Originally Posted by
AJSki2fly
I agree but even even creating energy from neutral sources has a carbon footprint from building it to maintenance and in the long term replacing it, I am not saying it isn't better than other forms of energy generation, but it is not necessarily clear cut. Also how efficient the Green generated power (electricity) is used is pretty important as well. I believe a recent study at an American university worked out the total carbon footprint of building a Tesla, maintaining it for 10 years, running it for 100K miles and then scraping it, and compared that with an equivalent petrol driven car, sadly the petrol car had the lower carbon footprint. At present in the UK we are around 50% green electricity generated for our current needs, I am not sure how long the forecast is to get to 100% but it is certainly quite a few years into the future. If you add to that +30 million electric cars then I think the amount of daily required generated electricity required is massively increased, so it will be interesting how and where a country like the UK will being getting its Electric power to support its needs.
Also I have been told that to produce one litre of ethanol for bio-fuel use produces a bigger carbon footprint than producing the same in petrol, so this implies ethanol as a additive to replace petrol is not such a great idea, apart form the fact that large organisations are destroying/burning vast swaths of forests(the lungs of the Earth) and planting cereals to then produce bio-fuels, this all seems a bit cock-eyed to me.
Don't get me wrong I don't think fossil fuel burning is the way forward I just don't think the right solutions have been thought through and the total environmental impacts. It is interesting how certain other technologies have been rubbished or resisted by large corporations as they probably would impact control and profits long term.