politics

Abe praises relations with oil-rich UAE

27 Comments
By JON GAMBRELL

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27 Comments
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Back on topic please.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

100% Costa Rica, 300 days in 2017

103% Portugal, for March 2018

100% Google (not a country but still significant)

dozens of others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy#Places_with_around_100%_renewable_electricity

This is going to keep increasing year by year, 2020-30s should be quite significant. If Japan is saying not until 2050 it's saying it will not be taking part in change.

Also note Iceland energy is only 28% geothermal, the majority is from hydroelectricity like other places.

Meanwhile 5m down it's 12C. You don't need bubbling hot springs to have geothermal installed, what is essentially a temperature differential. Nice base load for air conditioning in summer and a barrier to pipe problems in winter.

You can borehole a geothermal effect for larger buildings (UOIT Oshawa Ontario, since 2003)

Minerals and fuels have innate energy densities put there by thousands of years of geologic pressure. To suggest that energy densities innate to fuel materials and land is the same as the energy transferred to make hydrogen is not understanding that hydrogen isn't an energy source.

Hydrogen has nothing to do with energy generation, only its transfer, and thus will not enter into it as more generation occurs. Hydrogen can't grow an economy. There's no there, there.

As with the above it won't be worth the bother and is already too costly. When billion dollar research is abandoned by car companies who switched to EVs, that pretty much ends that.

People can recharge their EV car for free, today, for example. I think it will happen in Japan in the 20s and 30s too, not the 50s

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Hydrogen is usually made from natural gas, that's why the oil/gas industry keep promoting it. if the hydrogen is made from renewable sources then it's using that energy. In either case it was always more efficient to just use the original energy

1 ( +1 / -0 )

all without hydrogen and other fossil fuels

Hydrogen is not a fossil fuel.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Hydrogen isn't a fuel, it's a battery. You are still using other energy to make it. This will always be its downfall even if the universal corrosive nature is managed. But that second part makes it difficult to use if parts keep melting over time.

Grid connected vehicles will never need hydrogen batteries. It's a canard

1 ( +1 / -0 )

New TransLink electric buses in B.C Canada can be recharged in 5 minutes. In future this will cut down even more, so no, there isn't going to be a recharge problem with EVs. The future looks bright for electric vehicles as they continue to be on the forefront of innovation.

Wasting electricity to make hydrogen is not going to have good enough ROI and why its been abandoned by car companies. It's not economic

I don't think I'm wrong, but I don't have to be right. If companies won't do it then it's never going to happen. Entropy on hydrogen makes it difficult to manage and use. Electricity is a known known and keeps getting better.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

A UAE female cabinet minister and not one from Japan. Hmmm, because Japan's two female cabinet minsters, -Yoko KAMIKAWA, Minister of Justice and Seiko NODA, Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications- are heading ministries that have nothing to do with international affairs. That is why they didn't make the trip.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Meanwhile,Japan has been steadily decreasing the grid feed-in rates for solar energy and  Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 0.2 percent to a six-year low in the financial year that ended last March, government figures showed on Tuesday, amid growing use of renewable energy and the gradual return of nuclear power.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

A UAE female cabinet minister and not one from Japan. Hmmm.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Ugh on Hydrogen. You've been conned by an industry that needs customers before they abandon them for renewables. Hydrogen is a colossal waste of time demonstrated easily from simple experiments in conversion to go over thermal dynamics laws. (No free lunch). Also it is very corrosive. Is odourless colourless and can catch invisible fire. What a terrible design choice. Might as well base an economy on hydrochloride or sulphuric acid (because of all that yummy hydrogen in it?). C'mon

Engineers were asked to make it a fuel and were paid to do so. Doesn't mean it was a great idea. I'm sure they shrugged and banked it.

At best hydrogen is a battery, not a fuel. It has to use energy to be created, then to store it, then you better use it soon, then you have to waste more of it to convert it back to useable force. The constant conversion losses make it further unrealistic. We might as well have just used direct electricity. The only reason H2 is talked about in industry is because those industries want to remain in control. Without H2, the oil/gas conglomerates have nothing. Which is why they are investing in renewables too.

Energy systems have to be distributed across many types, are usually public systems, and can last for years due to fewer parts and processes. Windmills would be an exception, the gearboxes are more like an SUV hard to service when the time comes.

Anyway, the renewables keeping an electric grid in service would allow for grid connected vehicles and homes all without hydrogen and other fossil fuels. Homes and businesses can subtract their own needs with on site electrical or thermal generation as well which also doesn't need to be converted. It's all about whatever X exists to push a generator to make the electrons flow. That is the common denominator.

Most car companies with H2 vehicles have abandoned them for electric hybrid or full electric cars. Blew billions in research down the drain for fewer complications and easier designs. Thousands of free charging stations today in the here and now. No H2 required. They certainly wouldn't be free.

There are large plants that use H2 and that German train/trolley, so there are quaint toy uses, but it can't push a normal diesel train level of force. If all the fuel trucks used hydrogen to drive tanks of hydrogen fuel, they'd use up multiples more fuel in just one delivery. Thus it can't be delivered, or the losses pile up again, otherwise use a diesel truck to deliver H2 fuel. Hilarious.

Easier to make vehicles fuel-less, make the road the fuel, via grid connection. The home is already an extension, and with inverters can put energy back into the grid, paying the homeowner.

Grid connected vehicles moving without fuel is the future of safe transport while the price would only drop. It could be pennies a km, and we're not even trying yet.

Safe jobs in electrical engineering, and fun innovation on efficiency and new renewable ideas. The innovations and new designs currently remove the lithium and other special materials. No catalysts. When lithium goes as a market (not yet) then we'll be far far past H2 economics

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Some of the folks here who criticize the purchase of oil from Middle East or elsewhere and propose to switch 100% to solar, hydrogen or winds I suggest to take some economy classes before they go further with those ideas.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

If the Middle East's largest export were cabbages as opposed to oil, nobody would ever be cozying up to them like in this photo.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

If Japan were going with green energy, it wouldn't have to visit the Middle East at all

Pumped storage should be commonplace within a mountainous country. Solar uses the same tech as plasma TV production. Geothermal in geothermal towns. Deep water cooling hydrothermal piping. Insulation of homes to eliminate kerosene usage. Homes feel like camping indoors, it doesn't have to be that way. Net zero home design, passive haus, would celebrate local Japanese design aesthetics.

Japan doesn't have an energy shortage, nor an idea shortage, but an impediment to implementation by politics serving old industries. Plenty of amazing creative Japanese engineers. Capable research universities to play around with new ideas. Techies could really save the country if the oyagis and paper bags weren't in the way.

It's just so sad. What a colossal wasted opportunity for change.

That's what this photo shows

3 ( +4 / -1 )

This is a gathering is a level a foreign minister is supposed to attend rather than a prime minister.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Mr Abe - any chance of our using the abundant sunshine in your Beautiful Japan to provide us with cheap, non-polluting energy?

Nah, didn't think so. Suck up to the Saudis, then, and pretend your ceaseless cavalcade of domestic scandals are going away.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

So we are giving brown envelopes to UAE who are bombing and starving children in Yemen and isrsel who are shooting thousands of children in the legs so they eill never walk again....

6 ( +7 / -1 )

What is your point, WA4TKG? That the Emirates are unfriendly countries, or just to remind us what a good person you are?

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Really encouraging news. Japan has excellent relations with UAE,and it would be ultimate goal to boost tourism between these 2 great and friendly Nations. If PM Abe manges to broker the Peace Deal between Palestinian Territiry and Israel, something even Trump couldnt achieve yet,it will cement his legacy as Statesmen.

-22 ( +1 / -23 )

Meanwhile,Japan has been steadily decreasing the grid feed-in rates for solar energy-Shinzo doesn’t have much vision...

15 ( +16 / -1 )

Scandal? What scandal?

just smile for the camera and act like your doing something fundamentally beneficial for your people.

10 ( +12 / -2 )

This must burn Abe's butt, having to appease anyone because they hold "his" country by the cojones, and both he and they know it!

8 ( +12 / -4 )

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