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1. We don't need to replace all fossil fuels to just do better than we're doing now. It'd be a big help to just replace all fossil-fuel power plants, which is
by magduf 7y ago
1. We don't need to replace all fossil fuels to just do better than we're doing now. It'd be a big help to just replace all fossil-fuel power plants, which is what the OP was talking about.
2. Cars and trucks can be powered by electricity in the near-term. Airplanes cannot; we'd need much better battery tech for that to happen. Heating can't be replaced by heat pumps entirely; heat pumps don't work in subfreezing conditions. They have to resort to "auxiliary heat" (electric resistance heating) when it gets too cold. Of course, doing that and just having more nuclear plants is still better than burning hydrocarbons, but it does mean we need more electricity generation.
- StillBored 7y agoheat pumps don't work in subfreezing conditions. Not with the refrigerants used in retail AC units, which are sub-optimal even for that use when compared with some of the older HCFC's and CFC's. A lot of the current designs also likely ice up, so you need much larger evaporator coils/fields. Then there ends up being the question of what the efficiency looks like. Anyway, I'm just trying to say, that there is still heat in the air/etc below the freezing point of water, the science says it can work, and if you do a bit of googling you can even find vendors advertising fairly cold weather devices (-27C). https://daikinatlantic.ca/2019/11/03/what-are-the-best-heat-pumps-for-cold-weather/ https://daikinatlantic.ca/2019/11/03/what-are-the-best-heat-... So, making better ones is an engineering problem.