I'm surprised forcing manufacturers to build lighter cars is rarely mentioned as a stopgap, especially when it's affecting many other issues. The weight, size and power creep has been immense over the past few decades. Having people alone in their 2 tons EV tanks isn't gonna cut it, especially if only the upper middle class can afford it without getting into debt.
That is true. It also helps that sedans are safer in almost every way than an SUV and an SUV is not really used for its purpose of going off-road much if at all.
It was tried. It failed. The CAFE standards of the 90's were on their way to being successful when Edsel Ford Jr. led the subversive charge of corporate communism in the USA and linked arms with other SUV makers globally to escape the domestic vehicle rules, accompanied by an open campaign of product placement targeted at young men in action movies (what, you think Fast & Furious, Stallone and Schwarzenegger got financed for their art?) and an under-the-table campaign aimed at mothers to scare them out of the safer smaller vehicles into big SUVs and vans with far worse safety outcomes. The only way to force manufacturers to go less fossil-emissions intensive is to make it clear to them that fossil is going away. Curtail fossil extraction 2% of today's level per month down to zero by 2030. Do it openly. Say you're doing it often. Get the message through that anyone buying a gas guzzler is going to be left without fuel.
@@yoironfistbro8128 as the video says: both! we need electrification and modal shift! but cars are here to stay (i hate this as much as you do, trust me), so we better electrify them
The problem is that the batteries are terribly heavy - more than half the weight of today's EV models - so you have to have a much stiffer and stronger chassis that can withstand the pressure of the batteries. Besides, no one ever mentions where we will find so much lithium and other metals needed to produce batteries?!
Also, there are soooo many many more good reasons to reduce car traffic in urban areas through walkability, bikabilty and public transit. Less death, injury, pollution, wasted space, sealed areas (flooding), noise, etc. CO2 reductions are really just the tip of the melting iceberg.
Don't forget better overall health, with combustion engines reducing the amount of them reduces air pollution and thus increases health but even with electric vehicles just getting people to walk and bike more obviously improves their health.
Funny thing is that air pollution (NOT related to greenhouse gases) will not be solved by electric cars, unless a breakthrough in solving their weight happens. Brakes and other mechanical components common to all kinds of car will release pollutants that are harmful to us, and the removal of the engine generated ones is almost exactly compensated by the increase of emissions of every other component due to the extra weight. An electric car that is driven regularly is ALWAYS better than a ice one, tho, on greenhouse emissions, even if the energy used to run it comes from the worst possible current source of energy -coal- because of how inefficient the entire infrastructure to make, distribute, deliver is and the thermodynamical limitations of ICE engines (operating temperature and pressure put a hard cap to engine efficiency at about 45% if I'm not mistaken). So, tafic elimination is the best solution for cities (as stated in the video), but it would also be the best solution if we weren't goin through a climate crisis of our own making.
and the noise, the f**g noise from cars, cities are not loud, cars are, and gosh, even when people start switching to electric that's a relief, but no cars at all is so much better.
Moving away from fossil fuels for other transport will help reduce emissions from shipping a lot - as many ships are tankers transporting oil. Love the digital version of your book in the background!
@@SimonClarkwhat does the report say about SAFs/SSFs being shipped long distance because it all countries will have enough space and money and renewables to build renewable fuel plants in their land ? Or if the fuel market evolves in a way to keep the status quo, like the Middle East staying as e-fuel suppliers for political stability reasons ?
@@touyats1 it's possible they stay as fuel suppliers, but probably only if concentrated solar thermal turns out to be the cheapest way to make sustainable aviation fuels. On the other hand, high-temperature nuclear reactors can do anything concentrated solar thermal can, so unless you're talking about Germany, if can probably mostly be produced locally.
@@thamiordragonheart8682 nuclear pops out every time as a silver bullet for use case for which renewables allegedly would not make sense… until you realize that renewables pretty much make sense for everything. It kinda feels a bit the last song of the dying swan. Btw, I don’t think only Germany is opposed to nuclear. Austria too. And Italy technically still has a binding referendum banning nuclear. Moreover even if Germany was the only opposer, they have great power in pushing many other eu countries in the direction of phasing out nuclear. Ever noticed for example how most of the nuclear reactors shut off in the in the last decade happen to be bordering Germany ? Germans have been very clear with Switzerland too in wanting their reactors to be closed down. They are just too big of a risk for eu’s internal political stability.
@@touyats1 I was more thinking that if ultra-high temprature process heat was what you needed, concentrated solar and nuclear are both options and concentrated solar is honestly so bad cost wise for electricity that they probably are competitive with each other even though neither is competitive for electricity with anything else. My general opinion on nuclear is that if we hadn't completely stopped all nuclear energy investment after Chornobyl it would probably be competitive with solar and might have even already replaced a lot of fossil fuel energy generation since in principle it should be better, but at this point, renewables have such a head start in terms of research and actual production experience, not to mention regulatory and operational experience, that there isn't going to be a compelling case for nuclear energy closer to the sun than the asteroid belt in the next century.
glad you mentioned Australia - I'm in my 20s and when I heard that a plan for a very fast train connecting the east coast has been around since at least the 80s I was utterly confused as to why it hasn't resulted in anything. I was also understandably pissed off when our carbon tax was repealed. (all this was more than 10 years ago so I didn't understand the political power that massive corporations have - especially corporate media)
HSR in Australia is essentially a policy just brought up by governments during elections to entice voters and then as a money making scheme for the consultancies that are inevitably requested to write a report on it. We should really concentrate on improve state rail systems and connecting major cities in the state with faster rail before upgrading to HSR between the capital cities.
HSR isn't financially viable, and logistically it is a mess since all the rail networks were sold off. Rail gauges don't match between states and so much of the former network is in disrepair. But that's the excuses, realistically it can be done pretty quickly and would radically change things.
@@tim290280 HSR is usually an enormous money maker so I don't know what you're talking about. They're so profitable that often the government doesn't even have to provide much funding because private investors are willing to step in, for example the first leg of the TGV network was paid for entirely through private investment. This is also why you're seeing a ton of privately run HSR companies springing up in Europe. In the hand of a national operator HSR lines can help cover the cost of less profitable regional routes, which are needed to seriously cut down on road traffic.
Australia has a lot of coal. It’s going to be very difficult for an industry that brings in that much revenue and employs that many people to simply shutdown. I’d recommend switching to nuclear as Australia also has a lot of Uranium.
@@infidelheretic923 coal mining employees surprisingly few people and new mines aren't really making money. Nuclear doesn't make much sense in Australia right now.
Very interesting video. We're definitely caught up in a situation where transport advanced so quickly and we've completely normalised it to such a point that we can't look at it from an outside perspective. In such a short amount of time, we've completely built our systems around strange metal contraptions dependent on long dead crushed microorganisms, or rare earth metals extracted from across the world, and while it's been good for us, now so many see these metal contraptions as the only way to go. Look at the outrage and panic over the concept of 15 minute cities and building our societies around humans instead. There's no real recognition that masses of people stuck in traffic constantly because many necessary services are further away isn't really normal but it's perceived as an attack on the ordinary everyday people. That said, I don't blame them for being sceptical and distrusting with how very little has been done at the political level to try and cut down and restrict the use of private jets used by a minority of the population. Flight is also very interesting when you truly take a few steps back and admire the sheer spectacle of it For millenia, man looked up at the birds in the sky and dreamed of the possibilities of what it would be like to fly with such freedom and peace. Now here we are just over a century since flight with planes started off and so many take it as an absolute birthright and completely normalise it, bitching and moaning all the way about the sheer inconveniences expected getting to the airport through security, and boarding a flight with so many others, likely to sleep the whole journey and not truly grasping the absurdity of these flying vehicles that will let us travel distances our ancestors could only dream about in such a short amount of time
@@phyarth8082 people burned coal way back, be it charcoal or regular coal. They didn't start burning it during the industrial revolution. Especially in forging, charcoal is a staple, even today.
It reminded me Transport Tycoon as well, which I played a lot as a kid. For some reason I missed SimCity series. I think I moved into other games like Diablo, Quake, StarCraft, Morrowind, etc. Decades 1990-2000 were great for games. Maybe it is my nostalgia or maybe games were more creative back then. There is so much repetition and micro payments these days.
Great video, 2 small points that I feel went understated that could use more emphasis. - using trains more for transport of goods in between cities; even diesel trains will often have less emissions than electric trucks due to emissions repairing road damage, and there is a lot to be gained in this area instead of focusing on stuff that is already hard to do or would be more difficult (like increasing energy production while becoming greener to power eTrucks) - there is a lot to be gained in investing in lower income countries, as investment dollars go a lot further and there is often huge areas to improve. I live in Brazil, and while we are doing remarkably well in terms of having renewable sources of energy, we have virtually nonexistent rail infrastructure both in cities and for long distance travel, and doing so would help the world a lot more than making traveling from Rotterdam to Amsterdam even better
makes me depressed that my immediate reaction to that last thought was that it could never get implemented in the isolationist world we live in, even when you're completely correct
I really like this way of presenting issues and solutions where you repeat what your source states and then attach your own affirming / contradicting / doubtful opinions right after. Makes it easier to distinguish what is what.
I really enjoyed this video. Here in Tanzania, East Africa we have introduced the Bus Rapid Transit and the Standard Gauge Railway in the city of Dar-es-Salaam. The Bus Rapid Transit Is working okayish but is overwhelmed by the number of passengers. Additionally, the operations of the whole project are not really being regulated well. So, it's a good initiative, but we need to work on our systemic governance for innovations like this to work.
I think you didnt talk enough about public transport for Inter-city travel. If we plan our city well we can encourage modelling for bicycle commutes as we can learn from europe, And these solutions can be impleted now without having to wait.
I love this. Obviously we have a lot of work to do with slashing carbon emissions but I feel this hits the sweet spot for being practical, optimistic, and not blinded by techno-optimism (except for with aviation) or the notion that someone else will do it for us.
I feel this doesn't emphasize enough how important it is to reduce the number of cars. Other than that, it's pretty good but i find the timelines pretty optimistic. PS: you didn't talk about intercity freight
Intercity frieght is basically just use more tried and true trains. (Even without electrification they are far more energy efficient than trucks) Generally you just need to change up the regulations for both industries, make rail easier before making carbonized trucking harder. (One basic example is to not tax rail corridors by the number of "lane miles" such that a double tracked corridor is taxed at double its single track equivalent. It doesn't occur everywhere but its an example of a bad policy/regulation hampering proper infrastructure.)
Great video of showing the current options. It still leaves out our reorientation to traveling. You mentioned relying more on video calls to connect ourselves digitally over long distance. In my opinion traveling via shipping can be another solution. It currently takes around 7-9 days for a freighter to cross the Atlantic ocean from Europe to North America. A week of travel might seem long but if these travels are organized as a sort of ‘cruise light’ with work spaces and cheap accommodation it while also carrying regular freight along the way it might be the most carbon neutral mechanized travel possible. Currently traveling by freight ship is more expensive then traveling by plane and freight travel is still under the covid measures a lot of the time making it almost impossible to book such a trip. Besides this dedicated passanger travel across an ocean which are faster then freight is possible and can cut down travel by 4-5 days. Again great video and would love you to make a video about slow cross ocean travel!!!
I’m glad you mentioned carbon pricing. It seems insane to me we try everything policy-wise except for making those who pollute pay for the damage they cause.
@@AdamSmith-gs2dvyes that's precisely the point. People are supposed to pay an extra $5 for every amount of carbon they make. This gives producers an incentive to lower their carbon use, get the lower price, and attract more customers.
Good to see you back Simon. If you take into account full life cycle carbon costs then wind assist (WA) is hands down the most carbon cost effective form of alternative power available to shipping because the power is delivered free at the point of use. The cost is vested in the capture devices, the sails and as mass production kicks in the cost of WA will be falling by around 2/3rds while the cost of hydrocarbon and other combustibles will be rising above inflation. The International Wind Ship Association (IWSA) has calculated that if the shipping industry were to adopt WA across the board now the savings would fund all the other emissions reductions costs the industry will face going forward. Just saying:).
wind assist is pretty amazing. I think a lot of bulkers are already getting fletner rotors as retrofits because it's so easy and effective. What would be really exciting to me is new build ships designed to carry kite sails from the start, preferably a pair with one forward and one aft so that they can be balanced to still assist when you aren't doing downwind, though maybe trade wind routes will come back for less time-sensitive cargo.
@@thamiordragonheart8682 Wind assist works well with bulkers because they can afford to vary journey times much more, you have a stockpile at either end so you can sail slower or faster, or even delay departure altogether, to take the most advantage of wind conditions. Container ships on the other hand need to keep to a stricter timetable, even if the journey is slower to save fuel they need to have reliable and consistent journey times so the next link in the transport chain is ready when they arrive (JIT manufacturing). You could still have them of course, but whether you'd use them enough to justify the cost and maintenance is another question.
@@Croz89 Container ships also have geometric problems with mounting wind assist because the container stacks are so tall. I think kite sails could work for container ships that run between East Asia and the US since the north pacific trade winds are reliable and not too far out of the way in either direction on that route. I agree that wind assist for container ships would seem to be a serious challenge on other routes though. The good news is that I think bulkers cover a lot more ton-miles since bulk goods are just so much bigger, so even if wind assist only works for bulkers that's still pretty good.
@@thamiordragonheart8682 Probably better to focus on slow steaming. Container vessels are usually not time sensitive in terms of speed per se (if you want anything quickly it will go by air), only in terms of consistency. If a container takes 4 weeks instead of 2 weeks, a manufacturer can send out a container twice as frequently and the customer still gets the widgets at the same rate. It's a little more expensive, but if the container cost was lower because of lower fuel consumption, much of that could be compensated for. If however, the container may take 2 weeks *or* 4 weeks depending on wind conditions, it not as easy for the manufacturer to adjust, they might need to start stockpiling widgets which will likely cost more than an extra container.
@@Croz89 I agree with your logistical argument but do feel compelled to point out that wind assist means that the wind isn't strictly necessary for propuslion. Storm survival alone probably requires that those ships be able to make nearly 20 kts cruising speed in calm weather on the main engine so that they have enough power to control the ship and stay off a lee shore in a hurricane. I think the idea of most wind assist technologies is that you turn down the main engine when there's wind you can use and turn it back up when there isn't so that you can take advantage of the wind without changing your cruising speed or schedule. It's also important to do that because bulbous bows only work at one specific speed. that's also why I specifically mentioned going between east asia and north America as the only viable route for container ship wind assist because it's the only route where you can get reliable enough strong tailwind in both directions for it to be worth the investment in the short term (a couple of years)
City planners don't make cities, they just implement what they're briefed to do. This is why a lot of well known best practices are ignored when cities expand.
Was a great video to help out with. Mega City 7 is now fully powered by renewable power electrified public transport, cars and delivery. Still working on congestion though. (Loving the little Easter Eggs hidden about)
Iceland is a great example of why we need to decarbonise transport. Iceland runs on 100% renewable energy but yet still has almost 3 times the average global carbon emissions per capita which is an absolute bruh moment.
Wow! The animation style on this video is great! Its cool to see you experimenting with new formats. Hope you get some boosts from the algorithm - more people need to see this content.
4:00 there actually is a point in electric vehicles WITHOUT decarbonizing the electric grid. Power plants are so efficient because they can harness heat byproduct from energy production and turn it into stream energy; something no internal combustion engine in a car can do. Hence, per gallon of petrol or ton of coal, you get way more energy (and thus way less emissions) if it goes into a power plant and then into a car, than straight into a car.
Pretty much any engine/generator gets more efficient as it gets bigger even before taking things like that into account too. My understanding is that even if the powerplant was don't very little other than just running a Very Big generator (no idea if that's actually a practical thing, mind you, and obviously there are Better ways of doing things), it would Still be better, emissions wise, than having an engine in each invidual vehicle (better for maintenance costs too!) A large part of why electric rail has always been the better option if the money to build the infrastructure is to be had.
@@laurencefraseras an electrical engineer you are kinda right, before i explain how things work i will list the general efficiencies. ICE ≈ 20%, max is about 30% for diesel EV ≈ 75% Classic thermodynamic power cycle ≈35% Transmission lines ≈ 95% (means the grid is overall 33% efficient) Combined Cycle nat gas ≈ 55% efficient. Co Gen: 80% efficient (its cheating as it isn't purely electricity produced) ICEs work by exploding a small quantity of fuel vapors to shove a piston down and then convert the linear motion into rotational, it then goes through a bunch of gears before reaching the tires, just inherently inefficient. (I hope everyone here already knows how a car works) EVs instead use batteries and electric motors connected directly to the wheels, and can syphon power back out of motors to brake since motors and generators a physically the same thing. Electricity is inherently far more efficient at energy transfer than mechanical systems, hence the massive gap between the 2 cars as end use machines. As far as generation goes, most generators are fundamentally just spinning a magnet inside a coil of wire. Large generators use an electromagnet but small ones just use a permanent magnet for simplicity, all the different power plants are just looking for ways to spin the shaft of the generator. You could use and ICE but as mentioned they suck. The classic power plant uses the thermodynamic power cycle which extracts "work" out of energy flowing from a hot sink to a cold sink. Energy has to be "rejected" to the cold sink for the cycle to produce work. The basic installation is you boil a working fluid (water), run the steam through a turbine (extract the work), condense the steam in a condenser (reject waste heat), and then pump the 95°C water back to the boiler. (You have to put work in too) The ideal efficiency is based on the temperature difference, ideally you would be super hot and use absolute 0 for a cold sink, real world isn't ideal so the realistic temps limit this to under 40% ideal) Gas combined cycle starts with a 30% gas turbine (burn gas and use the exhaust to power the turbine, basically a jet engine) and then dump the waste heat into a classic power cycle and they get to double dip the energy from the fuel for an overall efficiency of 55%. Co-gen is a power plant that sells its waste heat via district heating instead of dumping it into a body of water or the sky. This is how they get 80% efficiency, its still only 30-50% electricity efficiency but they sell the heat as well. Otherwise the actual generator is the same between these power plants. And as you get bigger it becomes possible to chase after higher efficiencies, partially because the actual magnitude of the losses increases enough to justify the effort of recapturing or mitigating them. (Assuming they aren't mandatory physics losses like with the power cycle or aerodynamic drag on a car)
Electric cars are not "Zero emissions", the technology needs further development to have lower carbon emissions, cause at the moment they are quite high. You will never have a "zero emission-car", it should be called: "lower emission-car". People think this issue is fixed due to the wording and usage of the term "zero emission", the batteries themselves cost a lot of co2 in production. So if the country you are in doesn't produce it's electricity with 70% (or more) renewable energy you are actually not really fixing anything the emissions is the same / more, when you think about the lifetimes of the products.
I haven't seen your videos for a while now so it was a fresh experience to see game footage. TTD was immediately on my mind when I saw then second monitor! Nice one! Oh, and the topic was great as well.
Important caveat on the electric car CO2 emissions: the immense amount of carbon put into manufacturing EVs means it takes 3-4 years just for it to break even with the carbon output of a gas car. Even then, building and maintaining road infrastructure makes up a decent chunk of all carbon emmissions in its own right (concrete on its own is 7% IIRC and asphalt is literally a petroleum product). Im not saying EVs are useless, but we need an order of magnitude more emphasis on public transit than EVs if we hope to make a dent in our carbon emissions.
It’s a lot easier to stomach buying an EV than it is changing over to public transportation. Especially for older people! I always thought Musk’s robotaxis were a silly idea, but I’m starting to warm to it …
I think the current housing crises actually play into this quite a bit too. As someone who’s been trying to find a new rental for quite a while I often think about this. Obviously what I’m about to propose could probably be done far better with central planning and socialised systems but even leaning away from setting off any authoritarian alarm bells, what if we just placed some gentle pressures on the current rental market that incentivised property managers to select tenants who worked close to the potential house? They’d still be able to pick and choose on all their regular things “do they play the drums, do they like playing with matches, etc” but once you’re down to 3 more or less equal great tenants, imagine if all 3 had an ‘ease of commute’ score. I bet there’s so many cases of two similar applicants on similar incomes who are both applying to any place in a 10km radius around the city centre, and then through the luck of the draw, applicant A who works on the southern end of the city centre, gets a house 10km north of the city, where they’d have to change trains to get to work by train, and applicant B who works on the northern end of the city centre gets a house 10km south of the city and they also need to change trains to get to work. Therefore, these two people who could have had easy-breezy 15 minute train commutes both end up opting to drive. It would probably need to be an opt in system, and it’s probably only applicable to people who know their employment is reasonably stable, but I’m sure there’d be chances to exploit this to cut emissions. Maybe even if you taxed rental agencies based on the commutes of their tenants? (Even this could see a few investors sell their properties and help with the supply issue a little bit) Anyway, I know there’s a million issues with this idea, but someone gotta be thinking of something right?
When I hear carbon pricing, it seems like the government will be taxing the people more, so corporations don’t have to change. Why couldn’t they just tax corporations more for high carbon services instead? And what stops corporations from making the green option more expensive so that even after carbon pricing the polluting option is ‘cheaper.’ I just wish the government would tax corporations first, instead of shouldering the blame and responsibility on the tax payer.
I think you forgot in 11:50 about the possibility of nuclear reactors on ships. Designs existed and they are incredibly safe by design (safer than on-land reactors)
with all the new small modular reactor designs being developed, a navalized version for heavy shipping seems more practical than ever. The infinite heat sink of the ocean does certainly make them much safer.
I work in cold chain logistics and am considering a move to transport engineering and your mention of sharing delivery vehicles excited me. I started as a delivery driver and used to find that there’d be days where I’d all but follow around the same couple of trucks from rival companies to the same destinations, often getting in each others way and having to circle the block due to limited loading zone capacity. Ever since then I’ve always been brainstorming ideas for how to make this more efficient. I’ve thought of things like an app that all delivery drivers could run that would tell them if any nearby drivers had efficient freight swaps on offer (Ie, both drivers will be at a shared location at about 11am, and by moving only a couple of boxes between the two trucks they can both make 1 less stop. Let Truck 1 take anything Truck 2 has for Destination A, and let Truck 2 take anything Truck 1 has for Destionation B, and they both get to make less stops, and won’t be competing for parking space further down the road. Also that’s just a demonstration, the same process could result in the reduction of stops a lot more than just 1) Obviously, rather than rival courier companies fighting over the same real estate the best solution in this case would probably be socialise it all, put gigantic distribution centres for all freight types at the compass points of your city and centrally plan the delivery routes for maximum efficiency and utilisation, but if we must work within capitalism then I’m sure there’s still something that can be done in that direction.
As someone working in the policy space that happens to be looking at longer term planning for climate change right now, this has been very useful (and timely!) - both in terms of how ideas have been organised, and bringing the ITF Transport Outlook to my attention. Thanks!
@@laurencefraser No it does not. Imagine there are ares even in central Europe where there are no trains, never been any, never will be any. And still there are people living here. Now imagine the same for Africa, USA, South America, Canada, China, Asia in general. Only Russia has built their economy on the back of their railway system. No one else has done so. Railways are much too expensive for every day personal use. Good for transporting goods, bad for transporting people outside of very densely populated areas.
There's very interesting propeller designs hitting the market which are massively more efficient than old ones. The good thing with this is they can be retro fitted to existing ships.
I do wish you hadn't said there's no point in electric cars if the grid isn't renewable. Because there clearly is, and people shouldn't wait until the grid is fully renewable.
Trips 0 to 5 miles: walk or cycle. Trip's 0 to 10 miles: Bus/trams or eBikes/eScooters. Anything longer: Metro or Trains. Cars are great as In-between vehicles especially City cars but shouldn't be used 247 for all trips. Also please write to the UK/EU Government on these ideas from you and Not Just Bikes. You guys could really help them and the world.
Carbon pricing only works in certain area like Europe, China, USA where train infrastructure are a viable alternative option. While in archipelago nation like Indonesia is really hard, because aviation industry are the most convenient type of transport for trans-island travel
You just need to take your wins where you can. Yes, travelling across Indonesia is only feasible by airplane for the foreseeable future, but high-speed rail across Java is perfectly feasible, and Java is home to more than half of Indonesia's population.
@@aaaaaaaard9586they don't, but they do care about energy independence and part of that is energy efficiency, and trains are just about the most efficient land based transportation mode. (They are also much faster than boats, and can be directly connected to the power grid so they can run on anything, not just imported "dino juice". Its way easier for the CCP to build something like the 3 gorges dam than it is to build islands in the south china sea and possibly fight a war over it because they are after the oil under the Spratly Islands.
One thing i think that isnt quite talked about enough is working towards more localization again, because if more of the stuff we live with comes from much closer opposed to accross the world out carbon footprint will naturally decrease.
I would love to see an in depth video on electric vehicles and their pollution/lack thereof. I get that they're better than gas cars, but there's a lot of misinformation out there on how they pollute in other ways (e.g. through the material used for batteries). My feeling is that there's a nuanced conversation to be had there but all I can find on UA-cam are conspiracy style videos a la "the dirty secret of electric cars".
That's a very hard topic to do true justice too because you would need to track down so many different externalities associated with building, operating, and eventually disposing of such a vehicle. By CO2 emissions the EV will eventually always win, even on a 100% coal grid. (EVs are 75% efficient from the outlet/charger, ICE's are 20% from the pump, that a huge advantage) But CO2 isn't the only pollution to consider, theres also chemical like SOx, NOx, and whatever comes out of a cobalt mine, and particulate in the form of soot and brake dust. But you also get to some unexpected externalities like increased road wear from the heavier EVs or the fact an EV fire takes more water than a typical firetruck holds while an ICE does not. And at the end of all the data collecting and normalizing, you will have to make a judgement on what types of pollution/externalities are worse than others. This isn't impossible, but it is hard to do the topic true justice and provide an definitive conclusion. (Maybe it ends up close and you decide that african children mining cobalt is worse than american children getting asthma from the NOx of their parents ICE cars, just for an illustrative example of why comparing across pollution types is hard)
I'm so glad you mentioned this and the cement video in your most recent upload on eco hope. I hadn't seen either one and Im so glad I got the chance!! Well done, both very interesting and very informative
The infographics are great, especially the custom ones. I don't think you should use footage from different games though because it makes the style inconsistent. But overall, this is one of the more visually interesting videos
At the same time, it's incredibly unfair if island nations are forced to become even more isolated while the mainlands enjoy massive improvements to their international high speed trains.
@@yoironfistbro8128 On the other hand, the tourism industry does a LOT of damage, not just in terms of global emissions, but in terms of the local environment and, in many cases, the quality of life of the locals too. There's a benificial level of tourism, and then there's what most places that get enough to matter at all get: Far too much!
@@martinovallejo Currently you get issues with small businesses not being able to get resources they need, despite being in the country, or even city, that produces those resources, because they're sold in bulk to large interest on a different continent (more profitable that way), leaving the local business to have to import the same material (actually, in practice, often Worse material) Also from a different continent, but now having to pay a LOT more in shipping. (and it gets worse, because there are acutally Other problems too). All of which would be solved if the local supplier would actually fill local demand and only exported the Surplus. One of MANY situations where 'free trade' is actually detrimental. Not that the old practice of constant trade wars and egregious tariffs on things implemented purely to harm rivals and other nonsense was good, but tarrifs, subsidies, and import/export controls Do have their place when used for the things they're actually Good for. (sort of like its generally better for infrastructure that's going to end up being a monopoly anyway to be under government control, but large parts of the economy in general really do NOT benefit from the impossition of central planning.)
@@laurencefraser I see you completely missed my point... We can't leave island nations even more isolated while massively improving long distance rail on the mainlands!
7:51 I completely disagree, trains are a viable option in Indonesia and in the Philippines. It has already been done in Japan a country with similar geography.
One note on international ocean going shipping: oil and gas makes up a super majority by weight of moved goods. Simply weaning off of fossil fuels would go a long way to greatly reducing carbon intensity of mode of an already fuel efficient means of moving goods
Nice video. I'm currentttly studying traffffic engineering and we always say "avoid, shift, improve" to decarbonise traffic. Avoiding trips to be made is the most effective option. Next we should shift the transport option from cars, planes and ships to bikes, public transit and to go by foot. Last thing to do is improve everything that can't be avoided or shifted. It's really nice to see that in your video as well. It sure works for both: passenger transport and freight.
I think focusing too much on avoid could be detrimental though. It's not good for people's mental health to be cooped up in the same small area most of the time, especially if it's in a high density apartment block in an urban area. I think you should encourage people to engage in a minimum level of travel for their own wellbeing.
@@Croz89sure, but imagine if there were 3-4 great public plazas and spaces an easy walk from your front door. Arguably cooping up is what happens when you HAVE to get in a car to go anywhere worthwhile. I feel like an ideal set up would be something like: Most people in the city live within a few train/tram/bus stations of the city centre and commute to work via those methods during the week. When they get home they’re an easy walk to the shops, a plaza with restaurants, a green space, some sort of public sports fields. And then maybe on the weekend you take your car an hour out of the city to go to a beach, or a nice hiking spot in the mountains, and then you come back home via the supermarket, doing a big shop, bringing it home in the car, and then you’re done for the week, able to get any supplementary supplies and groceries by walking during the week. That’s your whole life sorted and you might need to drive for 2-3 hours per week in total
@@BD-yl5mh The multiple plazas idea is only really economically feasible for high density high income housing. Those in lower density and cheaper housing will probably only have one location, if any at all, that's a short enough distance away to not really be considered a journey. And that means you're going to be very restricted on choice and variety, and that's going to make people feel boxed in. What you say in your latter paragraph is way more shift than avoid in my opinion. You're still regularly travelling, probably even more than a more car dependant suburbanite would since you likely have less space to do things at home and you have to make more regular trips for groceries and such, because to have all those things within walking distance and have frequent fast and reliable public transit to the CBD, unless you're rich or lucky you will have to settle for higher density.
@@Croz89 the original video literally said “higher density” within the first few minutes. It absolutely makes sense. That doesn’t need to be dystopian though. High density doesn’t need to be micro-studios stacked 50 high. But if you can avoid a situation where any residence more than a couple of kilometres outside a city centre is necessarily a 4 bedroom house surrounded on all sides by yard, then you absolutely increase the number of people who can live without a car. 8-10 appartments in 2-3 stories, with one driveway onto the road is already using space way more efficiently than everyone having their white picket fence. We’re literally talking about change, and you’re saying “but nah change is hard” Yeah, we know that, but we’ve got into the mess we’re in by doing the easiest cheapest shit. We are now faced with the consequences of decades of ‘easy and cheap.’ Now might be the time for planners to go…. “Hmmm, maybe nice plazas don’t just have to be for the rich…. Maybe we can afford to spend more on parks if our roads are 50% less congested…” I also think for context it’s important to say… I’m an Australian. I live in one of the worst countries for urban sprawl. You may be a European, who already lives in a city that largely conforms to the image I’ve built up in my head of what would be good to aim for. Therefore you might be hearing my suggestions as over the top, like I’m asking you to do what you already do, but 10x more. In reality, my suggestions largely apply to the USA and Australia. Many other countries already control sprawl far better. Not perfectly, but better.
@@BD-yl5mh For a start, I'm responding to the comment, not the video. If I wanted to respond to the video, I would leave a top level comment. That comment in particular was talking about avoiding unnecessary travel as a first priority in urban design, something I criticised because I believe that unnecessary travel has health benefits for citizens, regardless of mode. Excessive necessary travel can be detrimental, I do agree. Now that I've cleared that up, I think you underestimate the cost of maintaining a vibrant public plaza with lots of shops and restaurants, particularly small businesses. You need a lot of foot traffic to make it economically viable, and also a lot of people willing to pay higher prices than they might find in the local discount supermarket. That means if you want to support a lot of these things in close proximity to one another, you need both wealth and density. I can find such places in my local city, and unsurprisingly they are surrounded by luxury apartments in towering skyscrapers, as well as office blocks where commuters will also support them. Where you might be able to avoid that level of high income density is if you get a lot of tourists but not everywhere is that lucky. If you've got the wealth but less density you might have a nice plaza with a restaurant and a couple of shops but you won't have much variety. If you have the density but not the wealth you'll probably just have a discount supermarket and nothing else.
Good video. My city (Puebla, Mexico) is investing in public transport, something I thought I would never see. I'm seeing more and more electric cars on my city's roads too. Nevertheless, I'm a presimistic, and I don't know is this is just an illusion or if the government is really thinking about the climate and the environment.
A thing with biking that is super obvious but still requires some healthy thinking is the sphere of influence that a business or other sort of destination has. I would wager that people generally have about a 10 minute limit on how long they would like to walk to somewhere before they take the car. This might be a small corner store, or a bus stop, but that's the same in the analogy. If a person walks at 5 km/h then that means there has to be a bus stop every 1.6 km. However, if you bike that speed goes up to 15 km/h minimum (or 20 on an electric bike) then you only need a bus stop every 5 km!! This also helps small businesses stay alive, because people are more inclined to "just go out for a couple minutes" to get to it and buy a small thing, rather than make it a whole ordeal to get in the car and drive the whole way there. A small corner shop won't function with only car traffic, because no one is going to get in their car and drive for 7 minutes, just to get a single chocolate bar because they wanted chocolate, but they would bike that way.
I do not fully understand the chart at 5:24 surely the bus is more efficient the more people that are in it. It seems strange to compare it to car and 2 passenger car usage without say how it scales with the number of passengers
yes I was surprised by that too! As said above, I assume it uses average passenger numbers per trip, you would have to check the OWID paper for the details
Its a fact or reality that cars are rather efficient on certain routes. Cars - even with only one passenger/driver are more efficient than most electric trains according to a Swiss study. And in the city they are more efficient if the city busses or metros are not filled to the brim.
There's a bit of unit mixing there, as "Medium car (petrol)" is in gCO2e *per vehicle km* but "Bus" and "Petrol car, 2 passengers" is in gCO2e *per passenger km*. I'm guessing that Our World in Data chose to include it to illustrate the effects of vehicle occupancy. (also, absent other information, 1 person per car is a pretty safe assumption) Also for buses, yes, the value is computed as ((total bus fuel consumption)*(fuel emission factor))/((total bus distance travelled)*(average bus occupancy)), as reported by the UK Department for Transport.
Very interesting video. One thing I disagree with is that private cars are here to stay in urban areas. Urban areas are generally dense enough that walking, cycling, and public transport are sufficient to get everyone to where they need to be. You're right to say that in inter-city contexts that the car is here to stay, but in urban contexts they are unnecessary.
I'm about to watch this video and I hope it includes a comparison of carbon costs to manufacture the transportation option, including the vehicle and the right-of-way.
Alternative fuels may be exactly the same fuels but manufactured from a different feedstock - crude oil is compost, baked & compressed compost, a well held industry secret is that you can put *_any_* vaguely-liquid or gaseous compost through an oil refinery & get the exact same range of things coming out, your compost can be a few weeks old, it doesn't have to have been underground for millions of years. It can also include anything that's come out of an oil refinery, captured engine exhaust, dissolved plastics, paint, tyres (with the steel removed), *anything!*
Maybe i have missed it, but when talking about improving fuel efficiency, you didn't mention the jevons paradox, which I think should definitely be talked about in this context. The problem is that if planes or ships become more efficient, they will (obviously) ue less fuel, making transport and travel cheaper, which increases demand, and thus also increases total fuel use. I am not sure about how much empiric evidence there is for the paradox, but as far as I know it has been observed after James Watt massively improved the steam engine (increasing the demand for coal), and when planes have become much more fuel efficient in the middle of the 20th century. So we should always have it in mind when considering improving fuel efficiency as a potential solution for reducing our emissions.
It almost always comes back to policy, which is stubbornly slow. Of course this is unsurprisingly when each president, prime minister, etc. only holds office for a few years (meaning they'll prioritize more 'current' problems). And on the flip size, the dictators who hold office for many years are generally not elected based on favorable climate policy.
Two things 1, I find some times that there’s more pressure to decarbonize public transport them. There is decarbonize cars which can be really annoying and add to the stigma against public transportation. 2, it’s not all that annoying because there’s maybe a tiny bit of truth to having the public transport sector decrease their carbon emissions.
Its also easier to decarbonize public transportation. Trains are often considered the "be all, end all" of public transport and they can be easily modified to draw power directly from the grid (either 3rd rail or overhead catenary). Electric trains are also typically just strictly better than diesel, they have more power, both already use electric motors, and they can go faster & regeneratively brake. By contrast electric cars are not objectively better than ICE cars, they may not have the emissions but they charge slower, need heavy batteries, burn hotter and longer, and you still have all the other problems of car dependency. (You can also fix their emissions by getting mode share change towards an already decarbonized public transit system and get benefits beyond just reducing CO2 emissions.)
Cities skylines, nice! And all the urban changes are literally what urbanist youtubers consistently mention about. Living in Jakarta, a city with bad planning and urban sprawl, having cities you describe is so desirable. Imagine not needing a car to go everywhere, less traffic, better air... I don't agree with you that trains don't fit Indonesia. Most of the population lives in Java, a small dense and decently flat island. Implementing good high speed rail will significantly reduce plane usage. However, interisland travel does require planes. The only connection trains can do in my understanding is Java Sumatra and Bali. Papua, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and the Nusa Tenggara Islands need planes. But by that point, carbon emissions from Indonesia should be really low and can be offset by algae, trees and carbon capture (I think?) Maybe planes can utilize hydrogen technology? or ion technology. Either way significant advances in battery technology or hydrogen technology are required.
Improving plane’s efficiency with no carbon tax would just make flying even more appealing. International agreement on a price for carbon is a necessity imo
AIRSHIPS!! Solves both the freight and long distance issues, as well as inter-island issues. Airships are a key to making a way forward. HxH actually demonstrates what a developed airship industry could look like for society and it’s pretty awesome.
Sadly, electric cars seem to be the most used solution. It is the least effective, but it is politically the easiest. Ideally, governments increase investements into rail, but that has to happen now, since infrastructure takes a long time to build
The long service life of ships also applies to planes too really. As one plane can typically be in service for decades. That being said a lot of older designs are being retired worldwide as it just happens to be the end of their lifecycle, and they're being replaced with things like the 787 or the A320 Neo.
I'm glad you didn't bash electric vehicles. They are not a silver bullet, but they are one of the many tools at our disposal. All too often I see purists thinking that just by increasing public transport and cyclability we could get rid of all cars. Unfortunately, just a quick look at places like the Netherlands or Denmark shows that cars are still present en masse, no matter what. So better them to be electric.
There is still a big step missing. Like reducing the amount of (long distance) plane trips, countries should reduce the amount of long international ship trips by either producing their needed goods themselves or in neighbouring countries. The US should produce their goods in mexico. The Eu in maybe poland, romania etc.
Eastern enlargement of EU + Turkey are already German manufacturing hub. They export more into Germany then entire Asia (minus Turkey) combined. EU economic model for the past 20 years is basically Germany buys/assembles parts east of Oder and sells to the rest of the world.
Most countries already have bans or restrictions on short distance flights unless it's to some place you can't reach otherwise or it's a connecting flight. Banning short haul flights really just means banning short connecting flights, which are often necesary to fly from smaller airports to just about anywhere, if that airport connects to a nearby large airport which serves as a hub for flights. If you really want to ban these flights in particular, you either have to simply screw people over without giving them a good alternative, or build high speed rail between nearby airports which serms kinda silly if you're trying to move away from flights altogether
Pretty sure that the idea with rail is that in most cases those smaller airports are replaced with railway stations. High speed isn't the only type of passenger rail, after all.
I guess one step in reducing long distance freight transport is to incentivize regional production of goods wherever possible. And also probably to get away from consumerism more, for example by using more durable products, repairing things when possible, buying second-hand, sharing things among people and avoiding buying products that you don't necessarily need when possible. One less obvious advantage of that would also be that there would be less garbage. The disposal of garbage also creates travel emissions, often even internationally, when first world countries send their trash to developing countries where it creates health hazards for many people living there.
Yes, we should switch from ownership to usership - for example having a communal warehouse with all the tools one might need in a neighborhood, instead of having neighbors own their tools individually. But also car-sharing. Of course, this transition will also require us to deconstruct capitalist ideals like "ownership = individual freedom, thus usership = communism".
I find it problematic that more people living in city's at any one time is to be taken for granted... You can't really involve people in the ecological process whilst forcing them to live separately from it. While lower per capita resource requirements are often touted for urban living, I feel there are probably diminishing returns after getting to the size of a well designed and clustered town/village, be that permanently settled or temporarily/modular constructed in flexible ways. The latter provides the most flexibility to involve a section of the population in ecologically pro active work and activities. Bio dynamic agriculture, best practice horticultural and conversational methods and initiatives ect. I feel that actually you can facilitate a much better quality of life for relatively less than ever more sprawling and dense urban subsistence. Seems like the idea is only less resource intensive than suburban sprawl or more fully detached rural homes, partially communal living is far better though. What advantages does an urban district have over a well sized and clustered village/community layout in a semi rural setting? If accommodation is clustered to improve thermal efficiency and if the village size is designed and scaled to a decent point where all required services can be delivered to a good number of people efficiently? How else can you account for the potential ecological and environmental benefits of rural populations or semi nomadic community ect?
the difference is density, you'll never have the efficiency of a city without density of a city. if you need 1000 people in one office building for collaboration purposes and all of them need to live in 1km radius for walkability and want to use hospitals and shops and services which then also need to be in 1km radius with their own employees also in the same radius you'll quickly realize that you need a city density to fit all those people close enough together. maybe if we all worked remote or alternatively were satisfied with commuting by train for 45mins every day the town idea would make sense. But neither of those options are beneficial for social fabric.
@@butterflysleg9649 So the first assumption is that you need 1000s of people in an office building for collaboration purposes, which depends on work options within a city. More job option that require a long commute is not what's necessary for the environment, while yes working office type jobs only remotely causes issues and really it's better for people to attend in person and be present for one another, at least some days of the week. Not everyone needs to do office work though, in fact considerably larger proportion of the population needs access to land in order to do the sort of ecologically pro active horticultural/conservation and better practice bio dynamic agricultural work. Of course a "cluster" of dwellings or accommodations is significantly more efficient than detached suburban spall or individual dwellings dotted about. However what are the significant benefits beyond a well designed cluster of dwellings and services larger than a village/town kind of size? If you look at historical towns and villages, the dwellings tend to share walls or are multi story and not detached, lots of example villages are nice and dense for their size. They had to be as historically energy was not nearly so abundant and cheep. So you can have the exact same density of a city district/block without needing to be as large as a city, in fact you can design *more* dense than a larger city because that won't impact on people's quality of life as much when they have nearby access to large open space landscapes and nature ect. So in addition to better design of towns and villages I would also advise modular accommodation that can be assembled temporarily and disassembled for logistic transportation, temporary villages that relocate from one work project to another. This would unlock a lot of environmentally pro active work options on landscapes, both for seasonal work and one off projects.
@@leifcian4288 if your town has a similar density to cit block then to me it's more of a question of city design and your town is essentially a district. Possibly these days cities are a bit too centralised and could benefit from spreading big destination points out. And I do agree that we would benefit from having larger access to nature and more greenspace between districts(towns) at cost of removing suburbs. Having some more dense central districts also makes sense since you won't always have everyone working within the same district and central one always has easier conectivity .
@@butterflysleg9649 Sure now I'm put in mind of a city with much more green space in between districts to break up those issues with heat traps and watershed management that comes with too much built up urban sprawl. That's great and better for the kind work and lifestyle options that are more city centric. I do maintain we also need a larger rural and even semi nomadic population and community's, or at least more people living a proportion of their lives as such to facilitate ecologically/environmentally pro active work around horticultural/conservational/agricultural best practice so that the landscape hydrological and carbon cycles are properly restored. I don't dispute that that issues around reducing carbon emissions, reducing waste and improving efficiency are as important as they are, unfortunately I find it a massive issue in the environmental discourse that we are not making steps towards restoring damage done to watersheds, which has badly diminished the hydrological cycle and carbon cycles. There is no substitute to facilitate pro active work restoring and building up a robust landscape watershed, through best practice horticultural, conservational, agricultural methods and ongoing ecological management via best observations and integration. This simply requires initial labour and ongoing labour/skill sets relevant to different areas of landscapes and biomes. At the end of the day the entire economy exists with the environment and is an ecological process in a sense. We need an ecological growth and stability economy.
We need ecological growth, the whole economy exists in the ecological environment, because of course it does. What we don't need is just more and more of the same kind of products and services year on year, we need to do ecologically pro active work and services which won't be possible given this idea that everyone will be living in super dense crowded urban areas...
Great idea using video games for all the footage haha. Another great video old bean. Keep up the great work. You're good and sensible voice in a realm of misinformation.
Yeah I use to play resource management computer games as a kid... Probably added to my sensibilities fairly well to a point. However then I learnt some tangible skills and took an interest in real world practice and conservation.
I think the idea of a car in cities should be a thing of the past. You can do all things by bus and tram and metro and bikes. Maybe allow scooters and motorbikes because they're only used to transport 1 or 2 people. Or make city cars a lot smaller. All the freed up land from the parking space can be used to plant trees or biking infrastructure. Why don't we use sails for boats, if they're retractable, they could be put in place to help a boat along. With the huge freight ships nowadays you can't expect it to do all but they could maybe get 30% more efficient. Put in trains everywhere now that I agree with.
There will always be some use cases for which a car is the only viable option. The goal should be to ensure that that list is as short as possible, of course, and car-centric city planing has got to go (never mind the American style cities that are frankly impossible to live in without a car). Increased density and improved public transportation go a long way on this front. I certainly won't argue with the rest of your points at all, though.
Start elsewhere and leave transport for last. Transport is the hardest sector to decarbonize but most visible to consumers. Hydrogen can decarbonize a chemical process 4 times more effective than a car. Still better than eFuels though.
Shipping is at least one of the sectors that is most friendly to carbon reduction schemes. This is because fuel is the single biggest expense for them and they've already gone to great lengths to increase fuel efficiency such as adopting slow steaming, so the shipping industry is very happy to adopt anything that can increase fuel efficiency. That might be why we've seen even some pretty radical concepts get full scale tests. Compared to many other sectors it probably won't be hard to get the shipping sector to adopt many of these measures. Fuel is also a pretty big expense for airlines but they have the competing interest of not wanting to lose market share to rail travel.
Great video. One topic I think worth exploring that was missed is, do we really need to move so many goods at global distances? Can we reduce the level of needless shipping. Food is generally easier to answer with eating seasonal and local but other products are more complicated. One big factory that ships internationally better than many smaller factories closer to the end market be better?
12:22 i'm still salty that nuclear ships are not more than an anecdotal thing, and probably never going to be more than that, while we have nuclear submarines cruising the ocean for various superpowers, so like, it's not like we don't know how to do it.
The fuel system on a combustion-engined vehicle is designed for a very specific range of fuels, using "alternative fuels" will often discover things that need to be redesigned. For example, putting vegetable oils in Diesel engines is absolutely fine, Rudolf Diesel did all his development with vegetable oils, but in your specific vehicle the fuel may turn black indicating that a rubber component is dissolving & you need to disassemble every last part of the fuel system from the filler cap to the injectors & replace whatever is dissolving before it lets go & dumps a tankful of fuel on the road, even if you go back to pump fuel & never put vegetable oil in it again. Similarly, with a bit of messing about, petrol engines will run on ethanol but a) the same rubber problem exists & b) ethanol dissolves zinc which is used in some solders & in aluminium castings - your carburettor may become porous or the jets fall out.
All great. Not one question asked about the WAY we live in the "developed" world. No consideration of the fact that most of us never need to be on another continent, certainly not quickly. I hear a private plane flying over my house right now. I saw a hummer at Target yesterday. These are insane, destructive choices that definitely deSERVE interruption. And there are endless other things we do which we do not NEED to do. Meanwhile we have largely abandoned so many things we USED to do (and of course I know as a queer parent of trans child, the old days sucked, okay, yes I know)... music together, stories together, reading to each other, making things together. We now "require" carbon and toxic substances to tolerate our own consciousness. We need to stop and consider all of this on a fundamental level.
I hope there will be a follow up on "the problem with decarbonisation with intensifying dependency on lithium." Some solutions you mentioned are good on every environmental scale (like public transport, biking or denser cities) but other cause on other fields problems (to name another example water consumption/pollution). Switching to electric cars is unluckily a moving of problems. Cars are just ineffecient (even more compared to airships!).
A quick Comment on shipping: there are designs that go to the old idea of sailing and modify it. These designs look strange (large rotating Zylinders) but the promise a large reduction in fuel consumption, since most of the energy comes from the wind. This would need to be incentivised however, since the owner and Operator of a ship are often different and the main profiter would be the operator, not the owner.
It might work for bulk carriers who aren't concerned about keeping to a timetable. For container ships the economics might not work out if they don't end up using them much because they will arrive at their destination too early or too late.
I’ll reserved a better judgement when I read the report, but frankly from Simon’s video it feels a bit like “business as usual” kind of report. Real co2 savings can only come if we change our way to move or we start moving less, I fear. And, nice to hear about investing in more public transit (and high speed intercity lines?), but I just hope this does cause infrastructure costs to inflate because now countries and economic areas (like the eu) suddenly starts pouring billions into them. And I hope “making transit more attractive” does not result in money being trashed just in buying newer rolling stocks and use it on crippled infrastructure (see Philadelphia) or build grandiose halts and use “heavy” infrastructure where it was not really needed (see the light rail projects in Los Angeles), or build transit tunnels everywhere to save surface space for cars and cyclists.
you make public transport more attractive by actually connecting places people want to go and increasing service frequency. Also: the way you bring infrastructure costs down is by building more of a given type of infrastructure constantly, because otherwise you lose a lot of relevant skills that have to be relearned. Mostly the skills that allow delays to be avoided. Delays being a Big sorce of high costs. (Also, NIMBYs and dodgy contractors/contract handling processes are Major sourcess of expense both directly and via delays once the project's already started).
Hi Simon, I haven't been able to finish watching your last few videos. It's lost that personal touch. This new format might work for some but it reminds me too much of corporate PowerPoints which I need to endure every couple of weeks. When you bring yourself back into the picture again I will return. Remember that LinusTechTips, Veritasium and PBS Space Time never lost that personal touch despite growing huge. Good luck and good fortune for the future.
My main concerns are 1) how can we effectively achieve such intense increase in city density without overall decreasing quality of life (creating concrete jungles, increased heat island, smaller available living spaces especially for lower income, etc); and 2) will these changes have a net positive effect on the manufacturing industry? After all, shifting carbonization and pollution out of transportation and into manufacturing won't fully solve the issue.
We have a lot of good high density examples in Europe to copy/adapt. The old cities of Puglia are painted white and lovely to live in, for example. The main hurdles are current stupid zoning rules, and developers. We don’t need to knock down all the in-use low density development (something the developers love to do, anyway). As it ages, replace it with higher density rather than with more low density. Even if well-designed higher density takes more resources initially (it won’t, because it takes less per person), the continued savings on transport outweighs that very quickly.
Could you list the twenty cities with the highest quality of life on the planet, and the twenty cities in the countries with those cities with the highest population density, and tell us how many are on both lists? Hint: it's nineteen. Similarly, of the list of countries with the twenty most populous cities, the overlap with highest standard of living is sixteen of twenty. Historically we see population increase, then standard of living, statistically. Overwhelmingly population density results in better standard of living. More overwhelmingly, fossil emissions result in far worse quality of life. Being downwind of smokestacks and chimneys, being ground level with ICEs, engender worse health, noise exposure and accompanying hazards immediately, in the middle term and in the long term far outstripping benefits to the populace. And who said to shift 'carbonization and pollution' anywhere? The issue is fossil emission, and the fix for that is the CARDIE wave that raises all boats equally: Curtail 2% of today's level of fossil extraction, export, import and exploitation per month down to zero by 2030. Avoid methane emissions as much as possible, both by shutting down fossil methane extraction and by diverting biomethane and fossil fugitive emissions either to use or flaring. Replace fossil emitting technology with fossil free alternatives and shut down the replaced fossil emitters instead of letting them stay on the market. Drawdown equivalent to a trillion new trees globally by 2060, if all those new trees are harvested to sequester. Increase conservation programs, like shutting down 40% of ocean traffic and equivalent biodiversity measures on land. Energy efficiency upgrades 8% per year.
Great to see you've given your guys an excuse to play games 😁 but did I miss it or was there no SimCity 2000? Surprising to see that an electric car is so much better on carbon than a diesel bus, although obviously there are a lot of variables around usage there that will affect the outcome. I think it's also important to consider the impact of congestion and the need for dedicated land use, air quality, noise pollution, safety and general quality of life, which means that decarbonisation isn't the only agenda in town, although clearly it is a huge one - but in a lot of cases, diesel-powered public transport may be better for the environment overall than electric cars.
"Surprising to see that an electric car is so much better on carbon than a diesel bus" Are you for real? Electric cars produce less carbon than most public transport and even most fully electric trains in Europe. According to a Swiss study. IDK about other continents with their Diesel-trains.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 Electric cars usually only have one person in, but despite that are getting bigger and heavier and needing more and more power. Buses can have dozens of people on - trains can have hundreds of passengers each, and have less friction making them more energy efficient to move.
@@stevieinselby "but despite that are getting bigger and heavier and needing more and more power" Ahh - nope. You are wrong. I guess you are still driving your good old trusted "sustainable because its so old" fossil burner. Those monsters from the last century used more poisonous gazoline for each kilogramm more. My EVs not. Actually my heaviest EV in my small company fleet is the second best in efficiency. You should try it yousrself. Buy a EV, drive it a few years in all possible situations and come back and tell me how much you really spent. Its not that EVs ussually have only one person, its that cars in general usually transport not more than 1,15 persons. According to the VCÖ. My EV uses 176Wh/km. Divided by 1.15 = 153 Wh/km median. A train needs between 140 and 260 Wh/km according to a Swiss study. Depending on its size, area - flat or mountaineous, long stretches or stop and go etc. My EV uses 176 Wh/km - independent of everything. Of course in winter its more and in summer its ess but overall its 176 Wh/km. If you have a more current international study regarding public transport efficiencies i welcome that information.
@@Somebodyherefornow Where do you live? Enceladus? Moscow? Must be somewhere very remote. FYI: Teslas are the safest vehicles on the roads today. Much safer than ANY other car. Besides maybe Abrams and Bradleys.
Building denser cities needs to factor in corridors for wildlife, nature and air to move. Its more that residential areas need small centers with shops.
Yeah you could have denser village clusters than an urban district, because people would have quicker access to open space without more crowded urban sprawl everywhere. The whole density things surly has diminishing returns on its benefits after scaling to a certain size.
I'm surprised forcing manufacturers to build lighter cars is rarely mentioned as a stopgap, especially when it's affecting many other issues. The weight, size and power creep has been immense over the past few decades. Having people alone in their 2 tons EV tanks isn't gonna cut it, especially if only the upper middle class can afford it without getting into debt.
That is true. It also helps that sedans are safer in almost every way than an SUV and an SUV is not really used for its purpose of going off-road much if at all.
Electric cars are there to save the motor industry, not the environment. We need a huge modal shift towards bikes, trams, and trains, yesterday
It was tried. It failed.
The CAFE standards of the 90's were on their way to being successful when Edsel Ford Jr. led the subversive charge of corporate communism in the USA and linked arms with other SUV makers globally to escape the domestic vehicle rules, accompanied by an open campaign of product placement targeted at young men in action movies (what, you think Fast & Furious, Stallone and Schwarzenegger got financed for their art?) and an under-the-table campaign aimed at mothers to scare them out of the safer smaller vehicles into big SUVs and vans with far worse safety outcomes.
The only way to force manufacturers to go less fossil-emissions intensive is to make it clear to them that fossil is going away.
Curtail fossil extraction 2% of today's level per month down to zero by 2030.
Do it openly. Say you're doing it often. Get the message through that anyone buying a gas guzzler is going to be left without fuel.
@@yoironfistbro8128 as the video says: both! we need electrification and modal shift! but cars are here to stay (i hate this as much as you do, trust me), so we better electrify them
The problem is that the batteries are terribly heavy - more than half the weight of today's EV models - so you have to have a much stiffer and stronger chassis that can withstand the pressure of the batteries.
Besides, no one ever mentions where we will find so much lithium and other metals needed to produce batteries?!
Also, there are soooo many many more good reasons to reduce car traffic in urban areas through walkability, bikabilty and public transit. Less death, injury, pollution, wasted space, sealed areas (flooding), noise, etc.
CO2 reductions are really just the tip of the melting iceberg.
🚶🚲🚉
Don't forget better overall health, with combustion engines reducing the amount of them reduces air pollution and thus increases health but even with electric vehicles just getting people to walk and bike more obviously improves their health.
Funny thing is that air pollution (NOT related to greenhouse gases) will not be solved by electric cars, unless a breakthrough in solving their weight happens. Brakes and other mechanical components common to all kinds of car will release pollutants that are harmful to us, and the removal of the engine generated ones is almost exactly compensated by the increase of emissions of every other component due to the extra weight.
An electric car that is driven regularly is ALWAYS better than a ice one, tho, on greenhouse emissions, even if the energy used to run it comes from the worst possible current source of energy -coal- because of how inefficient the entire infrastructure to make, distribute, deliver is and the thermodynamical limitations of ICE engines (operating temperature and pressure put a hard cap to engine efficiency at about 45% if I'm not mistaken).
So, tafic elimination is the best solution for cities (as stated in the video), but it would also be the best solution if we weren't goin through a climate crisis of our own making.
and the noise, the f**g noise from cars, cities are not loud, cars are, and gosh, even when people start switching to electric that's a relief, but no cars at all is so much better.
@@GabrielPettier cities are loud even without cars.
I mean, cars make it 100% worse, but don't kid yourself
Moving away from fossil fuels for other transport will help reduce emissions from shipping a lot - as many ships are tankers transporting oil. Love the digital version of your book in the background!
Yes this was a point in the ITF report! I wanted to feature it in the video but I worried it made the script too long
@@SimonClarkwhat does the report say about SAFs/SSFs being shipped long distance because it all countries will have enough space and money and renewables to build renewable fuel plants in their land ? Or if the fuel market evolves in a way to keep the status quo, like the Middle East staying as e-fuel suppliers for political stability reasons ?
@@touyats1 it's possible they stay as fuel suppliers, but probably only if concentrated solar thermal turns out to be the cheapest way to make sustainable aviation fuels. On the other hand, high-temperature nuclear reactors can do anything concentrated solar thermal can, so unless you're talking about Germany, if can probably mostly be produced locally.
@@thamiordragonheart8682 nuclear pops out every time as a silver bullet for use case for which renewables allegedly would not make sense… until you realize that renewables pretty much make sense for everything. It kinda feels a bit the last song of the dying swan. Btw, I don’t think only Germany is opposed to nuclear. Austria too. And Italy technically still has a binding referendum banning nuclear. Moreover even if Germany was the only opposer, they have great power in pushing many other eu countries in the direction of phasing out nuclear. Ever noticed for example how most of the nuclear reactors shut off in the in the last decade happen to be bordering Germany ? Germans have been very clear with Switzerland too in wanting their reactors to be closed down. They are just too big of a risk for eu’s internal political stability.
@@touyats1 I was more thinking that if ultra-high temprature process heat was what you needed, concentrated solar and nuclear are both options and concentrated solar is honestly so bad cost wise for electricity that they probably are competitive with each other even though neither is competitive for electricity with anything else.
My general opinion on nuclear is that if we hadn't completely stopped all nuclear energy investment after Chornobyl it would probably be competitive with solar and might have even already replaced a lot of fossil fuel energy generation since in principle it should be better, but at this point, renewables have such a head start in terms of research and actual production experience, not to mention regulatory and operational experience, that there isn't going to be a compelling case for nuclear energy closer to the sun than the asteroid belt in the next century.
glad you mentioned Australia - I'm in my 20s and when I heard that a plan for a very fast train connecting the east coast has been around since at least the 80s I was utterly confused as to why it hasn't resulted in anything. I was also understandably pissed off when our carbon tax was repealed. (all this was more than 10 years ago so I didn't understand the political power that massive corporations have - especially corporate media)
HSR in Australia is essentially a policy just brought up by governments during elections to entice voters and then as a money making scheme for the consultancies that are inevitably requested to write a report on it. We should really concentrate on improve state rail systems and connecting major cities in the state with faster rail before upgrading to HSR between the capital cities.
HSR isn't financially viable, and logistically it is a mess since all the rail networks were sold off. Rail gauges don't match between states and so much of the former network is in disrepair. But that's the excuses, realistically it can be done pretty quickly and would radically change things.
@@tim290280 HSR is usually an enormous money maker so I don't know what you're talking about. They're so profitable that often the government doesn't even have to provide much funding because private investors are willing to step in, for example the first leg of the TGV network was paid for entirely through private investment. This is also why you're seeing a ton of privately run HSR companies springing up in Europe. In the hand of a national operator HSR lines can help cover the cost of less profitable regional routes, which are needed to seriously cut down on road traffic.
Australia has a lot of coal. It’s going to be very difficult for an industry that brings in that much revenue and employs that many people to simply shutdown.
I’d recommend switching to nuclear as Australia also has a lot of Uranium.
@@infidelheretic923 coal mining employees surprisingly few people and new mines aren't really making money.
Nuclear doesn't make much sense in Australia right now.
Very interesting video.
We're definitely caught up in a situation where transport advanced so quickly and we've completely normalised it to such a point that we can't look at it from an outside perspective.
In such a short amount of time, we've completely built our systems around strange metal contraptions dependent on long dead crushed microorganisms, or rare earth metals extracted from across the world, and while it's been good for us, now so many see these metal contraptions as the only way to go.
Look at the outrage and panic over the concept of 15 minute cities and building our societies around humans instead. There's no real recognition that masses of people stuck in traffic constantly because many necessary services are further away isn't really normal but it's perceived as an attack on the ordinary everyday people. That said, I don't blame them for being sceptical and distrusting with how very little has been done at the political level to try and cut down and restrict the use of private jets used by a minority of the population.
Flight is also very interesting when you truly take a few steps back and admire the sheer spectacle of it
For millenia, man looked up at the birds in the sky and dreamed of the possibilities of what it would be like to fly with such freedom and peace. Now here we are just over a century since flight with planes started off and so many take it as an absolute birthright and completely normalise it, bitching and moaning all the way about the sheer inconveniences expected getting to the airport through security, and boarding a flight with so many others, likely to sleep the whole journey and not truly grasping the absurdity of these flying vehicles that will let us travel distances our ancestors could only dream about in such a short amount of time
@@phyarth8082 Where do you get how much dry wood they burned? with all due respect, this sounds like complete bollocks...
@@phyarth8082 people burned coal way back, be it charcoal or regular coal. They didn't start burning it during the industrial revolution. Especially in forging, charcoal is a staple, even today.
That OpenTTD footage is really cool and kudos to the person who captured it 👀😁
Just OpenTTD? Are you sure? I thought it was Cities: Skylines, OpenTTD, SimCity, etc...
It reminded me Transport Tycoon as well, which I played a lot as a kid. For some reason I missed SimCity series. I think I moved into other games like Diablo, Quake, StarCraft, Morrowind, etc. Decades 1990-2000 were great for games. Maybe it is my nostalgia or maybe games were more creative back then. There is so much repetition and micro payments these days.
@@pavel9652 OpenTTD is Open source transport tycoon
Great video, 2 small points that I feel went understated that could use more emphasis.
- using trains more for transport of goods in between cities; even diesel trains will often have less emissions than electric trucks due to emissions repairing road damage, and there is a lot to be gained in this area instead of focusing on stuff that is already hard to do or would be more difficult (like increasing energy production while becoming greener to power eTrucks)
- there is a lot to be gained in investing in lower income countries, as investment dollars go a lot further and there is often huge areas to improve. I live in Brazil, and while we are doing remarkably well in terms of having renewable sources of energy, we have virtually nonexistent rail infrastructure both in cities and for long distance travel, and doing so would help the world a lot more than making traveling from Rotterdam to Amsterdam even better
makes me depressed that my immediate reaction to that last thought was that it could never get implemented in the isolationist world we live in, even when you're completely correct
I really like this way of presenting issues and solutions where you repeat what your source states and then attach your own affirming / contradicting / doubtful opinions right after.
Makes it easier to distinguish what is what.
How to decarbonise transport
I really enjoyed this video. Here in Tanzania, East Africa we have introduced the Bus Rapid Transit and the Standard Gauge Railway in the city of Dar-es-Salaam. The Bus Rapid Transit Is working okayish but is overwhelmed by the number of passengers. Additionally, the operations of the whole project are not really being regulated well. So, it's a good initiative, but we need to work on our systemic governance for innovations like this to work.
The SGR is still under construction and I am interested to see how it will go.
Yeah, the thing about transportation is you need to nave enough of it
I think you didnt talk enough about public transport for Inter-city travel. If we plan our city well we can encourage modelling for bicycle commutes as we can learn from europe, And these solutions can be impleted now without having to wait.
I love the use of video game graphics. Can't wait for the inevitable "How to Decarbonise Transport: The Game".
I’m waiting eagerly to see if decarbonised/car-free cities are even possible in Cities Skylines 2.
@@scaredyfish Car-free is possible with mods and one of the latest Pedestrian zones DLC.
I love this. Obviously we have a lot of work to do with slashing carbon emissions but I feel this hits the sweet spot for being practical, optimistic, and not blinded by techno-optimism (except for with aviation) or the notion that someone else will do it for us.
I feel this doesn't emphasize enough how important it is to reduce the number of cars. Other than that, it's pretty good but i find the timelines pretty optimistic.
PS: you didn't talk about intercity freight
Intercity frieght is basically just use more tried and true trains. (Even without electrification they are far more energy efficient than trucks)
Generally you just need to change up the regulations for both industries, make rail easier before making carbonized trucking harder. (One basic example is to not tax rail corridors by the number of "lane miles" such that a double tracked corridor is taxed at double its single track equivalent. It doesn't occur everywhere but its an example of a bad policy/regulation hampering proper infrastructure.)
Great video of showing the current options. It still leaves out our reorientation to traveling. You mentioned relying more on video calls to connect ourselves digitally over long distance. In my opinion traveling via shipping can be another solution. It currently takes around 7-9 days for a freighter to cross the Atlantic ocean from Europe to North America. A week of travel might seem long but if these travels are organized as a sort of ‘cruise light’ with work spaces and cheap accommodation it while also carrying regular freight along the way it might be the most carbon neutral mechanized travel possible. Currently traveling by freight ship is more expensive then traveling by plane and freight travel is still under the covid measures a lot of the time making it almost impossible to book such a trip. Besides this dedicated passanger travel across an ocean which are faster then freight is possible and can cut down travel by 4-5 days. Again great video and would love you to make a video about slow cross ocean travel!!!
I’m glad you mentioned carbon pricing. It seems insane to me we try everything policy-wise except for making those who pollute pay for the damage they cause.
Because they just pass the tax onto regular people. See $5 gas in Washington as soon as the carbon tax went into effect
@@AdamSmith-gs2dv What’s the issue? Those “regular people” are the one’s polluting. They wouldn’t be taxed if they weren’t emitting the carbon.
Because those people own us like slaves. Nothing else can change until this fundamental problem is solved.
@@AdamSmith-gs2dvyes that's precisely the point. People are supposed to pay an extra $5 for every amount of carbon they make. This gives producers an incentive to lower their carbon use, get the lower price, and attract more customers.
@@AdamSmith-gs2dv I dont care about gas prices bud, because my mode of transportation doesn’t use gasoline
Good to see you back Simon. If you take into account full life cycle carbon costs then wind assist (WA) is hands down the most carbon cost effective form of alternative power available to shipping because the power is delivered free at the point of use. The cost is vested in the capture devices, the sails and as mass production kicks in the cost of WA will be falling by around 2/3rds while the cost of hydrocarbon and other combustibles will be rising above inflation. The International Wind Ship Association (IWSA) has calculated that if the shipping industry were to adopt WA across the board now the savings would fund all the other emissions reductions costs the industry will face going forward. Just saying:).
wind assist is pretty amazing. I think a lot of bulkers are already getting fletner rotors as retrofits because it's so easy and effective.
What would be really exciting to me is new build ships designed to carry kite sails from the start, preferably a pair with one forward and one aft so that they can be balanced to still assist when you aren't doing downwind, though maybe trade wind routes will come back for less time-sensitive cargo.
@@thamiordragonheart8682 Wind assist works well with bulkers because they can afford to vary journey times much more, you have a stockpile at either end so you can sail slower or faster, or even delay departure altogether, to take the most advantage of wind conditions. Container ships on the other hand need to keep to a stricter timetable, even if the journey is slower to save fuel they need to have reliable and consistent journey times so the next link in the transport chain is ready when they arrive (JIT manufacturing). You could still have them of course, but whether you'd use them enough to justify the cost and maintenance is another question.
@@Croz89 Container ships also have geometric problems with mounting wind assist because the container stacks are so tall.
I think kite sails could work for container ships that run between East Asia and the US since the north pacific trade winds are reliable and not too far out of the way in either direction on that route. I agree that wind assist for container ships would seem to be a serious challenge on other routes though. The good news is that I think bulkers cover a lot more ton-miles since bulk goods are just so much bigger, so even if wind assist only works for bulkers that's still pretty good.
@@thamiordragonheart8682 Probably better to focus on slow steaming. Container vessels are usually not time sensitive in terms of speed per se (if you want anything quickly it will go by air), only in terms of consistency. If a container takes 4 weeks instead of 2 weeks, a manufacturer can send out a container twice as frequently and the customer still gets the widgets at the same rate. It's a little more expensive, but if the container cost was lower because of lower fuel consumption, much of that could be compensated for. If however, the container may take 2 weeks *or* 4 weeks depending on wind conditions, it not as easy for the manufacturer to adjust, they might need to start stockpiling widgets which will likely cost more than an extra container.
@@Croz89 I agree with your logistical argument but do feel compelled to point out that wind assist means that the wind isn't strictly necessary for propuslion.
Storm survival alone probably requires that those ships be able to make nearly 20 kts cruising speed in calm weather on the main engine so that they have enough power to control the ship and stay off a lee shore in a hurricane.
I think the idea of most wind assist technologies is that you turn down the main engine when there's wind you can use and turn it back up when there isn't so that you can take advantage of the wind without changing your cruising speed or schedule. It's also important to do that because bulbous bows only work at one specific speed.
that's also why I specifically mentioned going between east asia and north America as the only viable route for container ship wind assist because it's the only route where you can get reliable enough strong tailwind in both directions for it to be worth the investment in the short term (a couple of years)
City planners don't make cities, they just implement what they're briefed to do. This is why a lot of well known best practices are ignored when cities expand.
And they're briefed by rich shareholders and Karens
You guys have City planners😮
Was a great video to help out with. Mega City 7 is now fully powered by renewable power electrified public transport, cars and delivery. Still working on congestion though. (Loving the little Easter Eggs hidden about)
Iceland is a great example of why we need to decarbonise transport. Iceland runs on 100% renewable energy but yet still has almost 3 times the average global carbon emissions per capita which is an absolute bruh moment.
Wow! The animation style on this video is great! Its cool to see you experimenting with new formats. Hope you get some boosts from the algorithm - more people need to see this content.
This is gameplay footage from Cities: Skylines and other city building games
Also flight simulator
4:00 there actually is a point in electric vehicles WITHOUT decarbonizing the electric grid.
Power plants are so efficient because they can harness heat byproduct from energy production and turn it into stream energy; something no internal combustion engine in a car can do. Hence, per gallon of petrol or ton of coal, you get way more energy (and thus way less emissions) if it goes into a power plant and then into a car, than straight into a car.
Pretty much any engine/generator gets more efficient as it gets bigger even before taking things like that into account too. My understanding is that even if the powerplant was don't very little other than just running a Very Big generator (no idea if that's actually a practical thing, mind you, and obviously there are Better ways of doing things), it would Still be better, emissions wise, than having an engine in each invidual vehicle (better for maintenance costs too!)
A large part of why electric rail has always been the better option if the money to build the infrastructure is to be had.
@@laurencefraseras an electrical engineer you are kinda right, before i explain how things work i will list the general efficiencies.
ICE ≈ 20%, max is about 30% for diesel
EV ≈ 75%
Classic thermodynamic power cycle ≈35%
Transmission lines ≈ 95% (means the grid is overall 33% efficient)
Combined Cycle nat gas ≈ 55% efficient.
Co Gen: 80% efficient (its cheating as it isn't purely electricity produced)
ICEs work by exploding a small quantity of fuel vapors to shove a piston down and then convert the linear motion into rotational, it then goes through a bunch of gears before reaching the tires, just inherently inefficient. (I hope everyone here already knows how a car works)
EVs instead use batteries and electric motors connected directly to the wheels, and can syphon power back out of motors to brake since motors and generators a physically the same thing. Electricity is inherently far more efficient at energy transfer than mechanical systems, hence the massive gap between the 2 cars as end use machines.
As far as generation goes, most generators are fundamentally just spinning a magnet inside a coil of wire. Large generators use an electromagnet but small ones just use a permanent magnet for simplicity, all the different power plants are just looking for ways to spin the shaft of the generator. You could use and ICE but as mentioned they suck. The classic power plant uses the thermodynamic power cycle which extracts "work" out of energy flowing from a hot sink to a cold sink. Energy has to be "rejected" to the cold sink for the cycle to produce work. The basic installation is you boil a working fluid (water), run the steam through a turbine (extract the work), condense the steam in a condenser (reject waste heat), and then pump the 95°C water back to the boiler. (You have to put work in too) The ideal efficiency is based on the temperature difference, ideally you would be super hot and use absolute 0 for a cold sink, real world isn't ideal so the realistic temps limit this to under 40% ideal)
Gas combined cycle starts with a 30% gas turbine (burn gas and use the exhaust to power the turbine, basically a jet engine) and then dump the waste heat into a classic power cycle and they get to double dip the energy from the fuel for an overall efficiency of 55%.
Co-gen is a power plant that sells its waste heat via district heating instead of dumping it into a body of water or the sky. This is how they get 80% efficiency, its still only 30-50% electricity efficiency but they sell the heat as well.
Otherwise the actual generator is the same between these power plants. And as you get bigger it becomes possible to chase after higher efficiencies, partially because the actual magnitude of the losses increases enough to justify the effort of recapturing or mitigating them. (Assuming they aren't mandatory physics losses like with the power cycle or aerodynamic drag on a car)
I like how he's using city building gameplay and flight simulator gameplay to explain decarbonise transport
CS1 (not counterstrike)
Electric cars are not "Zero emissions", the technology needs further development to have lower carbon emissions, cause at the moment they are quite high. You will never have a "zero emission-car", it should be called: "lower emission-car". People think this issue is fixed due to the wording and usage of the term "zero emission", the batteries themselves cost a lot of co2 in production. So if the country you are in doesn't produce it's electricity with 70% (or more) renewable energy you are actually not really fixing anything the emissions is the same / more, when you think about the lifetimes of the products.
I live in ljubljana, i can agree that good public transport does make a difference.
A lot of my friends don't even have a driver's license
I live in Berlin. It's even better. Maybe the best subway system in Europe because there are no ticket gates.
I haven't seen your videos for a while now so it was a fresh experience to see game footage. TTD was immediately on my mind when I saw then second monitor! Nice one! Oh, and the topic was great as well.
Important caveat on the electric car CO2 emissions: the immense amount of carbon put into manufacturing EVs means it takes 3-4 years just for it to break even with the carbon output of a gas car.
Even then, building and maintaining road infrastructure makes up a decent chunk of all carbon emmissions in its own right (concrete on its own is 7% IIRC and asphalt is literally a petroleum product).
Im not saying EVs are useless, but we need an order of magnitude more emphasis on public transit than EVs if we hope to make a dent in our carbon emissions.
It’s a lot easier to stomach buying an EV than it is changing over to public transportation.
Especially for older people!
I always thought Musk’s robotaxis were a silly idea, but I’m starting to warm to it …
I think the current housing crises actually play into this quite a bit too. As someone who’s been trying to find a new rental for quite a while I often think about this. Obviously what I’m about to propose could probably be done far better with central planning and socialised systems but even leaning away from setting off any authoritarian alarm bells, what if we just placed some gentle pressures on the current rental market that incentivised property managers to select tenants who worked close to the potential house? They’d still be able to pick and choose on all their regular things “do they play the drums, do they like playing with matches, etc” but once you’re down to 3 more or less equal great tenants, imagine if all 3 had an ‘ease of commute’ score.
I bet there’s so many cases of two similar applicants on similar incomes who are both applying to any place in a 10km radius around the city centre, and then through the luck of the draw, applicant A who works on the southern end of the city centre, gets a house 10km north of the city, where they’d have to change trains to get to work by train, and applicant B who works on the northern end of the city centre gets a house 10km south of the city and they also need to change trains to get to work. Therefore, these two people who could have had easy-breezy 15 minute train commutes both end up opting to drive.
It would probably need to be an opt in system, and it’s probably only applicable to people who know their employment is reasonably stable, but I’m sure there’d be chances to exploit this to cut emissions.
Maybe even if you taxed rental agencies based on the commutes of their tenants? (Even this could see a few investors sell their properties and help with the supply issue a little bit)
Anyway, I know there’s a million issues with this idea, but someone gotta be thinking of something right?
When I hear carbon pricing, it seems like the government will be taxing the people more, so corporations don’t have to change. Why couldn’t they just tax corporations more for high carbon services instead? And what stops corporations from making the green option more expensive so that even after carbon pricing the polluting option is ‘cheaper.’ I just wish the government would tax corporations first, instead of shouldering the blame and responsibility on the tax payer.
I love how this is all presented in one well-organized video, hopefully we see these steps follow through!
I think you forgot in 11:50 about the possibility of nuclear reactors on ships. Designs existed and they are incredibly safe by design (safer than on-land reactors)
By far the biggest hurdle here would be public opinion though.
Sounds like a big ship.
The problem with nuclear reactors on ships is principally that the full carbon life cycle costs including decommissioning makes them impractical.
it's normal, he always ""forgets"" about nuclear
with all the new small modular reactor designs being developed, a navalized version for heavy shipping seems more practical than ever. The infinite heat sink of the ocean does certainly make them much safer.
Hey Simon, can u suggest the best Universities in Europe for studying Climate Science which has affordable Tuition Fees?
I work in cold chain logistics and am considering a move to transport engineering and your mention of sharing delivery vehicles excited me. I started as a delivery driver and used to find that there’d be days where I’d all but follow around the same couple of trucks from rival companies to the same destinations, often getting in each others way and having to circle the block due to limited loading zone capacity.
Ever since then I’ve always been brainstorming ideas for how to make this more efficient.
I’ve thought of things like an app that all delivery drivers could run that would tell them if any nearby drivers had efficient freight swaps on offer (Ie, both drivers will be at a shared location at about 11am, and by moving only a couple of boxes between the two trucks they can both make 1 less stop. Let Truck 1 take anything Truck 2 has for Destination A, and let Truck 2 take anything Truck 1 has for Destionation B, and they both get to make less stops, and won’t be competing for parking space further down the road. Also that’s just a demonstration, the same process could result in the reduction of stops a lot more than just 1)
Obviously, rather than rival courier companies fighting over the same real estate the best solution in this case would probably be socialise it all, put gigantic distribution centres for all freight types at the compass points of your city and centrally plan the delivery routes for maximum efficiency and utilisation, but if we must work within capitalism then I’m sure there’s still something that can be done in that direction.
As someone working in the policy space that happens to be looking at longer term planning for climate change right now, this has been very useful (and timely!) - both in terms of how ideas have been organised, and bringing the ITF Transport Outlook to my attention.
Thanks!
This was fantastic - really enjoyed how all the info is integrated into the 3D environment, so smooth!
The technology to run trains for 0 emissions exists and has existed for over 100 years.
Yes buuuuuut that assumes the electricity is completely carbon neutral, which is probably why there is still an amount tied to it
@@dumbasgenius7227 so just use carbon neutral power. De stigmatize nuclear
Step 1 build trains
Step 2 build more trains
Step 3 built even more trains
Step 4 you know what to do.
Good idea. You come here and make us trains! Inside the mountains. I like! 👍👍👍
@@wolfgangpreier9160 global Switzerland
@@thomasgray4188 No, middle of Europe actually. Only about 30 million people living here. Noi biggie!
There are a few other steps that should be in there too (or perhaps sub-steps?), but that does correctly nail down the key points, yes.
@@laurencefraser No it does not. Imagine there are ares even in central Europe where there are no trains, never been any, never will be any. And still there are people living here.
Now imagine the same for Africa, USA, South America, Canada, China, Asia in general.
Only Russia has built their economy on the back of their railway system. No one else has done so.
Railways are much too expensive for every day personal use. Good for transporting goods, bad for transporting people outside of very densely populated areas.
There's very interesting propeller designs hitting the market which are massively more efficient than old ones. The good thing with this is they can be retro fitted to existing ships.
They together with drive shaft improvements will gain you around 4% savings - every little helps.
I do wish you hadn't said there's no point in electric cars if the grid isn't renewable. Because there clearly is, and people shouldn't wait until the grid is fully renewable.
Trips 0 to 5 miles: walk or cycle. Trip's 0 to 10 miles: Bus/trams or eBikes/eScooters. Anything longer: Metro or Trains. Cars are great as In-between vehicles especially City cars but shouldn't be used 247 for all trips.
Also please write to the UK/EU Government on these ideas from you and Not Just Bikes. You guys could really help them and the world.
Carbon pricing only works in certain area like Europe, China, USA where train infrastructure are a viable alternative option. While in archipelago nation like Indonesia is really hard, because aviation industry are the most convenient type of transport for trans-island travel
You just need to take your wins where you can. Yes, travelling across Indonesia is only feasible by airplane for the foreseeable future, but high-speed rail across Java is perfectly feasible, and Java is home to more than half of Indonesia's population.
@@rjfaber1991 Yep I forgot, it only works in densely populated Java Island
As if the ccp would care carbon footprint
@@aaaaaaaard9586they don't, but they do care about energy independence and part of that is energy efficiency, and trains are just about the most efficient land based transportation mode. (They are also much faster than boats, and can be directly connected to the power grid so they can run on anything, not just imported "dino juice". Its way easier for the CCP to build something like the 3 gorges dam than it is to build islands in the south china sea and possibly fight a war over it because they are after the oil under the Spratly Islands.
Trains are viable in the US? Clearly you havent been here if you think that
One thing i think that isnt quite talked about enough is working towards more localization again, because if more of the stuff we live with comes from much closer opposed to accross the world out carbon footprint will naturally decrease.
global economics rely on exploiting inequality to outsource labour to far away countries. I don't think this is an easy fix
Hope you're OK after the loss of your dad. Don't hesitate to get help if you need it.
I would love to see an in depth video on electric vehicles and their pollution/lack thereof. I get that they're better than gas cars, but there's a lot of misinformation out there on how they pollute in other ways (e.g. through the material used for batteries). My feeling is that there's a nuanced conversation to be had there but all I can find on UA-cam are conspiracy style videos a la "the dirty secret of electric cars".
That's a very hard topic to do true justice too because you would need to track down so many different externalities associated with building, operating, and eventually disposing of such a vehicle.
By CO2 emissions the EV will eventually always win, even on a 100% coal grid. (EVs are 75% efficient from the outlet/charger, ICE's are 20% from the pump, that a huge advantage)
But CO2 isn't the only pollution to consider, theres also chemical like SOx, NOx, and whatever comes out of a cobalt mine, and particulate in the form of soot and brake dust.
But you also get to some unexpected externalities like increased road wear from the heavier EVs or the fact an EV fire takes more water than a typical firetruck holds while an ICE does not.
And at the end of all the data collecting and normalizing, you will have to make a judgement on what types of pollution/externalities are worse than others.
This isn't impossible, but it is hard to do the topic true justice and provide an definitive conclusion. (Maybe it ends up close and you decide that african children mining cobalt is worse than american children getting asthma from the NOx of their parents ICE cars, just for an illustrative example of why comparing across pollution types is hard)
I'm so glad you mentioned this and the cement video in your most recent upload on eco hope. I hadn't seen either one and Im so glad I got the chance!! Well done, both very interesting and very informative
This video was visually stunning, I love this style and hope it continues!
I wish i could be paid a salary to write ambitious policies that little to no nation will seriously take up.
Don't worry about it. The Oil and Gas and Coal companies have that all in place. Rest Easy.
The infographics are great, especially the custom ones. I don't think you should use footage from different games though because it makes the style inconsistent. But overall, this is one of the more visually interesting videos
What about questioning if a travel is necessary ? Going in plane to see beach, coconuts and damage local ecosystems might not be brilliant :)
Applies to goods too. Reduce the amount of goods to be transported and you'll make a significant cut on emissions.
At the same time, it's incredibly unfair if island nations are forced to become even more isolated while the mainlands enjoy massive improvements to their international high speed trains.
@@yoironfistbro8128 On the other hand, the tourism industry does a LOT of damage, not just in terms of global emissions, but in terms of the local environment and, in many cases, the quality of life of the locals too. There's a benificial level of tourism, and then there's what most places that get enough to matter at all get: Far too much!
@@martinovallejo Currently you get issues with small businesses not being able to get resources they need, despite being in the country, or even city, that produces those resources, because they're sold in bulk to large interest on a different continent (more profitable that way), leaving the local business to have to import the same material (actually, in practice, often Worse material) Also from a different continent, but now having to pay a LOT more in shipping. (and it gets worse, because there are acutally Other problems too).
All of which would be solved if the local supplier would actually fill local demand and only exported the Surplus.
One of MANY situations where 'free trade' is actually detrimental. Not that the old practice of constant trade wars and egregious tariffs on things implemented purely to harm rivals and other nonsense was good, but tarrifs, subsidies, and import/export controls Do have their place when used for the things they're actually Good for. (sort of like its generally better for infrastructure that's going to end up being a monopoly anyway to be under government control, but large parts of the economy in general really do NOT benefit from the impossition of central planning.)
@@laurencefraser I see you completely missed my point...
We can't leave island nations even more isolated while massively improving long distance rail on the mainlands!
7:51 I completely disagree, trains are a viable option in Indonesia and in the Philippines. It has already been done in Japan a country with similar geography.
I would like to share my concept of a Hypothetical rail network in the Philippines to prove my point
@@LeZyloxaight, let's hear it
@@paisleepunk I uploaded it to the shared games in the Game "Nimby_Rails" under the name "Marxist Entrepreneurship"
One note on international ocean going shipping: oil and gas makes up a super majority by weight of moved goods. Simply weaning off of fossil fuels would go a long way to greatly reducing carbon intensity of mode of an already fuel efficient means of moving goods
I love how you presented information in this video
Nice video. I'm currentttly studying traffffic engineering and we always say "avoid, shift, improve" to decarbonise traffic. Avoiding trips to be made is the most effective option. Next we should shift the transport option from cars, planes and ships to bikes, public transit and to go by foot. Last thing to do is improve everything that can't be avoided or shifted. It's really nice to see that in your video as well. It sure works for both: passenger transport and freight.
I think focusing too much on avoid could be detrimental though. It's not good for people's mental health to be cooped up in the same small area most of the time, especially if it's in a high density apartment block in an urban area. I think you should encourage people to engage in a minimum level of travel for their own wellbeing.
@@Croz89sure, but imagine if there were 3-4 great public plazas and spaces an easy walk from your front door. Arguably cooping up is what happens when you HAVE to get in a car to go anywhere worthwhile.
I feel like an ideal set up would be something like:
Most people in the city live within a few train/tram/bus stations of the city centre and commute to work via those methods during the week. When they get home they’re an easy walk to the shops, a plaza with restaurants, a green space, some sort of public sports fields.
And then maybe on the weekend you take your car an hour out of the city to go to a beach, or a nice hiking spot in the mountains, and then you come back home via the supermarket, doing a big shop, bringing it home in the car, and then you’re done for the week, able to get any supplementary supplies and groceries by walking during the week.
That’s your whole life sorted and you might need to drive for 2-3 hours per week in total
@@BD-yl5mh The multiple plazas idea is only really economically feasible for high density high income housing. Those in lower density and cheaper housing will probably only have one location, if any at all, that's a short enough distance away to not really be considered a journey. And that means you're going to be very restricted on choice and variety, and that's going to make people feel boxed in.
What you say in your latter paragraph is way more shift than avoid in my opinion. You're still regularly travelling, probably even more than a more car dependant suburbanite would since you likely have less space to do things at home and you have to make more regular trips for groceries and such, because to have all those things within walking distance and have frequent fast and reliable public transit to the CBD, unless you're rich or lucky you will have to settle for higher density.
@@Croz89 the original video literally said “higher density” within the first few minutes. It absolutely makes sense. That doesn’t need to be dystopian though. High density doesn’t need to be micro-studios stacked 50 high. But if you can avoid a situation where any residence more than a couple of kilometres outside a city centre is necessarily a 4 bedroom house surrounded on all sides by yard, then you absolutely increase the number of people who can live without a car. 8-10 appartments in 2-3 stories, with one driveway onto the road is already using space way more efficiently than everyone having their white picket fence.
We’re literally talking about change, and you’re saying “but nah change is hard”
Yeah, we know that, but we’ve got into the mess we’re in by doing the easiest cheapest shit. We are now faced with the consequences of decades of ‘easy and cheap.’ Now might be the time for planners to go…. “Hmmm, maybe nice plazas don’t just have to be for the rich…. Maybe we can afford to spend more on parks if our roads are 50% less congested…”
I also think for context it’s important to say… I’m an Australian. I live in one of the worst countries for urban sprawl. You may be a European, who already lives in a city that largely conforms to the image I’ve built up in my head of what would be good to aim for. Therefore you might be hearing my suggestions as over the top, like I’m asking you to do what you already do, but 10x more. In reality, my suggestions largely apply to the USA and Australia. Many other countries already control sprawl far better. Not perfectly, but better.
@@BD-yl5mh For a start, I'm responding to the comment, not the video. If I wanted to respond to the video, I would leave a top level comment. That comment in particular was talking about avoiding unnecessary travel as a first priority in urban design, something I criticised because I believe that unnecessary travel has health benefits for citizens, regardless of mode. Excessive necessary travel can be detrimental, I do agree.
Now that I've cleared that up, I think you underestimate the cost of maintaining a vibrant public plaza with lots of shops and restaurants, particularly small businesses. You need a lot of foot traffic to make it economically viable, and also a lot of people willing to pay higher prices than they might find in the local discount supermarket. That means if you want to support a lot of these things in close proximity to one another, you need both wealth and density. I can find such places in my local city, and unsurprisingly they are surrounded by luxury apartments in towering skyscrapers, as well as office blocks where commuters will also support them. Where you might be able to avoid that level of high income density is if you get a lot of tourists but not everywhere is that lucky. If you've got the wealth but less density you might have a nice plaza with a restaurant and a couple of shops but you won't have much variety. If you have the density but not the wealth you'll probably just have a discount supermarket and nothing else.
Good video. My city (Puebla, Mexico) is investing in public transport, something I thought I would never see. I'm seeing more and more electric cars on my city's roads too.
Nevertheless, I'm a presimistic, and I don't know is this is just an illusion or if the government is really thinking about the climate and the environment.
A thing with biking that is super obvious but still requires some healthy thinking is the sphere of influence that a business or other sort of destination has.
I would wager that people generally have about a 10 minute limit on how long they would like to walk to somewhere before they take the car. This might be a small corner store, or a bus stop, but that's the same in the analogy. If a person walks at 5 km/h then that means there has to be a bus stop every 1.6 km. However, if you bike that speed goes up to 15 km/h minimum (or 20 on an electric bike) then you only need a bus stop every 5 km!!
This also helps small businesses stay alive, because people are more inclined to "just go out for a couple minutes" to get to it and buy a small thing, rather than make it a whole ordeal to get in the car and drive the whole way there. A small corner shop won't function with only car traffic, because no one is going to get in their car and drive for 7 minutes, just to get a single chocolate bar because they wanted chocolate, but they would bike that way.
the visuals on this video are straight FIRE I love it
M O R E T R A I N S
Good video. I liked the realistic approach to decarbonising taking every problem and nuance into account
I do not fully understand the chart at 5:24 surely the bus is more efficient the more people that are in it. It seems strange to compare it to car and 2 passenger car usage without say how it scales with the number of passengers
Best we can assume is that its some sort of average of passengers carried throughout the year/bus trips and average fuel consumption
yes I was surprised by that too! As said above, I assume it uses average passenger numbers per trip, you would have to check the OWID paper for the details
Its a fact or reality that cars are rather efficient on certain routes. Cars - even with only one passenger/driver are more efficient than most electric trains according to a Swiss study. And in the city they are more efficient if the city busses or metros are not filled to the brim.
There's a bit of unit mixing there, as "Medium car (petrol)" is in gCO2e *per vehicle km* but "Bus" and "Petrol car, 2 passengers" is in gCO2e *per passenger km*. I'm guessing that Our World in Data chose to include it to illustrate the effects of vehicle occupancy. (also, absent other information, 1 person per car is a pretty safe assumption)
Also for buses, yes, the value is computed as ((total bus fuel consumption)*(fuel emission factor))/((total bus distance travelled)*(average bus occupancy)), as reported by the UK Department for Transport.
OWID source: www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2019
Very interesting video. One thing I disagree with is that private cars are here to stay in urban areas. Urban areas are generally dense enough that walking, cycling, and public transport are sufficient to get everyone to where they need to be. You're right to say that in inter-city contexts that the car is here to stay, but in urban contexts they are unnecessary.
I'm about to watch this video and I hope it includes a comparison of carbon costs to manufacture the transportation option, including the vehicle and the right-of-way.
Comparison to WHAT exactly?
Alternative fuels may be exactly the same fuels but manufactured from a different feedstock - crude oil is compost, baked & compressed compost, a well held industry secret is that you can put *_any_* vaguely-liquid or gaseous compost through an oil refinery & get the exact same range of things coming out, your compost can be a few weeks old, it doesn't have to have been underground for millions of years. It can also include anything that's come out of an oil refinery, captured engine exhaust, dissolved plastics, paint, tyres (with the steel removed), *anything!*
Maybe i have missed it, but when talking about improving fuel efficiency, you didn't mention the jevons paradox, which I think should definitely be talked about in this context.
The problem is that if planes or ships become more efficient, they will (obviously) ue less fuel, making transport and travel cheaper, which increases demand, and thus also increases total fuel use. I am not sure about how much empiric evidence there is for the paradox, but as far as I know it has been observed after James Watt massively improved the steam engine (increasing the demand for coal), and when planes have become much more fuel efficient in the middle of the 20th century.
So we should always have it in mind when considering improving fuel efficiency as a potential solution for reducing our emissions.
Basically, it only helps if you also legislate against increasing plane numbers.
It almost always comes back to policy, which is stubbornly slow. Of course this is unsurprisingly when each president, prime minister, etc. only holds office for a few years (meaning they'll prioritize more 'current' problems). And on the flip size, the dictators who hold office for many years are generally not elected based on favorable climate policy.
To decarbonize nuclear power must become the most important power source since the majority of USA power comes from natural gas
Two things
1, I find some times that there’s more pressure to decarbonize public transport them. There is decarbonize cars which can be really annoying and add to the stigma against public transportation.
2, it’s not all that annoying because there’s maybe a tiny bit of truth to having the public transport sector decrease their carbon emissions.
Its also easier to decarbonize public transportation. Trains are often considered the "be all, end all" of public transport and they can be easily modified to draw power directly from the grid (either 3rd rail or overhead catenary). Electric trains are also typically just strictly better than diesel, they have more power, both already use electric motors, and they can go faster & regeneratively brake.
By contrast electric cars are not objectively better than ICE cars, they may not have the emissions but they charge slower, need heavy batteries, burn hotter and longer, and you still have all the other problems of car dependency. (You can also fix their emissions by getting mode share change towards an already decarbonized public transit system and get benefits beyond just reducing CO2 emissions.)
Cities skylines, nice! And all the urban changes are literally what urbanist youtubers consistently mention about. Living in Jakarta, a city with bad planning and urban sprawl, having cities you describe is so desirable. Imagine not needing a car to go everywhere, less traffic, better air... I don't agree with you that trains don't fit Indonesia. Most of the population lives in Java, a small dense and decently flat island. Implementing good high speed rail will significantly reduce plane usage. However, interisland travel does require planes. The only connection trains can do in my understanding is Java Sumatra and Bali. Papua, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and the Nusa Tenggara Islands need planes. But by that point, carbon emissions from Indonesia should be really low and can be offset by algae, trees and carbon capture (I think?) Maybe planes can utilize hydrogen technology? or ion technology. Either way significant advances in battery technology or hydrogen technology are required.
How about localisation of production. IE make things nearer where they are required and reduc the need for long distance transportation.
Improving plane’s efficiency with no carbon tax would just make flying even more appealing. International agreement on a price for carbon is a necessity imo
Do you VOTE for representatives in YOUR government who support such a view?
I’m engaging with this video. Jokes aside I love the production of this video Simon.
AIRSHIPS!!
Solves both the freight and long distance issues, as well as inter-island issues. Airships are a key to making a way forward.
HxH actually demonstrates what a developed airship industry could look like for society and it’s pretty awesome.
Carbon pricing is a regressive tax unless it’s directed at the companies profiting from using dirty fuels and tech
Sadly, electric cars seem to be the most used solution. It is the least effective, but it is politically the easiest. Ideally, governments increase investements into rail, but that has to happen now, since infrastructure takes a long time to build
The long service life of ships also applies to planes too really. As one plane can typically be in service for decades. That being said a lot of older designs are being retired worldwide as it just happens to be the end of their lifecycle, and they're being replaced with things like the 787 or the A320 Neo.
I'm glad you didn't bash electric vehicles. They are not a silver bullet, but they are one of the many tools at our disposal. All too often I see purists thinking that just by increasing public transport and cyclability we could get rid of all cars. Unfortunately, just a quick look at places like the Netherlands or Denmark shows that cars are still present en masse, no matter what. So better them to be electric.
There is still a big step missing. Like reducing the amount of (long distance) plane trips, countries should reduce the amount of long international ship trips by either producing their needed goods themselves or in neighbouring countries. The US should produce their goods in mexico. The Eu in maybe poland, romania etc.
Eastern enlargement of EU + Turkey are already German manufacturing hub. They export more into Germany then entire Asia (minus Turkey) combined.
EU economic model for the past 20 years is basically Germany buys/assembles parts east of Oder and sells to the rest of the world.
Most countries already have bans or restrictions on short distance flights unless it's to some place you can't reach otherwise or it's a connecting flight. Banning short haul flights really just means banning short connecting flights, which are often necesary to fly from smaller airports to just about anywhere, if that airport connects to a nearby large airport which serves as a hub for flights. If you really want to ban these flights in particular, you either have to simply screw people over without giving them a good alternative, or build high speed rail between nearby airports which serms kinda silly if you're trying to move away from flights altogether
Pretty sure that the idea with rail is that in most cases those smaller airports are replaced with railway stations. High speed isn't the only type of passenger rail, after all.
I guess one step in reducing long distance freight transport is to incentivize regional production of goods wherever possible. And also probably to get away from consumerism more, for example by using more durable products, repairing things when possible, buying second-hand, sharing things among people and avoiding buying products that you don't necessarily need when possible. One less obvious advantage of that would also be that there would be less garbage. The disposal of garbage also creates travel emissions, often even internationally, when first world countries send their trash to developing countries where it creates health hazards for many people living there.
Yes, we should switch from ownership to usership - for example having a communal warehouse with all the tools one might need in a neighborhood, instead of having neighbors own their tools individually. But also car-sharing.
Of course, this transition will also require us to deconstruct capitalist ideals like "ownership = individual freedom, thus usership = communism".
@@GTAVictor9128granted, i wouldn't be too peeved if this was the first step to a communist society, but still
Great video, always something that has puzzled me, glad you explained it so well.
I find it problematic that more people living in city's at any one time is to be taken for granted...
You can't really involve people in the ecological process whilst forcing them to live separately from it.
While lower per capita resource requirements are often touted for urban living, I feel there are probably diminishing returns after getting to the size of a well designed and clustered town/village, be that permanently settled or temporarily/modular constructed in flexible ways.
The latter provides the most flexibility to involve a section of the population in ecologically pro active work and activities. Bio dynamic agriculture, best practice horticultural and conversational methods and initiatives ect.
I feel that actually you can facilitate a much better quality of life for relatively less than ever more sprawling and dense urban subsistence.
Seems like the idea is only less resource intensive than suburban sprawl or more fully detached rural homes, partially communal living is far better though.
What advantages does an urban district have over a well sized and clustered village/community layout in a semi rural setting? If accommodation is clustered to improve thermal efficiency and if the village size is designed and scaled to a decent point where all required services can be delivered to a good number of people efficiently?
How else can you account for the potential ecological and environmental benefits of rural populations or semi nomadic community ect?
the difference is density, you'll never have the efficiency of a city without density of a city. if you need 1000 people in one office building for collaboration purposes and all of them need to live in 1km radius for walkability and want to use hospitals and shops and services which then also need to be in 1km radius with their own employees also in the same radius you'll quickly realize that you need a city density to fit all those people close enough together. maybe if we all worked remote or alternatively were satisfied with commuting by train for 45mins every day the town idea would make sense. But neither of those options are beneficial for social fabric.
@@butterflysleg9649 So the first assumption is that you need 1000s of people in an office building for collaboration purposes, which depends on work options within a city. More job option that require a long commute is not what's necessary for the environment, while yes working office type jobs only remotely causes issues and really it's better for people to attend in person and be present for one another, at least some days of the week.
Not everyone needs to do office work though, in fact considerably larger proportion of the population needs access to land in order to do the sort of ecologically pro active horticultural/conservation and better practice bio dynamic agricultural work.
Of course a "cluster" of dwellings or accommodations is significantly more efficient than detached suburban spall or individual dwellings dotted about. However what are the significant benefits beyond a well designed cluster of dwellings and services larger than a village/town kind of size?
If you look at historical towns and villages, the dwellings tend to share walls or are multi story and not detached, lots of example villages are nice and dense for their size. They had to be as historically energy was not nearly so abundant and cheep.
So you can have the exact same density of a city district/block without needing to be as large as a city, in fact you can design *more* dense than a larger city because that won't impact on people's quality of life as much when they have nearby access to large open space landscapes and nature ect.
So in addition to better design of towns and villages I would also advise modular accommodation that can be assembled temporarily and disassembled for logistic transportation, temporary villages that relocate from one work project to another. This would unlock a lot of environmentally pro active work options on landscapes, both for seasonal work and one off projects.
@@leifcian4288 if your town has a similar density to cit block then to me it's more of a question of city design and your town is essentially a district. Possibly these days cities are a bit too centralised and could benefit from spreading big destination points out. And I do agree that we would benefit from having larger access to nature and more greenspace between districts(towns) at cost of removing suburbs. Having some more dense central districts also makes sense since you won't always have everyone working within the same district and central one always has easier conectivity .
@@butterflysleg9649 Sure now I'm put in mind of a city with much more green space in between districts to break up those issues with heat traps and watershed management that comes with too much built up urban sprawl.
That's great and better for the kind work and lifestyle options that are more city centric.
I do maintain we also need a larger rural and even semi nomadic population and community's, or at least more people living a proportion of their lives as such to facilitate ecologically/environmentally pro active work around horticultural/conservational/agricultural best practice so that the landscape hydrological and carbon cycles are properly restored.
I don't dispute that that issues around reducing carbon emissions, reducing waste and improving efficiency are as important as they are, unfortunately I find it a massive issue in the environmental discourse that we are not making steps towards restoring damage done to watersheds, which has badly diminished the hydrological cycle and carbon cycles.
There is no substitute to facilitate pro active work restoring and building up a robust landscape watershed, through best practice horticultural, conservational, agricultural methods and ongoing ecological management via best observations and integration. This simply requires initial labour and ongoing labour/skill sets relevant to different areas of landscapes and biomes.
At the end of the day the entire economy exists with the environment and is an ecological process in a sense. We need an ecological growth and stability economy.
@@butterflysleg9649 just checking for removed messages.
Great video, I really like the visualizations!
I wish this video didn’t repeatedly assume growth as a given and instead at least considered degrowth as an option.
We need ecological growth, the whole economy exists in the ecological environment, because of course it does. What we don't need is just more and more of the same kind of products and services year on year, we need to do ecologically pro active work and services which won't be possible given this idea that everyone will be living in super dense crowded urban areas...
Love the style of the video, great job!
Great idea using video games for all the footage haha.
Another great video old bean. Keep up the great work. You're good and sensible voice in a realm of misinformation.
Yeah I use to play resource management computer games as a kid... Probably added to my sensibilities fairly well to a point. However then I learnt some tangible skills and took an interest in real world practice and conservation.
I think the idea of a car in cities should be a thing of the past. You can do all things by bus and tram and metro and bikes. Maybe allow scooters and motorbikes because they're only used to transport 1 or 2 people. Or make city cars a lot smaller. All the freed up land from the parking space can be used to plant trees or biking infrastructure. Why don't we use sails for boats, if they're retractable, they could be put in place to help a boat along. With the huge freight ships nowadays you can't expect it to do all but they could maybe get 30% more efficient. Put in trains everywhere now that I agree with.
There will always be some use cases for which a car is the only viable option. The goal should be to ensure that that list is as short as possible, of course, and car-centric city planing has got to go (never mind the American style cities that are frankly impossible to live in without a car). Increased density and improved public transportation go a long way on this front.
I certainly won't argue with the rest of your points at all, though.
Start elsewhere and leave transport for last. Transport is the hardest sector to decarbonize but most visible to consumers. Hydrogen can decarbonize a chemical process 4 times more effective than a car. Still better than eFuels though.
Shipping is at least one of the sectors that is most friendly to carbon reduction schemes. This is because fuel is the single biggest expense for them and they've already gone to great lengths to increase fuel efficiency such as adopting slow steaming, so the shipping industry is very happy to adopt anything that can increase fuel efficiency. That might be why we've seen even some pretty radical concepts get full scale tests. Compared to many other sectors it probably won't be hard to get the shipping sector to adopt many of these measures.
Fuel is also a pretty big expense for airlines but they have the competing interest of not wanting to lose market share to rail travel.
Great video. One topic I think worth exploring that was missed is, do we really need to move so many goods at global distances? Can we reduce the level of needless shipping. Food is generally easier to answer with eating seasonal and local but other products are more complicated. One big factory that ships internationally better than many smaller factories closer to the end market be better?
12:22 i'm still salty that nuclear ships are not more than an anecdotal thing, and probably never going to be more than that, while we have nuclear submarines cruising the ocean for various superpowers, so like, it's not like we don't know how to do it.
Imagine nuclear cargo ship held hostage by Somali pirates.
The fuel system on a combustion-engined vehicle is designed for a very specific range of fuels, using "alternative fuels" will often discover things that need to be redesigned.
For example, putting vegetable oils in Diesel engines is absolutely fine, Rudolf Diesel did all his development with vegetable oils, but in your specific vehicle the fuel may turn black indicating that a rubber component is dissolving & you need to disassemble every last part of the fuel system from the filler cap to the injectors & replace whatever is dissolving before it lets go & dumps a tankful of fuel on the road, even if you go back to pump fuel & never put vegetable oil in it again.
Similarly, with a bit of messing about, petrol engines will run on ethanol but a) the same rubber problem exists & b) ethanol dissolves zinc which is used in some solders & in aluminium castings - your carburettor may become porous or the jets fall out.
All great. Not one question asked about the WAY we live in the "developed" world. No consideration of the fact that most of us never need to be on another continent, certainly not quickly. I hear a private plane flying over my house right now. I saw a hummer at Target yesterday. These are insane, destructive choices that definitely deSERVE interruption. And there are endless other things we do which we do not NEED to do. Meanwhile we have largely abandoned so many things we USED to do (and of course I know as a queer parent of trans child, the old days sucked, okay, yes I know)... music together, stories together, reading to each other, making things together. We now "require" carbon and toxic substances to tolerate our own consciousness. We need to stop and consider all of this on a fundamental level.
thnaks for the great video!
I hope there will be a follow up on "the problem with decarbonisation with intensifying dependency on lithium."
Some solutions you mentioned are good on every environmental scale (like public transport, biking or denser cities) but other cause on other fields problems (to name another example water consumption/pollution).
Switching to electric cars is unluckily a moving of problems. Cars are just ineffecient (even more compared to airships!).
A quick Comment on shipping: there are designs that go to the old idea of sailing and modify it. These designs look strange (large rotating Zylinders) but the promise a large reduction in fuel consumption, since most of the energy comes from the wind. This would need to be incentivised however, since the owner and Operator of a ship are often different and the main profiter would be the operator, not the owner.
Similarly, I recall something using large kite sales that was looking pretty promising some years back.
It might work for bulk carriers who aren't concerned about keeping to a timetable. For container ships the economics might not work out if they don't end up using them much because they will arrive at their destination too early or too late.
I’ll reserved a better judgement when I read the report, but frankly from Simon’s video it feels a bit like “business as usual” kind of report. Real co2 savings can only come if we change our way to move or we start moving less, I fear. And, nice to hear about investing in more public transit (and high speed intercity lines?), but I just hope this does cause infrastructure costs to inflate because now countries and economic areas (like the eu) suddenly starts pouring billions into them. And I hope “making transit more attractive” does not result in money being trashed just in buying newer rolling stocks and use it on crippled infrastructure (see Philadelphia) or build grandiose halts and use “heavy” infrastructure where it was not really needed (see the light rail projects in Los Angeles), or build transit tunnels everywhere to save surface space for cars and cyclists.
you make public transport more attractive by actually connecting places people want to go and increasing service frequency.
Also: the way you bring infrastructure costs down is by building more of a given type of infrastructure constantly, because otherwise you lose a lot of relevant skills that have to be relearned. Mostly the skills that allow delays to be avoided. Delays being a Big sorce of high costs.
(Also, NIMBYs and dodgy contractors/contract handling processes are Major sourcess of expense both directly and via delays once the project's already started).
Hi Simon,
I haven't been able to finish watching your last few videos. It's lost that personal touch.
This new format might work for some but it reminds me too much of corporate PowerPoints which I need to endure every couple of weeks.
When you bring yourself back into the picture again I will return.
Remember that LinusTechTips, Veritasium and PBS Space Time never lost that personal touch despite growing huge.
Good luck and good fortune for the future.
Thanks for the video :)
My main concerns are
1) how can we effectively achieve such intense increase in city density without overall decreasing quality of life (creating concrete jungles, increased heat island, smaller available living spaces especially for lower income, etc); and
2) will these changes have a net positive effect on the manufacturing industry? After all, shifting carbonization and pollution out of transportation and into manufacturing won't fully solve the issue.
We have a lot of good high density examples in Europe to copy/adapt. The old cities of Puglia are painted white and lovely to live in, for example. The main hurdles are current stupid zoning rules, and developers. We don’t need to knock down all the in-use low density development (something the developers love to do, anyway). As it ages, replace it with higher density rather than with more low density. Even if well-designed higher density takes more resources initially (it won’t, because it takes less per person), the continued savings on transport outweighs that very quickly.
Could you list the twenty cities with the highest quality of life on the planet, and the twenty cities in the countries with those cities with the highest population density, and tell us how many are on both lists?
Hint: it's nineteen. Similarly, of the list of countries with the twenty most populous cities, the overlap with highest standard of living is sixteen of twenty.
Historically we see population increase, then standard of living, statistically.
Overwhelmingly population density results in better standard of living.
More overwhelmingly, fossil emissions result in far worse quality of life. Being downwind of smokestacks and chimneys, being ground level with ICEs, engender worse health, noise exposure and accompanying hazards immediately, in the middle term and in the long term far outstripping benefits to the populace.
And who said to shift 'carbonization and pollution' anywhere? The issue is fossil emission, and the fix for that is the CARDIE wave that raises all boats equally:
Curtail 2% of today's level of fossil extraction, export, import and exploitation per month down to zero by 2030.
Avoid methane emissions as much as possible, both by shutting down fossil methane extraction and by diverting biomethane and fossil fugitive emissions either to use or flaring.
Replace fossil emitting technology with fossil free alternatives and shut down the replaced fossil emitters instead of letting them stay on the market.
Drawdown equivalent to a trillion new trees globally by 2060, if all those new trees are harvested to sequester.
Increase conservation programs, like shutting down 40% of ocean traffic and equivalent biodiversity measures on land.
Energy efficiency upgrades 8% per year.
Great to see you've given your guys an excuse to play games 😁 but did I miss it or was there no SimCity 2000?
Surprising to see that an electric car is so much better on carbon than a diesel bus, although obviously there are a lot of variables around usage there that will affect the outcome. I think it's also important to consider the impact of congestion and the need for dedicated land use, air quality, noise pollution, safety and general quality of life, which means that decarbonisation isn't the only agenda in town, although clearly it is a huge one - but in a lot of cases, diesel-powered public transport may be better for the environment overall than electric cars.
"Surprising to see that an electric car is so much better on carbon than a diesel bus" Are you for real? Electric cars produce less carbon than most public transport and even most fully electric trains in Europe. According to a Swiss study.
IDK about other continents with their Diesel-trains.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 Electric cars usually only have one person in, but despite that are getting bigger and heavier and needing more and more power. Buses can have dozens of people on - trains can have hundreds of passengers each, and have less friction making them more energy efficient to move.
@@stevieinselby "but despite that are getting bigger and heavier and needing more and more power"
Ahh - nope. You are wrong.
I guess you are still driving your good old trusted "sustainable because its so old" fossil burner.
Those monsters from the last century used more poisonous gazoline for each kilogramm more. My EVs not. Actually my heaviest EV in my small company fleet is the second best in efficiency.
You should try it yousrself. Buy a EV, drive it a few years in all possible situations and come back and tell me how much you really spent.
Its not that EVs ussually have only one person, its that cars in general usually transport not more than 1,15 persons. According to the VCÖ.
My EV uses 176Wh/km. Divided by 1.15 = 153 Wh/km median. A train needs between 140 and 260 Wh/km according to a Swiss study. Depending on its size, area - flat or mountaineous, long stretches or stop and go etc.
My EV uses 176 Wh/km - independent of everything. Of course in winter its more and in summer its ess but overall its 176 Wh/km.
If you have a more current international study regarding public transport efficiencies i welcome that information.
electric cars: its not ONLY about carbon, busses are better than cars; electric vehicles are less safe; electric busses are really bad
@@Somebodyherefornow Where do you live? Enceladus? Moscow? Must be somewhere very remote.
FYI: Teslas are the safest vehicles on the roads today. Much safer than ANY other car.
Besides maybe Abrams and Bradleys.
Building denser cities needs to factor in corridors for wildlife, nature and air to move. Its more that residential areas need small centers with shops.
Yeah you could have denser village clusters than an urban district, because people would have quicker access to open space without more crowded urban sprawl everywhere.
The whole density things surly has diminishing returns on its benefits after scaling to a certain size.