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Articles and blog posts to do with Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions. Describes the types of technology available, and how these programs may affect the process industries.

Safety Moment #62: From Complicated to Complex

In any performance-based program such as process safety, the work is never finished — there is always room for improvement.

In practice, most of the developments in techniques for improving safety analysis are improvements of existing programs or techniques. For example, the hazards analysis technique LOPA (Layers of Protection Analysis) has seen widespread application in recent years. Yet it is basically a development of the well-established Fault Tree and Event Tree techniques.

The 300 Year Party

Submitted by gwddev on Tue, 03/07/2023 - 12:7 am

Published: August 2021

Imagine taking a magic carpet ride through northern Europe from east to west in Biblical. The area is circled on the map shown below — an area that Ugo Bardi rather unkindly refers to as a "vast regions of fog and swamps, inhabited by hairy Barbarians . . . the area we call today "Western Europe".

The New PSM Normal (2) — Do Less With More

Submitted by gwddev on Sat, 01/28/2023 - 9:28 pm

Dateline: June 2020

A Kodak Moment for the Oil Companies

Submitted by gwddev on Tue, 01/24/2023 - 12:24 pm

The term “Kodak Moment” originally referred to a rare or special occasion that was captured on (Kodak) film. The term has also come to describe a situation in which a company fails to foresee structural changes in its industry such that the company eventually falls into bankruptcy.

The Shape of Net Zero (1): No Substitute

Submitted by gwddev on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 5:23 pm

The central theme of Net Zero programs is that our use of fossil fuels must cease within the next two or three decades. This leads to the question as to whether there any other alternative energy sources that can replace the fossil fuels while allowing us to maintain our current, energy-profligate way of living. In this article we identify the features of fossil fuels, particularly oil, that make them so attractive, and that makes it unlikely that we will find an equivalent replacement.

The Renewable Energy Paradox

Submitted by gwddev on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 5:23 pm

Renewable Energy. M.C. Escher's Waterfall (1961)

Alice, the Red Queen and ERoEI

Submitted by gwddev on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 5:23 pm

Faster! Faster!

In Lewis Carroll’s famous story Through the Looking-Glass the protagonist, Alice, meets the Red Queen. Suddenly they start running.

Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying ‘Faster! Faster!’

Alice and the Queen run faster and faster until,

The Future Has No Narrative

Submitted by gwddev on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 5:23 pm

The following is a short summary of the full post, The Future Has No Narrative.

In 2015 the author Wendell Berry said,

So far as I am concerned, the future has no narrative. The future does not exist until it has become the past. To a very limited extent, prediction has worked. The sun, so far, has set and risen as we have expected it to do. And the world, I suppose, will predictably end, but all of its predicted deadlines, so far, have been wrong.

Greenhouse Gas Emission Scopes

Submitted by gwddev on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 5:23 pm

The matching YouTube for this article is located at the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Scopes video.

Many companies in the energy and process industries have committed to a Net Zero program. Their aim is to cease net emissions of greenhouse gases by a specific year, often 2050. In order to properly define their goal these companies need to identify the emissions for which they are responsible.

Hard Times for These Times

Submitted by gwddev on Mon, 01/23/2023 - 5:23 pm

Dateline: August 2021

Story-Telling

Most of the people reading posts such as this are aware that earlier this month the IPCC issued an alarming report on climate change that should make society change its ways. Failure to do so could lead to catastrophe and a possible breakdown of civilization within just 20 years. Yet nothing happened; the report changed almost nothing. It was just a blip in the torrent of news that we face every day.

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