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BBC:
[The canal boat company] has converted six boats so far - it takes about three months to strip out the old diesel engine and install the electric engine and batteries. A typical 23m (75ft) tourist boat needs about 66 batteries, he says, making the conversion cost around 165,000 to 250,000 euros ($189,000 to $287,000; £145,000 to £220,000) per boat.
But the engines are quieter, cleaner and cheaper to run - boat companies should recoup their costs in about 12 years, according to the Paris Process on Mobility and Climate, a body supporting sustainable transport projects.
They can be recharged in about 10 hours and last about two days between charges, says Sigrid Hanekamp, an application engineer from Dutch battery company Lithium Werks, which supplied the batteries for Reederij Kooij's boats.
These batteries are not your typical lead-acid type traditionally used in cars, or even the type of lithium-ion ones becoming standard in electric vehicles, she explains. They're lithium-iron-phosphate, a chemistry Lithium Werks believes is more durable and environmentally friendly.
The boats have been converted to comply with Amsterdam's mandate that all canal boats be converted to electric by 2025, as a measure meant to preserve the environment and reduce noise.
Are measures like these heavy-handed, or necessary to move mankind past dependence on fossil fuels?
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday October 09 2018, @03:17PM (3 children)
Well, we don't know that. Unless there has been a referendum or something where the will of the people can be gauged, then you can say with certainty if the majority is happy with the decision.
It is far to easy for some people to claim they "speak for the majority", without asking them and just going forward with laws (talking in general here, not just about this specific point).
Why would it do that? Unless the fuel isn't being completely burned, what particles would be left over? I guess some smaller sooty particles, but most particulate filters are able to clean those up fine.
I didn't realise there were rainforests and jungle in Europe :-) In seriousness, AFAIK, in the EU biofuel is generated from food refuse and other waste, and does not compete with food or land. A lot of the work is in algae produced biofuels. What you are describing sounds to me like Brazil in the 70s, when they decided to move to bioethanol, and started to clear out massive swathes of the rainforest for sugar plantations to convert to bioethanol.
It worked, in that they were one of the first countries to have a biofuel powered transport system. but they no longer tear down the forest for it. As you noted, there was a large cost in rainforest diversity. Saying that, the Brazilians seem to look for any excuse to cut down the rainforest, if it isn't for biofuel, then it is for crops, if not that, then paper wood, or grazing cattle, and so on. One would get the feeling they really don't want to have the rainforest in their country at all.
As for the absence of biofuels, I think the opposite. They are not promoted so much because adoption is pretty common, so much so that my local fuel station has biofuels available next to the fossil fuels, and cheaper than the fossil produce. It is just a normal thing now.
Unfortunately my cars are too old, and cannot run it without conversion, so I can't use it atm, but its there, and I know many people who use it in their vehicles.
In some ways it is the best eco-conversion. The end result was exactly the same for normal people, they just stick a different coloured nozzle in their car, you get the fast fill up time (no need to wait to charge), and they still can use their existing vehicles, except now they are carbon neutral. Plus in a pinch if they are stuck running out of fuel somewhere without biofuel, they can use the fossil stuff just fine.
I think it is a far better method than trying to legislate everyone to spend a lot of money scrapping vehicles, to replace them with a technology that is currently inferior in every way except tailpipe emissions. This method allows you to convert the existing infrastructure easily to a carbon neutral system.
Indeed, one of the latest things people are doing round here is converting the plug in hybrids (like the Chevy Volt) to work on bioethanol. So you get the plug in electric for stop and go rush hour traffic, you get the range and quick fill up of ICE for longer distances, and you get the cheaper and carbon neutral fuel.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:59PM (2 children)
The diesel boats emit some really nasty pollution at/below street level in a very dense and not always windy city.
Everybody's taxes go to healthcare. The many boat owners (and those houseboats are really really expensive) are asked to stop causing their fellow citizens to get sicker, costing everyone.
If you don't legislate, many people will not bother to do a major retrofit of their home tinkering endlessly to keep their pollution in other people's lungs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:23AM (1 child)
Not sure this applies to EU, but here in the states the exhaust is vented into the water.
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:27AM
How is that better? Eventually those exhaust products end up in the water supply. It is still spreading the pollution to others.