This seems doable EXCEPT for the Renewables part in supplying the electricity.
Looking at your rough numbers, it seems that SMRs (Small Micro-Reactors -> teeny nukes) may well fit the bill. Several companies have now had their designs blessed and in less than 3 years, have achieved successful criticality. Those folks are forecasting deliveries and generation during the next two year period; a FAR cry from the tradition nuke station that we're used to.
And the data centers, in order to have their electrical usage on the other side of the meter, are making contracts left and right.
Hmmm: as usual, it’s the Global North love for hi-tech solutions, isn’t it? And products you have to buy, rather than make yourself. Sigh. If our ‘pre-carbon’ forebears could see us, they would think us completely mad.
The reinventing wheels square even comes into the good old “lime cycle”, because we are finally realising we got that rather skew-whiff: you certainly CAN slake to lime, but you’d really only do that for lime wash. For making lime mortar, you get a much better product that is MUCH faster and easier to mix if you combine the one part lime as ground quicklime with the three parts of sand, and add just enough water to make it react: “hot mixing”. Then you throw it through a screen to get rid of any lumps of quicklime that are a bit too big - you mix those in with earth to make a great mix for rubble-filling - and finally you “bank” it: cover it with damp hessian and leave it for a couple of days to slake. The result is a lovely sticky mix that is super easy to use and is just like the 1:1.5 mixes we find when we analyse historic mortars. Which of course we could never match when we were trying to interpret the one part lime as slaked lime putty! Dear oh dear. And if we’d bothered to ask in places like Eastern Europe and India they would have told us we’d got it wrong.
We know that almost all buildings had lime renders, and that those renders and earth renders too would have been protected by regular lime washing, which works amazingly well. So, if we went back again to sensible solid-wall “greatcoat” construction, and to maintaining things well, might we be then automatically be also engaging in a good deal of carbon capture? 😸
I agree with you. Lloyd. This is more "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a cheeseburger today" thinking. There is an MIT spinout called Sublime -- a subtle play on words -- that is doing more to interrupt the emissions from limestone but using different precursors, but again, quite a lot of electricity is needed.
What we are seeing with AI is that the tech bros are making vapid promises about renewables but are actually depending on massive increases in thermal generation from coal and methane or building new nuclear plants. Basing this ETH Zurich process on renewables that do not exist -- and are under fire politically in many countries -- is "pie in the sky" thinking.
I have great respect for ETH Zurich, but this is more eyewash from the "let us pollute today and we will fix it tomorrow" crowd. Theoretically, their process works but in the real world, it is as BandAid for an existential problem.
PS: I read Abundance and thought the authors failed to perceive the depths of the climate emergency and instead were content to blow sunshine up our skirts.
PPS: I am beginning to think I am giving Mark Carney entirely too much credit.
Too technical for my understanding (no, I'm not looking for an explanation). I lean to the Use Less Stuff / Keep it Simple brigade.
Excellent quick review of the issue with concrete. Use less! Should not be hard to understand.
This seems doable EXCEPT for the Renewables part in supplying the electricity.
Looking at your rough numbers, it seems that SMRs (Small Micro-Reactors -> teeny nukes) may well fit the bill. Several companies have now had their designs blessed and in less than 3 years, have achieved successful criticality. Those folks are forecasting deliveries and generation during the next two year period; a FAR cry from the tradition nuke station that we're used to.
And the data centers, in order to have their electrical usage on the other side of the meter, are making contracts left and right.
Hmmm: as usual, it’s the Global North love for hi-tech solutions, isn’t it? And products you have to buy, rather than make yourself. Sigh. If our ‘pre-carbon’ forebears could see us, they would think us completely mad.
The reinventing wheels square even comes into the good old “lime cycle”, because we are finally realising we got that rather skew-whiff: you certainly CAN slake to lime, but you’d really only do that for lime wash. For making lime mortar, you get a much better product that is MUCH faster and easier to mix if you combine the one part lime as ground quicklime with the three parts of sand, and add just enough water to make it react: “hot mixing”. Then you throw it through a screen to get rid of any lumps of quicklime that are a bit too big - you mix those in with earth to make a great mix for rubble-filling - and finally you “bank” it: cover it with damp hessian and leave it for a couple of days to slake. The result is a lovely sticky mix that is super easy to use and is just like the 1:1.5 mixes we find when we analyse historic mortars. Which of course we could never match when we were trying to interpret the one part lime as slaked lime putty! Dear oh dear. And if we’d bothered to ask in places like Eastern Europe and India they would have told us we’d got it wrong.
We know that almost all buildings had lime renders, and that those renders and earth renders too would have been protected by regular lime washing, which works amazingly well. So, if we went back again to sensible solid-wall “greatcoat” construction, and to maintaining things well, might we be then automatically be also engaging in a good deal of carbon capture? 😸
I agree with you. Lloyd. This is more "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a cheeseburger today" thinking. There is an MIT spinout called Sublime -- a subtle play on words -- that is doing more to interrupt the emissions from limestone but using different precursors, but again, quite a lot of electricity is needed.
What we are seeing with AI is that the tech bros are making vapid promises about renewables but are actually depending on massive increases in thermal generation from coal and methane or building new nuclear plants. Basing this ETH Zurich process on renewables that do not exist -- and are under fire politically in many countries -- is "pie in the sky" thinking.
I have great respect for ETH Zurich, but this is more eyewash from the "let us pollute today and we will fix it tomorrow" crowd. Theoretically, their process works but in the real world, it is as BandAid for an existential problem.
PS: I read Abundance and thought the authors failed to perceive the depths of the climate emergency and instead were content to blow sunshine up our skirts.
PPS: I am beginning to think I am giving Mark Carney entirely too much credit.