New federal fuel regulations are coming soon — here's what you can expect
New federal fuel regulations are coming soon — here's what you can expect
"The new regulations are meant to cut the "carbon intensity" of automotive fuels sold on the Canadian market — how much they generate in emissions for a given amount of energy. Unlike the current rules, the new ones cover the entire life cycle of fuels, from production and transport to consumption.
The goal is to push companies that produce or import fuel to gradually reduce the emissions intensity of that process by setting a ceiling and dropping it each year. By 2030, the rules will require a 15 per cent cut in emissions intensity compared to 2016 levels."
lol
Ethanol is equally as inefficient as fossil fuels. You spend more fossil fuel producing it than you save burning it. Carbon capture is hopium. And 15% in 14 years might as well be pissing in the ocean to raise the sea level.
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Bit of a cart/horse issue sadly. If the farm machines were burning more ethanol than fossil fuels (or were electric) then this mightn't be the case. :-/ Of course there are other issues with ethanol production too (like erosion from unsustainably growing corn, replacing food crops with fuel crops, etc.)
If we put all of the other environmental factors aside and we didn't use fossil fuels to produce and transport ethanol, then ethanol would be better than fossil fuels in that the net carbon in the atmosphere wouldn't change. That's the goal with ethanol.
Ethanol agriculture is really inefficient land use. There isn't enough land on the planet to grow enough crops to supply ethanol for the entire world to use. And spoiler alert: ethanol actually emits more CO2 than fossil fuels when you include production, refinement, and blending. Okay, if everything was running on ethanol, sure, we'd cut CO2 emissions by roughly half, but then we're back to that pesky land issue.
As for EV's, batteries take enormous amounts of energy from the mining and manufacturing. At best, comparing lifetime emissions (resource mining, manufacturing, use, and scrapping), it's basically a wash with a typical ICE vehicle. Add to that the fact that they're about 30% heavier than their ICE equivalents (because batteries are so damn heavy), it means they'll wear down roads faster (causing more emissions to extract resources, construct and maintain roads) and wear tires faster. Oh, and fun fact: tires are actually the biggest polluter in any road vehicle.
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Ideally, you'd use agricultural by-products for ethanol/biofuel production.
Granted, we're not there yet, but it would be a more worthy goal.
Why is China investing so much in carbon capture, then?
I'm not sure holding up China as a shining example of environmentalism is making the case you think it is.
The biggest carbon capture facility in the world captures 0.001% of carbon emissions. There would literally need to be a million of these to capture all the carbon emitted.
I'm not sure holding up China as a shining example of environmentalism is making the case you think it is.
The biggest carbon capture facility in the world captures 0.001% of carbon emissions. There would literally need to be a million of these to capture all the carbon emitted.