> ... bringing "energy resilience", a key policy buzzphrase.
The word "buzzphrase" implies that you think energy resilience is not as relevant as the proponents want to make it seem. Correct?
I've been thinking for years that resilience of the overall energy system is a factor that many green energy transition people appear to systematically overlook.
As I see it, chemicals based energy systems have a huge advantage over electricity based energy systems through their property of bringing large amounts of storage (and thus capacity to bridge outages) with them basically inherently.
The electrical grid is a delicate life support system and I'm convinced that it will - even in the far future - depend heavily upon chemical energy storage and transportation to give it resilience.
As far as I've heard the electrical grids in the US and Europe have come close to breaking points a lot more often over the last few years, compared to before. And even though huge sums of money are being invested in their build-out and maintenance, the supply situation with critical components such as transformers is apparently dire.
Alltogether makes me think that chemical energy storage (and thus, hydrogen, power-to-gas, ammonia, and such) will have a dead-sure place in energy systems.
> ... new technique by creating tiny liquid metal droplets containing copper and gallium ... as the catalyst to break apart the raw ingredients of nitrogen and hydrogen.
> "Liquid metals allow us to move the chemical elements around in a more dynamic way that gets everything to the interface and enables more efficient reactions, ideal for catalysis," Daeneke said. "Copper and gallium separately had both been discounted as famously bad catalysts for ammonia production, yet together they do the job extremely well."
Each post could be encrypted (before publishing) using a unique key (derived from the private key of the poster) and then signed with the private key (of the poster) before publishing.
Then the poster could later choose to selectively publish (or make them available to individuals) some of these unique keys, to make posts readable.
There's apparently scientific studies that show how animals as well as humans tend to continue eating until they've satisfied a mostly fixed daily need for protein, mostly regardless of _what kind_ of food they're eating.
Now if people choose a diet low in protein/calories ratio, they'll have a tendency to ingest more calories than people who eat protein rich diets. Try eating eating 300 g of cheese/meat/tofu in one meal, it'll be difficult. Eating 300 g of chips/fries is something many people can absolutely do, if the chips aren't too salty.
One significant difference between our modern western lives and the lives of people tens to hundreds of years ago is IMO that people back then quite automatically used up all the carb calories of their comparably protein diluted diet because life required much more physical activity and came with less home heating than today.
Today, most people will just not expend much of the caloric energy of carb rich diets and thus develop metabolic diseases and such.
A carb rich diet is usually fine as long as you expend the energy via physical activity.
> .. don't know where you get the idea that eating 300g of meat is difficult.
You're right, 300 g of meat isn't much of a challenge. The more appropriate comparison would be between 300 g of chips and an equal amount of calories in some protein rich food like meat. That should be much more challenging.
> .. people today are eating too much.
Yeah, the important question is: why are they eating too much?
I assume that a lot of it is unintentional. Overeating mostly happens because people aren't aware of a few simple mechanisms or are misunderstanding them, not because the world is hard. Mechanisms which they could quite easily use to overeat less or avoid it altogether, instead of falling prey to them.
Just telling people that they're eating to much doesn't help in any way. People need to know why and how they can quite easily change it.
> „Seit 2023 betreiben wir nun einen Bitcoin-Node und auch Bitcoin-Lightning-Nodes, und voller Stolz möchte ich ein kleines Geheimnis verraten: Wir werden bald in die digitale monetäre Photosynthese einsteigen“, so Röder.
deepl.com translation:
> "We have been operating a Bitcoin node since 2023 and also Bitcoin Lightning Nodes, and proudly I would like to reveal a little secret: We will soon be entering the digital monetary photosynthesis," says Röder.
> .. has a compact hydrogen generator in its product portfolio, which can produce 20 g of hydrogen from 200 ml of purified water in around five-to-six hours.
> .. that hydrogen is transferred to a 25-cm-tall (9.8-in) bottle-like container at an internal pressure of 1 MPa. Popping one of these containers into the frame of one of the company's HYRYD ebikes feeds the onboard 180-W fuel cell and offers up to 60 km (37 miles) of range. Then it's just a case of removing a spent container and replacing it with a fresh one, which is said to take just 3-10 seconds.
> .. by mining bitcoin you invest directly in money creation, that is, there's no hiring people, no new business creation, no research aimed at product development, therefore much less knowledge and by extension a lot less jobs.
IMO your point is somewhat valid, though "no new business creation" is obviously an exaggeration. Every application of some technology (Bitcoin mining, to mention just one aspect, is highly technological, as are other aspects of putting the equipment somewhere and operating it) involves a very deep supply/maintenance chain, which diffuses investments through society, in part local, in part elsewhere.
I would agree that with Bitcoin mining, there may be less local investment in broader ranges of businesses on average, than with many other kinds of investments. But local development of business/society is a complex topic with many many aspects generating all kinds feedback, so it's IMO very hard to make general and yet truthful statements about this.
There's another aspect that comes to my mind: in a way, letting people invest directly in money creation, as you put it, can be a benefit to the environment. How so?
Money being saved instead of being reinvested or spent immediately is effectively people taking their feet off the gas pedal of the economy. As long as the worldwide economy is still > 80 % fossil carbon based (energy wise that is, material wise it might even be more), deceleration should be mostly a benefit for the ecosphere/environment.
Assuming you can just store it as piles of iron dust (somehow shielded from air/oxygen) and assuming a gross density of 5 t/m³ for iron dust you'd get a volumetric energy density in the ballpark of 10,000 kWh/m³.
The word "buzzphrase" implies that you think energy resilience is not as relevant as the proponents want to make it seem. Correct?
I've been thinking for years that resilience of the overall energy system is a factor that many green energy transition people appear to systematically overlook.
As I see it, chemicals based energy systems have a huge advantage over electricity based energy systems through their property of bringing large amounts of storage (and thus capacity to bridge outages) with them basically inherently.
The electrical grid is a delicate life support system and I'm convinced that it will - even in the far future - depend heavily upon chemical energy storage and transportation to give it resilience.
As far as I've heard the electrical grids in the US and Europe have come close to breaking points a lot more often over the last few years, compared to before. And even though huge sums of money are being invested in their build-out and maintenance, the supply situation with critical components such as transformers is apparently dire.
Alltogether makes me think that chemical energy storage (and thus, hydrogen, power-to-gas, ammonia, and such) will have a dead-sure place in energy systems.