The Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak has seen widespread disruption of manufacturing operations as well as trade and sporting events worldwide, however it appears there is a silver lining of sorts in the wake of significantly reduced movement; satellite data appears to show reduced nitrogen dioxide emissions across the United States, China and Italy, Gizmodo reported.
“Nitrogen dioxide is produced by fossil fuel burning and therefore often used as an urban pollution tracer,” said Barbara Dix, an atmospheric researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“Burning fossil fuels directly emits a lot of nitric oxide and a little nitrogen dioxide (often referred to as NOx together), but the nitric oxide is rapidly converted into nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere. Nitrogen dioxide can easily be measured by satellite,” she added.
California became the first state in the United States to issue a shelter-in-place order effective from March 19, while many cities have made their decision to shut down earlier, according to Gizmodo. Los Angeles marked a clear reduction in pollution owing the the city’s car culture, the website noted, meanwhile in the northeast region, New York City also marked a significant reduction.
In Europe, Italy has also seen air quality improvements, also with a reduction in nitrogen dioxide emissions over the span of a month, from February 8 to March 7. “The rapid decrease we see in nitrogen dioxide due to Covid-19 is unprecedented. We are now witnessing a global experiment where one emission source is rapidly turned down, while other sources are still up or will decrease more slowly. A lot of atmospheric science will come out of this,” said Dix.
While the positive impact of the coronavirus outbreak with regards to the drop in pollution isn’t likely to be long-term, it demonstrates what improvements in air quality could take place with the widespread adoption of electric vehicles, notes Electrek.
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Go EV! Go hydrogen fuel cell!!!
As of 2018, the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas, partial oxidation of methane, and coal gasification.
So how does hydrogen fuel cells help the environment?
At least the emissions stop right there, only water came out of every individual vehicle exhaust. Meanwhile mainstream fossil fuels (petrol, disel, kerosene, etc) produce emissions right from it being extracted, to distillation, to distribution, until the end of every individual consumers.
Hydrogen can also be produced by using water & electricity, which could come from power plants that produce even less emissions.
But traditional engine is still fun drive tho
“Hydrogen can also be produced by using water & electricity”
Yes, but companies don’t use water & electricity for a good reason: It’s way too expensive. Or why do you think they use natural gas, methane or coal? Big industry is not the school laboratory.
I know. It require a lot gigawatt of electricity, and the cost associated with it(if every engine in the world replaced with fuel cell). It just one of possible options, may not be viable “as of 2018” or even now (also 95% of hydrogen produce today still far a lot less than petroleum being extracted by Saudi alone). But the option is there. Who knows what the future technologies hold.
Also It’s way far beyond school laboratory, it’s a military advanced technology. For many years the US nuclear submarines extracting hydrogen from sea water (not even freshwater). Not really, they are extracting oxygen, but they also get hydrogen.
Even tho, fuel cell still help the environment compared to traditional engines we have today, especially in terms of air quality, don’t you agree?
Man, those productions can easily be regulated and control than something that has lots of volumes and moves randomly.
1. methane can be sourced from BioGas.
2. Lithium for EV battery cell, is that green? So much of Lithium mining ongoing.
3. What is used for charging EV battery cell?
I am giving selective yet directive answer. So do you.
1. methane can be sourced from BioGas.
2. Lithium for EV battery cell, is that green? So much of Lithium mining ongoing.
3. What is used for charging EV battery cell?
I am giving selective yet directive answer. So do you.
“Electrek” totally ignores that the electric would have to be generated somewhere else, most likely in coal-fired power stations.
Energy can be generated by cleaner sources, such as solar and wind which are already reaching grid parity in many parts of the world. The problem is the fossil fuel industry which is very powerful & controls government policies. They still receive few trillion $ worth of direct subsidies worldwide, which can be redirected for cleaner and distributed energy systems if there is a will. In any case, even if the source is coal, the cities will be free of pollution, which is a good thing.
“such as solar and wind”
So if there’s no wind at night, people can’t recharge their EV’s?
There’s more problem to that, a geographical challenge cities can only dream of building those green power plants, eg: there’s large part of china that is mountainous, cold(less bright sunshine) with no big fresh water reserve (no lake for hydro). There’s is still a strong wind, but the nature of mountainous structure made the wind flow in various directions too much, and who know the challenge of building those big tall wind turbine on a mountain. There may also be other place facing a different kind of geographical challenge. Nuclear may be an option, but with no technological knowledge, they can only pay some other countries for the tech wich may not be economically sustainable. Let just hope the electric & fuel cell vehicle will take-off and change the world, although it may not be as soon as we thought.
I take it you’re not in the energy business? This talk about renewables achieving “grid parity” is a lot of BS. They’ll say it has grid parity even when it can match baseload output for an hour. Look at the capacity factor, that’s what matters.
And you’re wrong. It’s the renewables industry that receives billions in subsidies everywhere. In places like the US where the consumer has the option to choose which provider they purchase their power from, renewables providers tend to have per-kWh prices that’s up to 3-4 times higher than nuclear power producers, and require subsidies to bring the price down to be competitive.
Nuclear energy and natural gas have not had much subsidies for a long time now. Nuclear power plants in the United States do not have any subsidies for their power generation and sales. The only sort of government financial assistance that the nuclear fleet operators receive are favorable loan terms and loan guarantees for the construction of these power plants.
The renewables indsutry has been subsidized from top to bottom all across the supply chain. From the construction of solar farms, the construction of PV factories, subsidies on rare earth raw materials, subsidies on the sales of PV-generated power, you name it.
I was recently working with a partner on a large-scale solar farm proposal and a mini-hydroelectric proposal (both for a neighboring country) and if you look at the cost and revenue structures for both, we went full-steam ahead on the mini-hydro proposal without even thinking twice. Not because it was cheaper, not because it was easier to build, not because it’s cheaper to maintain. It boiled down to the fact that solar has less than a 20% capacity factor while mini-hydro has a nearly-100% capacity factor, and that made all the difference towards viability and payback period. The construction challenges of the mini-hydro proposal and the large land footprint needed by the solar farm are similar in terms of cost and challenges so they sort of evened out.
PV and wind power can never be viable. Not right now, not ever. Unless the cost of solar panels reduce to less than half of what they currently are while generating twice the power that they do now, coupled with efficient power storage systems that cost anywhere between one-fifth to one-tenth of what they currently are. Wind power is an even bigger problem as it’s more intermittent and diffuse, making them more limited in where they can be deployed.
some of really solid facts there. Preach it bruh! PREACH IT!!!
Well u are wrong about the subsidy, some facts from IMF about the fossil fuel subsidy can be found here (https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509). And you completely missed my point btw, I was saying that if we can redirect these huge direct subsidies for a more distributed energy systems (including solar, wind,…), we can greatly reduce the need for fossil fuel. Billions of subsidies vs. trillions of subsidies, think about it.
The point DK trying to make is how much potential power generated per dollar invested. Renewables won’t give you that parity. Ever.
Someone forgot to tell Gizmondo this is mainly due to no activity because of COVID-19, having EV doesn’t mean we will see levels even close to this as electric still required power generation from fossil fuel or nukes.
I believe that’s not the case. Producing energy in large quantities at one place and store it inside the EV everywhere else is more efficient & cleaner. Better air quality since all the emissions from power generation being pooled at one place, that is power plants(usually at a remote place), not every individual vehicle that is everywhere.
You’re subscribing to the wrong theory that EV power generation is cleaner. No it isn’t.
Imagine trying to disperse the pollution generated on a concentrated area around the power plant as compared to dispersing on a wider scale when cars moves around. Is it fair to those living around the power plant to inhale high levels of pollution, and by concentrating the pollutants in an area will lead to lower levels of dispersal efficiency with the high levels of pollutants still remaining.
Power generation needs a rethink before they can be touted as the ‘cleaner’ solution because it isn’t there yet.
It is cleaner by a simple fact, producing energy in large quantities produced less emissions per volume of power generated as compared to producing small power from every small engines.
You don’t have to imagine, just visit some coal power plants and you can see a very tall chimney where the combustion gas being released very high up in the sky after being used (yes they also used the gas for additional power generation) and treated for cleaner release to atmosphere. Now tell me if any road-going vehicle have a sky-high exhaust pipe everywhere they go. None! they go straight into your lungs everywhere they go.
There’s no escaping it, any kind of power generation(harvesting) will produce emissions in someway or another, with coal power plant as the worst offender. But that’s not the entire point, as long as it help reduce emissions with better efficiency, then why not? EV is a good start. If want absolute zero emission we might as well going back using livestock as mean of transportation.