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I find the terminology used here incredibly annoying. > It will convert its production waste and residues into an Ultra-Low Carbon Fuel (ULCF) gas that produce

by twic 5y ago

I find the terminology used here incredibly annoying. > It will convert its production waste and residues into an Ultra-Low Carbon Fuel (ULCF) gas that produces minimal carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions. > The biogas emitted by whisky’s production process cuts CO2 emissions by over 95 per cent compared to diesel and other fossil fuels and reduces other harmful particulates and greenhouse gas emissions by up to 99 per cent, Glenfiddich said. Biogas is a mixture of methane and CO2. When burnt, it produces less CO2 per unit energy than petrol, because it's got more hydrogen, but it absolutely still produces lots of CO2. It is definitely not cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 95% or 99%! The important difference is that the carbon is not from fossil sources. This is vital! But CO2 is still being emitted! Essentially, "carbon" has become a metonym for "fossil-derived carbon". This is going to lead to lots of confusion by anyone who doesn't have a firm grip on that fact.

ReactiveJelly 5y ago
It's already a metonym for CO2, and I'm already not happy about that. There's lots of other tailpipe emissions worth asking about. Isn't that how Europe wasted years trying to make clean diesel?
- dexterdog 5y ago
  Not to mention tire and break emissions which are still considerable on any vehicle.
  - ianai 5y ago
    My hybrid uses the brakes significantly less than a nonhybrid ICE. The motors do a lot of the stopping work instead of the brakes. It’s easiest to see this going downhills. My cars recharging while other cars are using brakes. Tire wear though is definitely not abated.
    - simondotau 5y ago
      Is tyre wear really a comparable concern? Think about how many times you refuel your car between tyre changes. Contemplate the volume of fuel burned versus the volume of material scraped off your tyres over their lifetime. Whatever the environmental cost of tyres, they cannot compete with liquid fuel.
      - ianai 5y ago
        It’s more about PM2.5 and similar particulate pollution. But absolutely there are bigger concerns. Tire and brake pollution gets brought up as a false equivalency between ICE and EV car emissions often. Just wanted to add a factoid about how electrified vehicles really are more efficient.
      - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
        It's not just how much stuff is consumed. Different materials break into different size and shape particles. Tires may wear out slower but the particles they release may cause more damage.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - hinkley 5y ago
      They've also banned certain materials from brake pads that were causing problem. Copper is a no-no in the time between when my car was built and I last talked to someone about replacements (my car didn't need it because while it's an ICE, the computer is smart enough to do engine braking much of the time).
  - nick__m 5y ago
    That carbon is not a green house gas so its okay :P But seroulsly, a review found on pubmed¹ made me realise that brakes and tires emissions are an understudied public health threat. Breaks emissions accounts for 16% to 55% of the PM₁₀ emitted by an ICE car and those particles are an healthy mix of iron, copper, barium, lead, inorganic carbon (probably as soot and graphite, I would be terribly surprised if it was as diamonds and graphene) and various unlisted and unstudied organic compounds! 1- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4315878/#Sec8title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4315878/#Sec8ti... P.s. I tried to link directly to the conclusion but the pubmed reader sometimes show a seemingly random page... so the correct page is 40
fsckboy 5y ago
the average person will take this to mean this use of a sustainable, renewable fuel will reduce the carbon footprint of the distillery... I don't see the problem it definitely is reducing greenhouse gas emissions because the source of the energy is byproducts of plantstuffs they grow anyway for the purpose of making their whiskey
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Denvercoder9 5y ago
"Emissions" has become synonym for "net emissions" in non-technical discourse. I'm not sure what to think about that: on one hand it can be confusing as you said, but on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter if someone takes a ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere and then re-emits it. After all, net emissions is the interesting number for climate change.
- joshjdr 5y ago
  I appreciate the original comment’s explanation- it’s helpful to understand how the marketing points can potentially obfuscate the real/technical points. I also think your feedback is here accurate, and beyond that would take the side of ringing relevant. If when they ‘re-emit’ they’re replacing what would otherwise be gross emission, that’s a net reduction, and a good thing. Is good the enemy of great? Jim Collins and many corporate managers would agree yes. At a global/societal scale? I think it’s probably more debatable, at least. I remember learning reduce>reuse>recycle and I think this falls somewhere in the middle which might make it an ethical conundrum; but unless we expect to the whiskey company to reduce whiskey production, it seems to me like we should likely applaud the effort.
User23 5y ago
Isn’t fossil-derived carbon the problem? The whole point is that fossil carbon was sequestered. How does using non sequestered carbon in place of sequestered carbon not massively reduce the rate of atmospheric CO2 increase in the long run?
laurencerowe 5y ago
> but it absolutely still produces lots of CO2. It is definitely not cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 95% or 99%! The important difference is that the carbon is not from fossil sources. This is vital! But CO2 is still being emitted! Isn't the presumption here that otherwise the CO2 would have been emitted anyway when the waste decomposed in landfill? So using it as fuel doesn't emit additional CO2 beyond the energy used processing it.
- ac29 5y ago
  Landfilling organic waste leads to methane forming during decomposition, which is a substantially more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
  - gameswithgo 5y ago
    More potent but shorter lasting, by a lot. Once CO2 is in the atmosphere you are stuck with it for centuries.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Yes, but CH₄ degrades into CO₂ and water (in the presence of oxygen).
      - IgorPartola 5y ago
        Shh. You are going to spoil HN poo pooing another renewables initiative with your science.
        stephen_g 5y ago
        No they didn't... They're only correcting gameswithgo's mistake - it still agrees with what's being talked about in the article...
- hinkley 5y ago
  Cogeneration is generally good, but it's not perfect. It tends to include perverse incentives. As someone pointed out in a recent thread, when you sell the byproduct you have an incentive to keep producing that byproduct. No incentive to remove it, reduce the volume, or reduce consumption. "The fuel is free anyway, so who cares?"
hinkley 5y ago
It's also lack of systems thinking. When you turn a product liability into an asset, you increase the margins of the primary product, meaning you want to produce more of your primary product. When that growth is coming at a cost to your competitors, then this is an overall win. But if it increases the overall supply, then it gets very hard to call it a carbon reduction, in the same way that vehicle fuel efficiency and safety have also increased total miles traveled and total land converted into housing.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  I don’t see how doing something like this increases the global demand for whiskey/hard liquor. Also if one distillery can do it, so can others which is also an overall win.
  - roflc0ptic 5y ago
    It doesn't necessarily change the demand, but it changes the supply curve by making it cheaper per unit to produce whiskey. Previously, you could sell whiskey, and the waste was garbage. Under this hypothetical scheme, now you could make money on the waste, too, reducing the price of production.
    - VBprogrammer 5y ago
      Would this be an example of the Jevons paradox? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
      - roflc0ptic 5y ago
        I can't really tell. Certainly jevon's paradox adjacent.
    - ohyeshedid 5y ago
      Reminds me of Kingsford Charcoal.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)
LatteLazy 5y ago
Of course, all that carbon comes from the crops grown to make whiskey. So it's 99% from the atmosphere on the first place, so emitting it is really "re"-emitting it. And it the waste were just dumped, it would likely produce a lot of methane, itself a greenhouse gas...
mytailorisrich 5y ago
Burning fossil fuels is the main issue with CO2 emissions because that it adds CO2 into the atmosphere by releasing carbon that was sequestrated underground. On the other hand, burning renewable plant matter is pretty much neutral: The plant absorbs carbon from the atmosphere while growing and that carbon is released back into the atmosphere when the plant is essentially burned to release energy. The main problem with biofuels is that they may compete with other crops for land, etc. But if they are produced from plant waste that was already being produced anyway then they are a pretty good option.
throwawayboise 5y ago
The CO2 emitted is not a concern because it's carbon from the current environment. Just like it's fair to call wood-fire heating carbon-neutral (even though it's not so great from a particulate standpoint)
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  > Just like it's fair to call wood-fire heating carbon-neutral (even though it's not so great from a particulate standpoint). As long as you grow these trees specifically for burning. Once you start chopping down forests without replacing them, you're still adding to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > As long as you grow these trees specifically for burning. I don't think anyone's chopping down ancient forests in the West anymore.
    - _whiteCaps_ 5y ago
      https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/fairy-creek-blockade/ https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/fairy-creek-blockade/ It's still happening in Canada. :(
    - slapfrog 5y ago
      For the most part, you're right. Monoculture tree farms with straight rows of fast growing pine trees as far as the eye can see are now the norm, for better or worse.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >The CO2 emitted is not a concern because it's carbon from the current environment. Nope, it doesn't work like that. Source: Business very related to this exact activity.
  - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
divbzero 5y ago
I think most people would roughly understand “reducing carbon” as meaning “renewable” or “sustainable”, while the more technically informed will recognize it’s shorthand for “fossil-derived carbon”. Relatively few will be confused.

by twic 5y ago

ReactiveJelly 5y ago

It's already a metonym for CO2, and I'm already not happy about that. There's lots of other tailpipe emissions worth asking about. Isn't that how Europe wasted years trying to make clean diesel?

dexterdog 5y ago
Not to mention tire and break emissions which are still considerable on any vehicle.
- ianai 5y ago
  My hybrid uses the brakes significantly less than a nonhybrid ICE. The motors do a lot of the stopping work instead of the brakes. It’s easiest to see this going downhills. My cars recharging while other cars are using brakes. Tire wear though is definitely not abated.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    Is tyre wear really a comparable concern? Think about how many times you refuel your car between tyre changes. Contemplate the volume of fuel burned versus the volume of material scraped off your tyres over their lifetime. Whatever the environmental cost of tyres, they cannot compete with liquid fuel.
    - ianai 5y ago
      It’s more about PM2.5 and similar particulate pollution. But absolutely there are bigger concerns. Tire and brake pollution gets brought up as a false equivalency between ICE and EV car emissions often. Just wanted to add a factoid about how electrified vehicles really are more efficient.
    - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
      It's not just how much stuff is consumed. Different materials break into different size and shape particles. Tires may wear out slower but the particles they release may cause more damage.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - hinkley 5y ago
    They've also banned certain materials from brake pads that were causing problem. Copper is a no-no in the time between when my car was built and I last talked to someone about replacements (my car didn't need it because while it's an ICE, the computer is smart enough to do engine braking much of the time).
- nick__m 5y ago
  That carbon is not a green house gas so its okay :P But seroulsly, a review found on pubmed¹ made me realise that brakes and tires emissions are an understudied public health threat. Breaks emissions accounts for 16% to 55% of the PM₁₀ emitted by an ICE car and those particles are an healthy mix of iron, copper, barium, lead, inorganic carbon (probably as soot and graphite, I would be terribly surprised if it was as diamonds and graphene) and various unlisted and unstudied organic compounds! 1- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4315878/#Sec8title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4315878/#Sec8ti... P.s. I tried to link directly to the conclusion but the pubmed reader sometimes show a seemingly random page... so the correct page is 40

fsckboy 5y ago

the average person will take this to mean this use of a sustainable, renewable fuel will reduce the carbon footprint of the distillery... I don't see the problem it definitely is reducing greenhouse gas emissions because the source of the energy is byproducts of plantstuffs they grow anyway for the purpose of making their whiskey

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Denvercoder9 5y ago

"Emissions" has become synonym for "net emissions" in non-technical discourse. I'm not sure what to think about that: on one hand it can be confusing as you said, but on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter if someone takes a ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere and then re-emits it. After all, net emissions is the interesting number for climate change.

joshjdr 5y ago
I appreciate the original comment’s explanation- it’s helpful to understand how the marketing points can potentially obfuscate the real/technical points. I also think your feedback is here accurate, and beyond that would take the side of ringing relevant. If when they ‘re-emit’ they’re replacing what would otherwise be gross emission, that’s a net reduction, and a good thing. Is good the enemy of great? Jim Collins and many corporate managers would agree yes. At a global/societal scale? I think it’s probably more debatable, at least. I remember learning reduce>reuse>recycle and I think this falls somewhere in the middle which might make it an ethical conundrum; but unless we expect to the whiskey company to reduce whiskey production, it seems to me like we should likely applaud the effort.

User23 5y ago

Isn’t fossil-derived carbon the problem? The whole point is that fossil carbon was sequestered. How does using non sequestered carbon in place of sequestered carbon not massively reduce the rate of atmospheric CO2 increase in the long run?

laurencerowe 5y ago

> but it absolutely still produces lots of CO2. It is definitely not cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 95% or 99%! The important difference is that the carbon is not from fossil sources. This is vital! But CO2 is still being emitted! Isn't the presumption here that otherwise the CO2 would have been emitted anyway when the waste decomposed in landfill? So using it as fuel doesn't emit additional CO2 beyond the energy used processing it.

ac29 5y ago
Landfilling organic waste leads to methane forming during decomposition, which is a substantially more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  More potent but shorter lasting, by a lot. Once CO2 is in the atmosphere you are stuck with it for centuries.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Yes, but CH₄ degrades into CO₂ and water (in the presence of oxygen).
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      Shh. You are going to spoil HN poo pooing another renewables initiative with your science.
      - stephen_g 5y ago
        No they didn't... They're only correcting gameswithgo's mistake - it still agrees with what's being talked about in the article...
hinkley 5y ago
Cogeneration is generally good, but it's not perfect. It tends to include perverse incentives. As someone pointed out in a recent thread, when you sell the byproduct you have an incentive to keep producing that byproduct. No incentive to remove it, reduce the volume, or reduce consumption. "The fuel is free anyway, so who cares?"

hinkley 5y ago

It's also lack of systems thinking. When you turn a product liability into an asset, you increase the margins of the primary product, meaning you want to produce more of your primary product. When that growth is coming at a cost to your competitors, then this is an overall win. But if it increases the overall supply, then it gets very hard to call it a carbon reduction, in the same way that vehicle fuel efficiency and safety have also increased total miles traveled and total land converted into housing.

IgorPartola 5y ago
I don’t see how doing something like this increases the global demand for whiskey/hard liquor. Also if one distillery can do it, so can others which is also an overall win.
- roflc0ptic 5y ago
  It doesn't necessarily change the demand, but it changes the supply curve by making it cheaper per unit to produce whiskey. Previously, you could sell whiskey, and the waste was garbage. Under this hypothetical scheme, now you could make money on the waste, too, reducing the price of production.
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    Would this be an example of the Jevons paradox? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
    - roflc0ptic 5y ago
      I can't really tell. Certainly jevon's paradox adjacent.
  - ohyeshedid 5y ago
    Reminds me of Kingsford Charcoal.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)

LatteLazy 5y ago

Of course, all that carbon comes from the crops grown to make whiskey. So it's 99% from the atmosphere on the first place, so emitting it is really "re"-emitting it. And it the waste were just dumped, it would likely produce a lot of methane, itself a greenhouse gas...

mytailorisrich 5y ago

Burning fossil fuels is the main issue with CO2 emissions because that it adds CO2 into the atmosphere by releasing carbon that was sequestrated underground. On the other hand, burning renewable plant matter is pretty much neutral: The plant absorbs carbon from the atmosphere while growing and that carbon is released back into the atmosphere when the plant is essentially burned to release energy. The main problem with biofuels is that they may compete with other crops for land, etc. But if they are produced from plant waste that was already being produced anyway then they are a pretty good option.

throwawayboise 5y ago

The CO2 emitted is not a concern because it's carbon from the current environment. Just like it's fair to call wood-fire heating carbon-neutral (even though it's not so great from a particulate standpoint)

Denvercoder9 5y ago
> Just like it's fair to call wood-fire heating carbon-neutral (even though it's not so great from a particulate standpoint). As long as you grow these trees specifically for burning. Once you start chopping down forests without replacing them, you're still adding to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > As long as you grow these trees specifically for burning. I don't think anyone's chopping down ancient forests in the West anymore.
  - _whiteCaps_ 5y ago
    https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/fairy-creek-blockade/ https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/fairy-creek-blockade/ It's still happening in Canada. :(
  - slapfrog 5y ago
    For the most part, you're right. Monoculture tree farms with straight rows of fast growing pine trees as far as the eye can see are now the norm, for better or worse.
moralestapia 5y ago
>The CO2 emitted is not a concern because it's carbon from the current environment. Nope, it doesn't work like that. Source: Business very related to this exact activity.
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago

divbzero 5y ago

I think most people would roughly understand “reducing carbon” as meaning “renewable” or “sustainable”, while the more technically informed will recognize it’s shorthand for “fossil-derived carbon”. Relatively few will be confused.