Permachar
- A discussion list for a 'Greener Economy' for climate adaptation and (partly) trade war proofing
- Not an exhaustive list but exhausting (and fun) to research
How? A hypothesis with a good dose of dogma, philosophy, economic and climate 'reality':
Degrowth of unsustainable 'Ancient sunlight' growth and growth of sustainable 'Carbon negative' 'New sunlight' industry.
I can bake a cake and eat it - or brew beer and drink it...but what about economic complexity?
How much of it do we, or anyone, need?
What if a Carbon negative new sunlight industry was more complex, localised, regionalised and in some cases 'Nationalised' through PPPs (eg.grid) and more resilient to external shocks eg. climate, than the current economic trajectory with more fossil expansions and mines and a threat (from the opposition) to remove our 2030 'Emissions Reduction Target' (and possibly 2050 net zero target too)?
BUT - to be fair (kind of), the targets are too low without enough ambition - but it would be like Trump pulling the US out of WHO calling it a 'bad deal' when he just could have reduced funding to a more 'fair' number...BUT a lower ERT (both 2030 and 2050) would make no sense at all - they are already BOTH compromised numbers. If anything changed, the targets would need to go higher (or earlier) but probably couldn't be achieved with existing economic planning - what's left of it. It would be mostly left to the private sector to do the heavy lifting however what if, say, greentech startups could get a helping hand, using some of that fossil subsidy money, perhaps, or even money from a hefty fossil C export tax? Otherwise, not much will change in the mining industry and the downstream green or appropriate technologies that we can dare to imagine without using most, or any, Oz materials or off-the-shelf components.
This is a future we can sustainably adapt to or a future in which we can lose our way.
So here we go...
Mining
- Earth
- water efficient and non-toxic wastewater
- Iron ore eg.magnetite
- steel
- Copper
- transmission lines and substations for the upgraded renewable energy grid
- batteries
- electronics
- bauxite
- Aluminium
- high energy for smelting but could be powered from renewables eg. green Hydrogen?
- recyclable many times over
- High quality ceramic grade clay
- Solid State Batteries (SSBs)
- Lithium
- Oz controls approximately 46% of world production (2020, ABS)
- very high water footprint
- batteries BUT Sodium tech has caught up with first generation Li ion batteries and is getting great results for SSBs and will continually improve over
time
- rare earth minerals BUT sand mining unsustainable
- electronics
- Atmosphere
- Carbon (biomass to biochar)
- C sequestration and permanent C removal
- water (Atmospheric Water Harvesting eg. Energy efficient powered machines and panels)
- Nitrogen (fertilizer)
- Ocean
- CO2
- concrete (or 5% biochar)
- ethanol
- C sequestration BUT not permanent removal unless geologically stored which is a waste of the resource
- multipurpose eg. Desalination mining
- water
- potable/drinking
- growing systems, with the exception of some crops eg.sorghum and some microalgaes that can grow in saline irrigation
water
- Green Hydrogen, for iron ore/?Al reduction (and performance cars)
- Sodium
- batteries
- ? Lithium
- batteries
Materials
- industry
- housing
- hempcrete
- hemp Hurd
- C negative lime (hemp waste Bioenergy to biochar)
- water
- transport
- Carbon fibre (Biochar feedstock)
- power grid/microgrids
- steel
- construction
- Biochar stoves and kilns
- manufacturing
- DIY
- appropriate technology eg. Biochar: air and water filters,Top-Lit UpDraft stoves and kilns, Flame Cap kilns; and everything under the ☀️
- biomimicry
- everywhere you look in nature
- biotechnology
- plants
- Climate adapted, such as drought, frost and fire tolerant
- industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa)
- eg.'Multipurpose'
- high nutrition and high yield seed
- high quality and high yield hurd
- pharmaceuticals
- cosmetics
- microalgae
- food (fish/humans) in the desert
- biofuels
- pharmaceuticals
- plant waste biomass eg.hemp, bamboo, kelp, microalgae, sorghum etc. -> biochar
- yeast (booze, bread and biology)
- pharmaceuticals
- cosmetics
Manufacturing
- consumed in Oz
- electronics eg. Carbon based
- renewable energy
- solar PV and solar thermal
- wind turbines
- Bioenergy: biomass-> Biochar + power and heat (optional)
- wave eg. Vertical or horizontal
- combination eg. Wind, solar PV and wave
- SSBs
- stationary/mobile
- eg. Sodium-air
- nano MnOx-Biochar composite, Ceramic MOF (Na-biochar+ceramic), Air (Oxygen)
(anode/electrolyte/cathode): new design
- affordable and green EVs: land, air and sea
- eg.personal and public transport on land
- Na-air SSB (Circuit 1)
- perovskite PV-hemp fibre-C fibre 'massless' battery (doped in KCl) biocomposite panels (Circuit 2)
- solar glass windows (Circuit 3)
- Aluminium frame
- eg2. Logistics
- trucks
- planes
- ships
- agricultural machinery
- mining machinery
- Machinery
- imported? or built in Oz
- fabricated with Oz materials eg. Steel
- 3D printed parts eg. Plastic and Metal powders
- ?import tariffs on ?
- surplus exported after domestic demand is met, where there are holes/demand in the world market (globalisation) BUT near impossible to control unless PPPs for specific technologies, possibly in
an emergency situation
- Intellectual Property (IP)
- can anyone keep secrets?
- mainly used to protect manufacturing operations (centralized/decentralised)
- potentially licensed for Industry 4.0
- ideally open source/access for Planet saving ideas
+
'Fossil Free Future' for a cooler Planet
- catchy phrase but a lot of work to do before now and then, eg.
- moratorium on new fossil expansions and mines
- hefty fossil C export tax eg. Natural gas (unnatural methane), coal etc.
+
'Biochar, bread and beer' survival system
eg. Grains, such as semi-arid or arid growing crops eg. sorghum (grown in some parts of Africa), growing in Biochar swales (initially using Biochar from other biomass waste or biomass waste from
crops not grown (yet) in biochar) to produce more biomass waste for more biochar swales...
+ Bread and beer, to nourish the body and soul (from grain + baking yeast)
https://www.kiva.org/blog/sorghum-beer-recipe
Great intel - only main criticism is the idea that pellet torrefaction and combustion is the best technology. For eg., sorghum straw/stubble can be pyrolysed in flame cap panel kilns eg. Algorithm in field or processed into biomass pellets that could be used in both TLUD stoves and TLUD pellet heaters for heat and biochar and larger kilns eg.continuous TLUD rotary, for bioelectricity (also using pyrolysis and without torrefaction of biomass pellets beforehand), heat and biochar. Good energy security argument re biomass pellet domestic use V exports but difficult to implement without market intervention. Dispatchable bioelectricity to fill in the gaps of intermittent renewable energy is also a strong argument but would need to be compared to large batteries on a cost, technology and sustainability basis. For eg., scalable/modular large batteries with green chemistry are just starting to hit the market eg.Na-air, Fe-air etc. but are a one trick pony for energy storage. Also, biochar kiln pyrolysis technology, at all scales, with bioelectricity potential mainly at the larger scale, is entering a Renaissance (also Carbon negative with many applications for biochar including a circular biomass option). All difficult to predict.
NOTES
-Research project idea:
- Comparison of effects of growing 'Dual purpose' Sorghum in inoculated Sorghum straw/stubble biochar pellets (from a bioelectricity plant) OR inoculated Sorghum straw/stubble biochar (produced in the 'Flame Cap 'Algorithm' Panel Kiln) + manure pellets eg.poultry + soil at different ratios eg.40:40:20
I'm predicting that the ratio 40:40:20 will vary between the biochar straw pellets and biochar straw. The inoculation ingredients would need to be controlled or separate test beds too with different ratios of products and/or different products. At this point I'm backing liquid sea kelp, microbes and fungus as the best inoculation strategy. I'm also predicting the ratio will vary with Sorghum variety, location/climate region, local weather, soil type and water quality. This would be a huge research project and would need a lot of funding but the rewards are great, if regenerative agriculture can be linked to Carbon negative bioelectricity in a circular loop.
Using this model, a comparable study could be done with industrial hemp. For eg., hemp leaf and short stems could be pelletised and pyrolysed in TLUD tech and the main stem waste eg.after hurd removal, could be pyrolysed in an Algorithm. I would love to see the results one day! This could be a couple of steps forward for a 'Greener Economy'.
-Steel
Without a robust manufacturing industry for consumer goods and high cost of living pressure/inflation, we are probably better off taxing Fossil Carbon exports (big one) than adopting large import tariffs to 'protect' the economy eg.10% on Chinese imported goods. Import purchase power is also decreasing with the Aussie dollar dropping. The reality is, people will still buy Chinese imported consumer goods eg. Smartphones but make budget sacrifices elsewhere. Import tariffs on Chinese steel could be good for the domestic steel industry but bad for the iron ore export model (Gina), eg. as a response, China could place import tariffs on Oz iron ore. But - vertical integration of iron ore mining, Green Hydrogen iron ore reduction and steel manufacturing (Twiggy), could get an advantage domestically and is a more ecologically sustainable, stable and secure model anyway.
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