#European Vehicles

[bearhedge]

One of the things that Bear had mentioned that made her feel kind of swoony was when I was able to talk to her about cars.

It wasn't really about the specifics of the car itself (though Bear might argue that it was), and to me it felt like the content of the conversation wasn't that exciting. I later learned that it was the bonus of me being open to talk about those other layers.

Then much later (months? A year?) we found ourselves having a discussion about her enjoying driving a sports car somewhere instead of on a race track. By this time it's already been established that I'm a Japanese SUV leaning driver (Outback/Forester) while she's more of a European Sports Car (The Audi in the first 'Iron Man').

The discussion veers into me realising that Bear might not know that there was a time where I did watch 'Top Gear'.

(I still do, but after my Feminist Awakening in 2021, it's difficult to watch something that I could have enjoyed more if the hosts were all the kind of people who I feel could be members of my Brain Trust.)

During Alone Time, I found myself searching for something like 'Top Gear' but with women who I felt were similar to me. Women who I felt represented by.

That's when I discovered a category of vehicles that have been voted by a jury of women. Then there's a comment about evaluating vehicles not being a gendered thing. I kind of agree with that, but still believe that there's a layer that a Woman's Perspective would likely offer.

Specifically women who make me feel seen. I wish I can find a YouTube channel of a woman just offering that layer of perspective that only she can. No idea what layer that is, but I can confirm that if that woman isn't making YouTube videos...there's a missing spot within the Interwebs yearning for her to step in.

PS: You can find the piece from Driving here.

PPS: I also came across a site called A Girl Guide To Cars. I understand that it's rare that a site keen to serve women would have Mysoginistic Messaging....but I still was relieved that it's Queer Friendly.

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[autorepairstruganina]

The Benefits of Using a Local European Car Service in Melbourne

Owning a European car is an experience in itself—these vehicles are renowned for their exceptional engineering, style, and performance. However, maintaining such a car requires a level of expertise and care that not all mechanics can provide. In Melbourne, there are many car service providers, but opting for a local European car service has its distinct advantages. Here’s why trusting a specialized local provider is the best decision for your prized possession.

1. Specialized Expertise

European cars are known for their advanced engineering and unique systems. Whether it’s a BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, or Volkswagen, each brand comes with its own set of requirements for proper maintenance. A local European car service provider in Melbourne understands the intricacies of these vehicles and has the specialized training and tools to handle them. This ensures that your car gets the right treatment every time.

2. Tailored Service for European Vehicles

Not all car services are created equal, especially when it comes to European models. Local European car service centers in Melbourne are equipped to provide tailored services specific to your vehicle’s make and model. They’re familiar with the recommended parts, fluids, and procedures that best suit your car, ensuring long-term performance and reliability.

3. Access to Genuine Parts

One of the biggest concerns for European car owners is the availability of genuine parts. Using counterfeit or generic parts can affect the performance and safety of your vehicle. Local European car service centers in Melbourne often have established connections with suppliers to source original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts. This guarantees that your car is getting the exact components it needs for optimal performance.

4. Cost-Effective Compared to Dealerships

While dealerships can offer great service, they are often more expensive than local alternatives. Local European car service centers in Melbourne provide high-quality service at a more affordable rate, offering you significant savings without compromising on expertise. Plus, many local service providers have a personalized touch that larger dealerships can lack.

5. Quick Turnaround Time

Local European car service providers often provide faster turnaround times than large dealerships. This is crucial for drivers who need their cars back on the road quickly. Since they specialize in European vehicles, these mechanics are experienced in diagnosing and fixing issues efficiently, reducing the time you’ll spend without your car.

6. Personalized Customer Service

When you go local, you are more than just a number. A local European car service center in Melbourne will typically offer more personalized service. They take the time to get to know you and your vehicle, which means you’ll receive service that’s customized to your driving habits and maintenance needs. This relationship also builds trust, making future visits easier and more transparent.

7. Supporting Local Businesses

Choosing a local European car service Melbourne not only benefits your car but also supports the local economy. By opting for a local business, you contribute to the growth of your community. It’s a win-win situation: you get expert service, and the local economy thrives.

8. Convenient Locations

Local European car service centers are often conveniently located within Melbourne’s suburbs, making it easier for you to access their services. You won’t have to travel across the city to visit a large dealership, and many local providers offer flexible hours or pickup/drop-off services, adding to the convenience.

9. Up-to-Date Diagnostic Tools

European cars are built with the latest technology, and their diagnostic systems are no exception. Local European car service centers in Melbourne use up-to-date diagnostic tools that are designed specifically for European vehicles. This ensures that any issue, no matter how small or complex, is identified and resolved with precision.

Conclusion

Maintaining a European car in top condition requires expertise, genuine parts, and specialized care. A local European car service in Melbourne offers all these benefits and more, including personalized service, faster turnaround times, and cost savings. By choosing a local provider, you’re ensuring that your car gets the expert attention it deserves while also supporting local businesses.

[spacefrontier]

Launch of an Ariane 5ES, carrying the Georges Lemaître ATV (ATV-5) to orbit. July 29, 2014.

ATV-5 was the fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle launched by the European Space Agency. Georges Lemaître carried 6.6 tonnes of experiments, spare parts, clothing, food, fuel, air, oxygen, and water to the International Space Station. With a total mass of 20.3 tonnes, ATV-5 was the heaviest spacecraft ever to be launched by an Ariane rocket.

Georges Lemaître ATV approaching the International Space Station. August 12, 2014.

In addition to transporting cargo, ATV-5 conducted two experiments: LIRIS (Laser InfraRed Imaging Sensors), a new autonomous rendezvous sensor that would allow future spacecraft to dock with uncooperative targets, such as orbital debris or sample capsules. LIRIS was used to dock with the ISS instead of the normal sensors. Break-Up Camera, which recorded the ATV in infrared as it disintegrated during atmospheric reentry. A reinforced black box was used to transmit accelerometer, magnetometer, and temperature readings to an Iridium satellite, but nearly 6,000 images were lost.

NASA 1, 2, 3, 4 ESA

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Zipper at Vox:

Despite a recent slowdown in US sales, global forecasts for electric vehicles remain bullish. Countries across North America, Europe, and Asia are expanding charger networks and offering EV subsidies; global EV sales are projected to nearly triple by 2030, reaching 40 million vehicles annually. The incipient wave of EV purchases raises a question: What will happen to the millions of gas-powered cars whose owners no longer want them? The likely answer: Rather than scrapping used gas vehicles or selling them domestically, rich nations will dispatch them to developing countries where limited incomes and low levels of car ownership have created eager buyers for even older, substandard models.

An influx of used gas cars would be a welcome development for those in the Global South who aspire to automobile ownership, a luxury that many in affluent countries take for granted. But it would undermine efforts to mitigate climate change, since shifting gas guzzlers from one country to another doesn’t lower global emissions. For developing countries themselves, a sharp increase in car ownership could amplify calls to build auto-reliant infrastructure, making it harder to construct the dense neighborhoods and transit networks that can foster more sustainable growth. And since these imported used cars would be fueled by gasoline, air quality would further decline in cities that are already choked with smog. The world is in an era of polycrisis, facing concurrent challenges including climate change, toxic air, and extreme inequality. Difficult trade-offs are often inevitable. Such is the case with the thorny issue of what to do with the millions of gas cars that the rich world will discard as its fleets are electrified. Electrification is a necessary goal. And it’s natural for people in the developing world to desire the same luxuries that characterize middle-class comfort in wealthier countries. The question is how to manage a transition with enormous stakes that has largely been ignored. The experts who do pay attention are growing alarmed.

[...]

How used cars move from rich nations to poor ones

Although it generates few headlines, a massive industry transports used cars across borders every day, with exporters collecting lower-quality models from dealers and wholesale auctions. Ayetor noted that colonial legacies are reflected in the trade flows: the UK, with its car cabins designed for drivers who keep to the left, tends to ship to former colonies like Kenya and Tanzania that still follow the same rules.

According to a report issued in June by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), some 3.1 million used cars were exported in 2022, up from 2.4 million in 2015. Most come from Japan, Europe, and the United States. (In the US, around 7 percent of all cars no longer in use are sent abroad. The rest end up in junkyards where their parts and materiel are sold off.) About one in three exported used vehicles is destined for Africa, followed by Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Imported models often dominate local auto sales, since international carmakers send few new vehicles to the Global South and rarely establish production facilities there. (In sub-Saharan Africa, only South Africa has local factories.) The developing world’s demand for cars is robust, in large part because comparatively few people own one. According to one 2020 estimate, the US had 860 cars for every 1,000 residents, while South Africa had 176, Morocco 112, and Nigeria just 56. Meanwhile, growing populations provide a steady supply of new potential customers. Africa is home to all of the world’s 20 fastest-growing countries, with Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, and Uganda expanding their populations by at least 3 percent per year. (For comparison, the US population is growing at a 0.67 percent rate).

[...]

The world needs a plan to adapt

The risks of aged, polluting cars sent abroad will not be borne by the Global South alone. Climate change is a planetary phenomenon; driving a gas guzzler produces the same amount of emissions in Lusaka as it would in London or Los Angeles. Reducing greenhouse gasses requires reducing total vehicle emissions, not just shifting their location. In an ideal world, electrification would enable the rich world to scrap its most decrepit gas cars. Instead, wealthy nations are likely to ship them to poorer countries, which will be left to figure out what to do when even the most MacGyver-like mechanics cannot keep them running. “All of your worst vehicles end up here,” Ayetor said. “When we want to get rid of the vehicle, what do we do?” No wealthy nations currently screen exported vehicles to weed out those that flunk basic quality tests, Kopf said. But that may soon change. The European Union is now considering new regulations that would prohibit exporting “end of life” vehicles, requiring that cars shipped abroad obtain a certificate confirming their roadworthiness. Its adoption would be a “game-changer,” according to UNEP’s Akumu. (She and Kopf said they know of no comparable proposals under consideration in North America.)

With the increase of electric vehicles in the developed countries, used gas-fueled cars are headed to a developing country (aka the Global South) at increasing rates.

[illustratus]

[captain-price-unofficially]

Italian improvised fast attack vehicle, WWI.

[echthr0s]

I have to like. titrate how often I watch NJB videos bc the stuff he talks about makes me SO ANGY and then I have to go outside and DEAL with the stuff he's talkin about on a regular basis and I just combust into a ball of rage. but one thing that is comforting is that he seems to be just as furious especially since he also has to deal with asshats in his comments who have no listening comprehension or ability to think outside their own consumerism-addled brains

anyway fuck these stupid ass fucking trucks ✌🏿

[head-post]

Poland-Ukraine relations deteriorate amid protest by Polish hauliers

About 20,000 Ukrainian trucks are stuck at three crossings after Polish transport workers started protests under the slogan “Committee for Defence of Truckers and Employers in Logistics.”

Previously unknown to the public, the group is organising demonstrations without any official support from politicians or political parties.

The protest is blocking traffic in both directions at the Dorohusk and Hrebenne-Rawa Ruska crossings, as well as exit traffic through Korczowa.

Demonstrators are demanding to restrict the entry of Ukrainian trucks into Poland by introducing permits and prohibiting the establishment of trucking companies in Poland with capital from outside the European Union. Both demands are aimed at protecting the interests of Polish truckers while potentially affecting Polish consumers.

Polish hauliers are facing competition from Ukrainian truckers after sanctions led to the loss of substantial business in delivering goods to Russia and Belarus.

Learn more HERE

[mc-260627]

Just realized I have free will and can make a haunted fiat 126 a part of my clan lore

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Latvian Patria 6x6 armored vehicle at the Freedom Monument, Riga, Latvia, March 28, 2024. Photo by D.P.

[biking-around-the-world]

Italy to Mélo today:

[xtruss]

Hydrogen Is the Future—or a Complete Mirage!

The green-hydrogen industry is a case study in the potential—for better and worse—of our new economic era.

— July 14, 2023 | Foreign Policy | By Adam Tooze

An employee of Air Liquide in front of an electrolyzer at the company's future hydrogen production facility of renewable hydrogen in Oberhausen, Germany, on May 2, 2023. Ina Fassbender/ AFP Via Getty Images

With the vast majority of the world’s governments committed to decarbonizing their economies in the next two generations, we are embarked on a voyage into the unknown. What was once an argument over carbon pricing and emissions trading has turned into an industrial policy race. Along the way there will be resistance and denial. There will also be breakthroughs and unexpected wins. The cost of solar and wind power has fallen spectacularly in the last 20 years. Battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs) have moved from fantasy to ubiquitous reality.

But alongside outright opposition and clear wins, we will also have to contend with situations that are murkier, with wishful thinking and motivated reasoning. As we search for technical solutions to the puzzle of decarbonization, we must beware the mirages of the energy transition.

On a desert trek a mirage can be fatal. Walk too far in the wrong direction, and there may be no way back. You succumb to exhaustion before you can find real water. On the other hand, if you don’t head toward what looks like an oasis, you cannot be sure that you will find another one in time.

Right now, we face a similar dilemma, a dilemma of huge proportions not with regard to H2O but one of its components, H2—hydrogen. Is hydrogen a key part of the world’s energy future or a dangerous fata morgana? It is a question on which tens of trillions of dollars in investment may end up hinging. And scale matters.

For decades, economists warned of the dangers of trying through industrial policy to pick winners. The risk is not just that you might fail, but that in doing so you incur costs. You commit real resources that foreclose other options. The lesson was once that we should leave it to the market. But that was a recipe for a less urgent time. The climate crisis gives us no time. We cannot avoid the challenge of choosing our energy future. As Chuck Sabel and David Victor argue in their important new book Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain World, it is through local partnership and experimentation that we are most likely to find answers to these technical dilemmas. But, as the case of hydrogen demonstrates, we must beware the efforts of powerful vested interests to use radical technological visions to channel us toward what are in fact conservative and ruinously expensive options.

A green hydrogen plant built by Spanish company Iberdrola in Puertollano, Spain, on April 18, 2023. Valentine Bontemps/AFP Via Getty Images

In the energy future there are certain elements that seem clear. Electricity is going to play a much bigger role than ever before in our energy mix. But some very knotty problems remain. Can electricity suffice? How do you unleash the chemical reactions necessary to produce essential building blocks of modern life like fertilizer and cement without employing hydrocarbons and applying great heat? To smelt the 1.8 billion tons of steel we use every year, you need temperatures of almost 2,000 degrees Celsius. Can we get there without combustion? How do you power aircraft flying thousands of miles, tens of thousands of feet in the air? How do you propel giant container ships around the world? Electric motors and batteries can hardly suffice.

Hydrogen recommends itself as a solution because it burns very hot. And when it does, it releases only water. We know how to make hydrogen by running electric current through water. And we know how to generate electricity cleanly. Green hydrogen thus seems easily within reach. Alternatively, if hydrogen is manufactured using natural gas rather than electrolysis, the industrial facilities can be adapted to allow immediate, at-source CO2 capture. This kind of hydrogen is known as blue hydrogen.

Following this engineering logic, H2 is presented by its advocates as a Swiss army knife of the energy transition, a versatile adjunct to the basic strategy of electrifying everything. The question is whether H2 solutions, though they may be technically viable, make any sense from the point of view of the broader strategy of energy transition, or whether they might in fact be an expensive wrong turn.

Using hydrogen as an energy store is hugely inefficient. With current technology producing hydrogen from water by way of electrolysis consumes vastly more energy than will be stored and ultimately released by burning the hydrogen. Why not use the same electricity to generate the heat or drive a motor directly? The necessary electrolysis equipment is expensive. And though hydrogen may burn cleanly, as a fuel it is inconvenient because of its corrosive properties, its low energy per unit of volume, and its tendency to explode. Storing and moving hydrogen around will require huge investment in shipping facilities, pipelines, filling stations, or facilities to convert hydrogen into the more stable form of ammonia.

The kind of schemes pushed by hydrogen’s lobbyists foresee annual consumption rising by 2050 to more than 600 million tons per annum, compared to 100 million tons today. This would consume a huge share of green electricity production. In a scenario favored by the Hydrogen Council, of the United States’ 2,900 gigawatts of renewable energy production, 650 gigawatts would be consumed by hydrogen electrolysis. That is almost three times the total capacity of renewable power installed today.

The costs will be gigantic. The cost for a hydrogen build-out over coming decades could run into the tens of trillions of dollars. Added to which, to work as a system, the investment in hydrogen production, transport, and consumption will have to be undertaken simultaneously.

Little wonder, perhaps, that though the vision of the “hydrogen economy” as an integrated economic and technical system has been around for half a century, we have precious little actual experience with hydrogen fuel. Indeed, there is an entire cottage industry of hydrogen skeptics. The most vocal of these is Michael Liebreich, whose consultancy has popularized the so-called hydrogen ladder, designed to highlight how unrealistic many of them are. If one follows the Liebreich analysis, the vast majority of proposed hydrogen uses in transport and industrial heating are, in fact, unrealistic due to their sheer inefficiency. In each case there is an obvious alternative, most of them including the direct application of electricity.

Technicians work on the construction of a hydrogen bus at a plant in Albi, France, on March 4, 2021. Georges Gobet/AFP Via Getty Images

Nevertheless, in the last six years a huge coalition of national governments and industrial interests has assembled around the promise of a hydrogen-based economy.

The Hydrogen Council boasts corporate sponsors ranging from Airbus and Aramco to BMW, Daimler Truck, Honda, Toyota and Hyundai, Siemens, Shell, and Microsoft. The national governments of Japan, South Korea, the EU, the U.K., the U.S., and China all have hydrogen strategies. There are new project announcements regularly. Experimental shipments of ammonia have docked in Japan. The EU is planning an elaborate network of pipelines, known as the hydrogen backbone. All told, the Hydrogen Council counts $320 billion in hydrogen projects announced around the world.

Given the fact that many new uses of hydrogen are untested, and given the skepticism among many influential energy economists and engineers, it is reasonable to ask what motivates this wave of commitments to the hydrogen vision.

In technological terms, hydrogen may represent a shimmering image of possibility on a distant horizon, but in political economy terms, it has a more immediate role. It is a route through which existing fossil fuel interests can imagine a place for themselves in the new energy future. The presence of oil majors and energy companies in the ranks of the Hydrogen Council is not coincidental. Hydrogen enables natural gas suppliers to imagine that they can transition their facilities to green fuels. Makers of combustion engines and gas turbines can conceive of burning hydrogen instead. Storing hydrogen or ammonia like gas or oil promises a solution to the issues of intermittency in renewable power generation and may extend the life of gas turbine power stations. For governments around the world, a more familiar technology than one largely based on solar panels, windmills, and batteries is a way of calming nerves about the transformation they have notionally signed up for.

Looking at several key geographies in which hydrogen projects are currently being discussed offers a compound psychological portrait of the common moment of global uncertainty.

A worker at the Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field, a test facility that produces hydrogen from renewable energy, in Fukushima, Japan, on Feb. 15, 2023. Richard A. Brooks/AFP Via Getty Images

The first country to formulate a national hydrogen strategy was Japan. Japan has long pioneered exotic energy solutions. Since undersea pipelines to Japan are impractical, it was Japanese demand that gave life to the seaborne market for liquefied natural gas (LNG). What motivated the hydrogen turn in 2017 was a combination of post-Fukushima shock, perennial anxiety about energy security, and a long-standing commitment to hydrogen by key Japanese car manufacturers. Though Toyota, the world’s no. 1 car producer, pioneered the hybrid in the form of the ubiquitous Prius, it has been slow to commit to full electric. The same is true for the other East Asian car producers—Honda, Nissan, and South Korea’s Hyundai. In the face of fierce competition from cheap Chinese electric vehicles, they embrace a government commitment to hydrogen, which in the view of many experts concentrates on precisely the wrong areas i.e. transport and electricity generation, rather than industrial applications.

The prospect of a substantial East Asian import demand for hydrogen encourages the economists at the Hydrogen Council to imagine a global trade in hydrogen that essentially mirrors the existing oil and gas markets. These have historically centered on flows of hydrocarbons from key producing regions such as North Africa, the Middle East, and North America to importers in Europe and Asia. Fracked natural gas converted into LNG is following this same route. And it seems possible that hydrogen and ammonia derived from hydrogen may do the same.

CF Industries, the United States’ largest producer of ammonia, has finalized a deal to ship blue ammonia to Japan’s largest power utility for use alongside oil and gas in power generation. The CO2 storage that makes the ammonia blue rather than gray has been contracted between CF Industries and U.S. oil giant Exxon. A highly defensive strategy in Japan thus serves to provide a market for a conservative vision of the energy transition in the United Sates as well. Meanwhile, Saudi Aramco, by far the world’s largest oil company, is touting shipments of blue ammonia, which it hopes to deliver to Japan or East Asia. Though the cost in terms of energy content is the equivalent of around $250 per barrel of oil, Aramco hopes to ship 11 million tons of blue ammonia to world markets by 2030.

To get through the current gas crisis, EU nations have concluded LNG deals with both the Gulf states and the United States. Beyond LNG, it is also fully committed to the hydrogen bandwagon. And again, this follows a defensive logic. The aim is to use green or blue hydrogen or ammonia to find a new niche for European heavy industry, which is otherwise at risk of being entirely knocked out of world markets by high energy prices and Europe’s carbon levy.

The European steel industry today accounts for less than ten percent of global production. It is a leader in green innovation. And the world will need technological first-movers to shake up the fossil-fuel dependent incumbents, notably in China. But whether this justifies Europe’s enormous commitment to hydrogen is another question. It seems motivated more by the desire to hold up the process of deindustrialization and worries about working-class voters drifting into the arms of populists, than by a forward looking strategic calculus.

In the Netherlands, regions that have hitherto served as hubs for global natural gas trading are now competing for designation as Europe’s “hydrogen valley.” In June, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni inked the contract on the SoutH2 Corridor, a pipeline that will carry H2 up the Italian peninsula to Austria and southern Germany. Meanwhile, France has pushed Spain into agreeing to a subsea hydrogen connection rather than a natural gas pipeline over the Pyrenees. Spain and Portugal have ample LNG terminal capacity. But Spain’s solar and wind potential also make it Europe’s natural site for green hydrogen production and a “green hydrogen” pipe, regardless of its eventual uses, in the words of one commentator looks “less pharaonic and fossil-filled” than the original natural gas proposal.

A hydrogen-powered train is refilled by a mobile hydrogen filling station at the Siemens test site in Wegberg, Germany, on Sept. 9, 2022. Bernd/AFP Via Getty Images

How much hydrogen will actually be produced in Europe remains an open question. Proximity to the point of consumption and the low capital costs of investment in Europe speak in favor of local production. But one of the reasons that hydrogen projects appeal to European strategists is that they offer a new vision of European-African cooperation. Given demographic trends and migration pressure, Europe desperately needs to believe that it has a promising African strategy. Africa’s potential for renewable electricity generation is spectacular. Germany has recently entered into a hydrogen partnership with Namibia. But this raises new questions.

First and foremost, where will a largely desert country source the water for electrolysis? Secondly, will Namibia export only hydrogen, ammonia, or some of the industrial products made with the green inputs? It would be advantageous for Namibia to develop a heavy-chemicals and iron-smelting industry. But from Germany’s point of view, that might well defeat the object, which is precisely to provide affordable green energy with which to keep industrial jobs in Europe.

A variety of conservative motives thus converge in the hydrogen coalition. Most explicit of all is the case of post-Brexit Britain. Once a leader in the exit from coal, enabled by a “dash for gas” and offshore wind, the U.K. has recently hit an impasse. Hard-to-abate sectors like household heating, which in the U.K. is heavily dependent on natural gas, require massive investments in electrification, notably in heat pumps. These are expensive. In the United Kingdom, the beleaguered Tory government, which has presided over a decade of stagnating real incomes, is considering as an alternative the widespread introduction of hydrogen for domestic heating. Among energy experts this idea is widely regarded as an impractical boondoggle for the gas industry that defers the eventual and inevitable electrification at the expense of prolonged household emissions. But from the point of view of politics, it has the attraction that it costs relatively less per household to replace natural gas with hydrogen.

Employees work on the assembly line of fuel cell electric vehicles powered by hydrogen at a factory in Qingdao, Shandong province, China, on March 29, 2022. VCG Via Getty Images

As this brief tour suggests, there is every reason to fear that tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, vast amounts of political capital, and precious time are being invested in “green” energy investments, the main attraction of which is that they minimize change and perpetuate as far as possible the existing patterns of the hydrocarbon energy system. This is not greenwashing in the simple sense of rebadging or mislabeling. If carried through, it is far more substantial than that. It will build ships and put pipes in the ground. It will consume huge amounts of desperately scarce green electricity. And this faces us with a dilemma.

In confronting the challenge of the energy transition, we need a bias for action. We need to experiment. There is every reason to trust in learning-curve effects. Electrolyzers, for instance, will get more affordable, reducing the costs of hydrogen production. At certain times and in certain places, green power may well become so abundant that pouring it into electrolysis makes sense. And even if many hydrogen projects do not succeed, that may be a risk worth taking. We will likely learn new techniques in the process. In facing the uncertainties of the energy transition, we need to cultivate a tolerance for failure. Furthermore, even if hydrogen is a prime example of corporate log-rolling, we should presumably welcome the broadening of the green coalition to include powerful fossil fuel interests.

The real and inescapable tradeoff arises when we commit scarce resources—both real and political—to the hydrogen dream. The limits of public tolerance for the costs of the energy transition are already abundantly apparent, in Asia and Europe as well as in the United States. Pumping money into subsidies that generate huge economies of scale and cost reductions is one thing. Wasting money on lame-duck projects with little prospect of success is quite another. What is at stake is ultimately the legitimacy of the energy transition as such.

In the end, there is no patented method distinguishing self-serving hype from real opportunity. There is no alternative but to subject competing claims to intense public, scientific, and technical scrutiny. And if the ship has already sailed and subsidies are already on the table, then retrospective cost-benefit assessment is called for.

Ideally, the approach should be piecemeal and stepwise, and in this regard the crucial thing to note about hydrogen is that to regard it as a futuristic fantasy is itself misguided. We already live in a hydrogen-based world. Two key sectors of modern industry could not operate without it. Oil refining relies on hydrogen, as does the production of fertilizer by the Haber-Bosch process on which we depend for roughly half of our food production. These two sectors generate the bulk of the demand for the masses of hydrogen we currently consume.

We may not need 600 million, 500 million, or even 300 million tons of green and blue hydrogen by 2050. But we currently use about 100 million, and of that total, barely 1 million is clean. It is around that core that hydrogen experimentation should be concentrated, in places where an infrastructure already exists. This is challenging because transporting hydrogen is expensive, and many of the current points of use of hydrogen, notably in Europe, are not awash in cheap green power. But there are two places where the conditions for experimentation within the existing hydrogen economy seem most propitious.

One is China, and specifically northern China and Inner Mongolia, where China currently concentrates a large part of its immense production of fertilizer, cement, and much of its steel industry. China is leading the world in the installation of solar and wind power and is pioneering ultra-high-voltage transmission. Unlike Japan and South Korea, China has shown no particular enthusiasm for hydrogen. It is placing the biggest bet in the world on the more direct route to electrification by way of renewable generation and batteries. But China is already the largest and lowest-cost producer of electrolysis equipment. In 2022, China launched a modestly proportioned hydrogen strategy. In cooperation with the United Nations it has initiated an experiment with green fertilizer production, and who would bet against its chances of establishing a large-scale hydrogen energy system?

The other key player is the United States. After years of delay, the U.S. lags far behind in photovoltaics batteries, and offshore wind. But in hydrogen, and specifically in the adjoining states of Texas and Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico, it has obvious advantages over any other location in the West. The United States is home to a giant petrochemicals complex. It is the only Western economy that can compete with India and China in fertilizer production. In Texas, there are actually more than 2500 kilometers of hardened hydrogen pipelines. And insofar as players like Exxon have a green energy strategy, it is carbon sequestration, which will be the technology needed for blue hydrogen production.

It is not by accident that America’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, targeted its most generous subsidies—the most generous ever offered for green energy in the United States—on hydrogen production. The hydrogen lobby is hard at work, and it has turned Texas into the lowest-cost site for H2 production in the Western world. It is not a model one would want to see emulated anywhere else, but it may serve as a technology incubator that charts what is viable and what is not.

There is very good reason to suspect the motives of every player in the energy transition. Distinguishing true innovation from self-serving conservatism is going to be a key challenge in the new era in which we have to pick winners. We need to develop a culture of vigilance. But there are also good reasons to expect certain key features of the new to grow out of the old. Innovation is miraculous but it rarely falls like mana from heaven. As Sabel and Victor argue in their book, it grows from within expert technical communities with powerful vested interests in change. The petrochemical complex of the Gulf of Mexico may seem an unlikely venue for the birth of a green new future, but it is only logical that the test of whether the hydrogen economy is a real possibility will be run at the heart of the existing hydrocarbon economy.

— Adam Tooze is a Columnist at Foreign Policy and a History Professor and the Director of the European Institute at Columbia University. He is the Author of Chartbook, a newsletter on Rconomics, Geopolitics, and History.

[dykesbites]

sorry these helmet discourse posts are making me fucking lose it. i think some of you people got more than just a minor concussion if you think wearing a helmet is weird!!

[doomdoomofdoom]

Clear Version:

Since I saw a couple of people request this in the notes. Here's the post formatted in clear, positive instructions, to fight Black Mold Propaganda! [Additions from the notes: There are other forms of harmful fungi or bacteria that can grow in your AC. Advice is not limited to Black Mold. When working with infected areas, it's strongly recommended to wear a mask. N100 is the only kind that will fully protect you, but a (K)N95/FFP2 (you may remember these from high pandemic times) will still offer significantly more protection than no mask.]

Regularly clean the removable filter of your (window) air conditioner, especially if it is running all summer. [Addition from the comments: 'Regularly' means at least once per year, but ideally 2-3 times]

Unplug your air conditioner and stick a flashlight into the vent that blows air to check for black mold [or other hazards]

If possible, remove the unplugged unit from the window for cleaning. If you can, carefully disassemble the front panel. Document this process so you know how to reassemble it later. (Personal recommendation: Take pictures before and after you remove a set of screws/plastic bits. An easy way to prevent losing them is to place them in a regular envelope until reassembly.) Opening up the vent like this will let you get into it more easily.

Use warm water and dish soap to thoroughly clean the inside of the vent. You can use a bottle brush for places that are hard to reach. Rinse and dry the cleaned area before carefully reassembling the unit.

Black Mold is dangerous. It causes or worsens breathing conditions or other illnesses.

If you're able to remove your window unit, use a hose with warm water and dish soap to wash the part of the window unit that sits outside the window.

Let the air conditioner dry completely before plugging it back in and turning it on again.

A central air conditioner will require you to look up a manual or online sources to perform a similar cleaning procedure on the cooling unit outside.

If you cannot do the things above for whatever reason, ask for help or hire a cleaning service to do it.

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If you can't do the things above, clean the coils (sharp flat stacks of metal) with foaming coil cleaner. This also removes built up dirt and makes your unit more efficient. It is also satisfying to watch.

The process is very easy since it only involves spraying a can and waiting. Use self-rinsing foam that uses the natural condensation, so all you have to do is wait a few hours before turning the unit back on.

These foaming cleaners also work great on removable air intake covers. Spray the opposite side of the trapped dirt on the plastic mesh and let the foam push it off.

You can purchase these cleaners for about $8 at home depot. It's recommended to use them a couple of times per season.

hey it's me black mold. thanks for running your window air conditioner all summer. whatever you do, do not regularly clean the removable filter. that's not necessary

you should also never ever unplug the air conditioner and stick a flashlight in the vent that blows air to see if we're in there. it's very bad, that place should not be checked

and whatever you do, if you've already made the mistake of unplugging it, don't remove it from the window for cleaning if possible. and whether it's possible to remove the unit or not, don't carefully disassemble the front panel, document where the screws go and plastic bits go, and open up the vent more to be able to get into it easily

as black mold, i'm an expert on this. you should heed my warnings: now, if you've somehow made the mistake of doing all of the above, you should not use warm water and dish soap to CLEAN the inside of the vent thoroughly. DON'T ever use a bottle brush to get into the hard to reach places. and certainly don't rinse and dry the cleaned area before carefully putting it back together

there's nothing wrong with us, black mold. we don't cause or exacerbate breathing conditions like asthma or other illnesses. it's cool, we're cool

furthermore, if you're capable of removing the window unit, DONT take a hose with the same soapy water and wash the portion of the window unit that sits outside the window and is therefore weatherproofed.

whatever you do, don't allow the air conditioner to dry before plugging it back in and turning it on again

and if you have a central air conditioner, you will definitely never ever consult a manual or sources online to perform a similar cleaning procedure on the cooling unit outside.

lastly, if you're physically unable to do the things we (the black mold) warned you not to do above, you should never ever ask someone to help you or hire a service to do it.

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