[extropy-chat] Trees and EVs

[Dan Clemmensen]

Eugen Leitl wrote:

>On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 07:39:46PM -0500, Dan Clemmensen wrote:
>  
>
>>Kevin Freels wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>So who wants to start work developing a home solar/wind combo re-charging
>>>station?
>>>      
>>>
>>OK, now we have it: Grow trees and leave them standing: they sequester 
>>carbon as they grow.
>>    
>>
>
>Better: insulate your house. Put good passive absorbers on the roof for
>heating your water. Build a winter garden, and other means for passive solar
>heating.
>
>Use efficient burners. Use hydrogen-rich fossil fuels (methane), or renewables (there
>are now new clean wood powder burners, etc).
>
>Use energy-efficient household machines.
>
>This gives the best ROI. Everything beyond that is going to cost you more,
>and give you increasingly diminishing returns (some local variations like
>geothermia and microhydro or subsidized PV ignored on purpose).
>
>  
>
Absolutely. However, this does not provide energy for transportation. 
For that
we need to generate either electricity or hydrocarbon fuel, I speculated 
that the
incremental cost to generate power for the house, given the capital 
investment
needed to generate energy for the EV, would be acceptably small. Of course,
when you notice that your leaf pile from last year is running out before the
next fall, you will probably decide to insulate, etc. in order to 
conserve energy.
I focused on electricity rather than hydrocarbon fuel because one of the two
parent threads was all about zero-emission vehicles.

With respect to heating, the use of any fuel means that you are not 
being clever
enough in managing your heat budget. Insulation, solar thermal, and heat 
storage
and transfer should keep you snug. However, if you are converting biomass to
electricity, or even to methanol and/or methane, you also have a fair 
amount of
cogenerated process heat to work with, and it may be cheaper to use it 
than it
is to mess with solar thermal.