this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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Construction equipment is going electric. Here’s what it’s like behind the wheel. (wapo.st)
submitted 4 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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I tested a 55,000-pound electric excavator. New ways to power off-road machines, which mostly run on diesel, could cut about 3 percent of U.S. carbon emissions.

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[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Lol how do you think construction sites generate electricity to charge the batteries?

[–] ealoe@ani.social 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You're saying this like sort of gotcha, but larger generators can be a lot more efficient than a smaller engine so even running a large diesel generator 24/7 to charge a battery is likely an improvement over a gas powered digger. Same reason powering an EV with a coal power plant is still a win over a gas car, bigger engines are more efficient.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah I was aware of that as I posted it. I work on construction sites. More than anything I was highlighting how vehicles isn't the only problem.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Three ways:

  • They can prioritize bringing power to the site, and do that first
  • They can use a trailer with solar panels, as is currently done today for lighting and tools
  • For equipment which sees limited use, simply bring it to the site already-charged

Electric equipment doesn't need to be a 100% replacement to make a big difference.

[–] Bilbo_Haggins@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

You would need a pretty big solar array to power a construction site with it. But you're headed in the right direction. Not only is it an option to use renewables to power battery-powered vehicles, but also pretty much any form of electricity generation increases in efficiency and decreases in emissions (per kilowatt generated) as it scales up. Even if you are burning the same fuel at the power plant, the emissions are going to be lower overall than the equivalent number of individual internal combustion engines because the efficiency of the power plant is much higher than an ICE. Vehicle engines are ridiculously inefficient overall and when you use a more efficient fuel like natural gas it is even more drastic of a difference.

It's also much easier to put stack controls on a power plant to capture or reduce emissions than it is to put emissions controls on all construction equipment individually. This has implications for carbon capture, which could happen right at the stack. However, there's a non-climate change benefit here as well which is that the local air quality would be greatly increased around construction sites. Currently most construction equipment does not have much in the way of emissions controls for other things like sulfur and nitrogen oxides or particulate emissions. Power plants have to meet emissions standards for all of these.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago
  1. It's not always practical to get power to a site, depending on the utility and whatever upgrades they need.
  2. Solar doesn't generate enough, and doesn't generate at all overnight (when plant would be charged).
  3. Most plant lives on site and transporting it off site to charge is just going to add to costs and likely increase pollution (you need lorries to move them).

It's a good idea, and one that's growing, but it's still niche and it will be a long time before construction sites are fully electric.

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