. Technology goes more and more into harvesting the smaller left over energy. Ive seen examples in the Netherlands where startups try to get energy from a chip (I have been thinking on how to claim every energy that comes on my plot. Technology goes more and more into harvesting the smaller left over energy. Ive seen examples in the Netherlands where startups try to get energy from a chip (http://www.nowi-energy.com, https://memsys.nl) and a transparent solar panel layer on windows etc. Here in Lithuania sometimes the whole day has an overcast sky and that is the solar energy that we are getting. I know that with heavy overcast days a standard solar panels output can be as low as 10%. So a 5kWp can generate instead of 3.75kW produce only a meager 370W. My question to you, arent there other solar technologies that are adjusted to this overcast circumstances? So to gain more efficiency from diffuse lighting or from frequencies that can pierce the clouds more (like infrared spectrum)?

Some sunday morning pondering....