| From The Newspaper (20) Environment (10) |
January 26, 2023
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| He watched a TV program which featured about the recent situation of renewable energies, which was created by a joint venture of companies from France, Germany, and Holland. First, a specialist mentioned the premise of present international energy policies. She said that natural gas in power plants emits half CO2 than coal. So, a lot of countries want to change from coal to natural gas. Actually, for a couple of decades, European countries had been depending on Russia's natural gas more and more. And, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made it worse. She added that those countries basically want to shift more to wind power generation and solar power generation, but it was difficult because electricity by those methods are unstable, and the way to store electricity efficiently hasn't been found yet. In the later part of the program, it explained that in Denmark 50% of electricity is generated by wind power generation, but, when wind is strong, the windmills generate more than their use (daily) and sell some to other countries like Germany. On the other hand, if wind is  weak (and they can't generate as much as they need (daily)), they will import electricity from Germany which is generated by coal generating power plants, or from Sweden which is generated by nuclear reactors. There are those types of electric networks among European countries. He checked on the internet about the ease of emitting CO2. A web page read that the CO2 emissions after production of the same calorific value, of coal, crude oil, and natural gas is 10 : 7.5 : 5.5. The web also showed that from crude oil, other extracted fuels, gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene, light oil, and heavy oil have almost the same amount of CO2 emissions. He had heard that a new type of coal generation power plants don't emit as much CO2 as before. But, it was his misunderstanding. The new technology enables to reduce noxious smoke, but not CO2. The specialist added that coal is cheaper than other raw materials, so coal is used a lot. But with recent international movement against fossil fuels, each country tends to give up coal mines and generation plants. About reactors: Reactors have been receiving constant criticism toward their safety and wastes. After Fukushima, Germany and Italy gave up on reactors. He couldn't recognize it, but in the show a country is making a big cave-like storage facility for nuclear waste. A worker said, "If this is used, nobody won't enter." If he remembers correctly, plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years. And, his country hasn't decided where they will make those types of storage facilities yet. Plutonium has another problem, which can be used as a material for atomic bombs. The program showed some countries' efforts in order to reduce CO2. Denmark and Romania are pushing for wind power generation more and more. They have programs to reeducate workers of coal mines and coal generating power plants for new jobs with wind power generation. A training program for workers for maintenance of windmills was introduced. A minister in Denmark remarked that this is their business chance, and they are planning to build windmills offshore where the wind is stronger. For airplanes, electric planes are not realistic because batteries will become too big, a specialist said. Bio-fuel called 'green ammonia' from plants, algae, etc. will be used. He also read in the newspaper that an airplane company in this country has started to experiment to use waste oil from households. Oil companies like Exxon-Mobile have a sense of crisis because their stock prices are unstable because their future is thought to be dark. Now they have increased investment in projects for reducing CO2. They started to experiment to collect CO2 from various industrial scenes, compress them, and preserve it in rock under the deep ground. He had read in the newspaper the same type of idea. A gas company in this country has started to experiment to collect CO2 from factories, and then make a reaction with hydrogen, in order to make methane. Maybe not only investors, but also common consumers will be interested in those new technologies, and investment for CO2 reduction will accelerate, he hoped. |
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No. 507
February 3, 2023
February 10, 2023
*premise :前提
*ease :しやすさ
*crude :加工していない
*noxious :有毒の、有害な
*offshore :沖合