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Hybridising engines


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27 minutes ago, IanD said:

Absolutely correct, power increases so rapidly with rpm and speed that how fast you go makes a huge difference -- and this effect is *much* bigger with electric/hybrid boats than diesels, because diesels get less efficient as power/revs fall and still consume fuel when idling, electric motors don't. So dropping speed a bit makes a small difference to fuel consumption with a diesel but a big difference to energy use with electric.

 

The numbers I picked aren't drawn out of a hat, they're based on how fast I travel on the canals, which I'd say is fairly typical (I'm hardly a speed merchant) seeing what happens with other boats in front of me or behind me -- and going by the size of the wakes (and engine noise) I've often seen with boats coming the other way, some people go a lot faster, or at least burn a lot more fuel to go a little bit faster 😉

 

Some people -- you included -- travel more slowly -- and will use less power. Some people don't. YMMV -- literally.

 

However the "low-speed torque" argument keeps being put forward as an advantage of electric motors in boats, and it's just as wrong this time as all the other times, regardless of how many people keep saying it...

 

(there are lots of real advantages but this isn't one of them)

 

So doesn't that suggest that at canal speeds - and when passing through locks, moored boats etc,  the power consumption of the electric powered boat will be noticeably lower than a diesel equivalent?  (I thought you were arguing that there's not much in it.) 

 

The question is how much lower the power requirements are - Keith M was suggesting electric is maybe a third of diesel.  I presume he is something to do with "Motherships" as the figures/examples he quoted are the same as they publish on their website. 

 

 

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38 minutes ago, Neil2 said:

 

So doesn't that suggest that at canal speeds - and when passing through locks, moored boats etc,  the power consumption of the electric powered boat will be noticeably lower than a diesel equivalent?  (I thought you were arguing that there's not much in it.) 

 

The question is how much lower the power requirements are - Keith M was suggesting electric is maybe a third of diesel.  I presume he is something to do with "Motherships" as the figures/examples he quoted are the same as they publish on their website. 

 

 

If you take the numbers I worked with (3kW/4hrs+1kW/2hrs+0kW/2hrs into the prop) and look at hybrid vs. diesel efficiency including all losses, the hybrid uses about 40% less fuel even if all the power comes from the generator -- if half the power comes from solar the fuel saving is 70% (and obviously 100% if it all comes from solar a la Peter). If you go more slowly then the differences become even bigger. But at a given speed the power absorbed by the prop is identical for diesel and hybrid, the hybrid just burns less fuel to generate it.

 

I also assume he's to do with Motherships/narrowboat "Shine", and those numbers were brought up several times a year or so ago by Peter. After a lot of discussion the conclusion then was that they're very -- possibly unbelievably -- low, unless the boat is going slower than normal or spending lots of time going slowly past moored boats or in locks. They seemed to be implying that the boat could cruise at normal speed on 1kW on a normal canal which is simply impossible, because diesels need about 3kW (into the prop) to do this, and a kW is a kW regardless of where it comes from -- it might well be able to cruise at normal speed and also average 1kW over a long trip, but that's like saying "my car can do 120mph and 50mpg" -- both true, but not at the same time.

 

[in deep water 1kW *will* get you about 3mph, but not on a normal depth/width UK canal]

 

"It’s hard to go fast on the way up to Crick as there are so many moored boats. We used between 1kW and 0.7kW to make way and surprised a lot of people."

 

Yep, 1kW past moored boats is what I assumed, makes complete sense.

 

I've seen (and been stuck behind...) boats drifting along at just above idle speed making very little wash, and if you do this in a hybrid boat it will use very little power, with far lower fuel consumption than a diesel at the same speed. But at the speeds that most diesel boats seem to travel at on the open canals -- the biggest clue is how much wash they make, because that's actually where a lot of it goes -- the power will be higher, which is where I got my figures from. If you go more slowly -- like "Shine" probably did -- the power will be (considerably) less.

 

Of course it's also possible that once people get a hybrid boat and see how expensive that extra 0.5mph is in power consumption they slow down, and this pushes the power use down, hence the claims -- but then this isn't a like-for-like comparison...

 

So yes, the key is what speed you travel at and how much power this needs, and this will be different for different people.

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1 hour ago, IanD said:

If you take the numbers I worked with (3kW/4hrs+1kW/2hrs+0kW/2hrs into the prop) and look at hybrid vs. diesel efficiency including all losses, the hybrid uses about 40% less fuel even if all the power comes from the generator -- if half the power comes from solar the fuel saving is 70% (and obviously 100% if it all comes from solar a la Peter). If you go more slowly then the differences become even bigger. But at a given speed the power absorbed by the prop is identical for diesel and hybrid, the hybrid just burns less fuel to generate it.

 

I also assume he's to do with Motherships/narrowboat "Shine", and those numbers were brought up several times a year or so ago by Peter. After a lot of discussion the conclusion then was that they're very -- possibly unbelievably -- low, unless the boat is going slower than normal or spending lots of time going slowly past moored boats or in locks. They seemed to be implying that the boat could cruise at normal speed on 1kW on a normal canal which is simply impossible, because diesels need about 3kW (into the prop) to do this, and a kW is a kW regardless of where it comes from -- it might well be able to cruise at normal speed and also average 1kW over a long trip, but that's like saying "my car can do 120mph and 50mpg" -- both true, but not at the same time.

 

[in deep water 1kW *will* get you about 3mph, but not on a normal depth/width UK canal]

 

"It’s hard to go fast on the way up to Crick as there are so many moored boats. We used between 1kW and 0.7kW to make way and surprised a lot of people."

 

Yep, 1kW past moored boats is what I assumed, makes complete sense.

 

I've seen (and been stuck behind...) boats drifting along at just above idle speed making very little wash, and if you do this in a hybrid boat it will use very little power, with far lower fuel consumption than a diesel at the same speed. But at the speeds that most diesel boats seem to travel at on the open canals -- the biggest clue is how much wash they make, because that's actually where a lot of it goes -- the power will be higher, which is where I got my figures from. If you go more slowly -- like "Shine" probably did -- the power will be (considerably) less.

 

Of course it's also possible that once people get a hybrid boat and see how expensive that extra 0.5mph is in power consumption they slow down, and this pushes the power use down, hence the claims -- but then this isn't a like-for-like comparison...

 

So yes, the key is what speed you travel at and how much power this needs, and this will be different for different people.

 

The press "reviews" of the Motherships boats spend a lot of time describing the fit out etc before getting to the interesting bit which is then rather skirted over, I feel.  

 

Also, all the demos were done on rivers...  I would like to see a real world appraisal of these boats on somewhere like the Ashby, for example, a notoriously turgid canal.

 

When marketing/publicity is done so selectively you cannot help being sceptical.  If this company has something which is genuinely ground breaking then why not subject it to more rigorous testing.  As I remarked on the Finesse boats - full order books say nothing except that some people have been convinced by the marketing.  There are not enough of these boats in circulation yet so every buyer is taking something of a risk. 

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13 hours ago, Bee said:

Personally I would either go all electric and fit a hefty generator or tap the local sewer for methane and bottle it and run the Beta on gas, might get a few explosions in the trial stage though.

 

So run a diesel generator to charge batteries to run an electric drive. How is that of any environmental benefit exactly? With all the losses and inefficiencies incurred in converting from diesel to chemical energy (batteries) and then drawing on that chemical energy store it might even be less environmentally sustainable than a direct diesel propulsion engine.

 

Edited by blackrose
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3 hours ago, Neil2 said:

 

The press "reviews" of the Motherships boats spend a lot of time describing the fit out etc before getting to the interesting bit which is then rather skirted over, I feel.  

 

Also, all the demos were done on rivers...  I would like to see a real world appraisal of these boats on somewhere like the Ashby, for example, a notoriously turgid canal.

 

When marketing/publicity is done so selectively you cannot help being sceptical.  If this company has something which is genuinely ground breaking then why not subject it to more rigorous testing.  As I remarked on the Finesse boats - full order books say nothing except that some people have been convinced by the marketing.  There are not enough of these boats in circulation yet so every buyer is taking something of a risk. 

As far as speed vs. power or energy is concerned they can't have anything ground-breaking, the same laws of physics apply to all boats -- the faster you go, the more energy is needed. Design changes like hull or drive design can at best make small changes to this, not big ones.

 

It's notable that before the new "electric boat companies" like Mothership appeared, all the analysis on hybrids (e.g. from Hybrid Marine and others) emphasised how little power was really needed to propel a narrowboat, a mere 3kW/4hp or so was the figure often quoted, with emphasis on how small this was compared to a typical 40hp diesel. This also agrees with the oft-quoted 1.5l/hr diesel fuel consumption when cruising, which happens to coincide with 1400rpm on a Beta 43...

 

So I'd say anyone who believes that via some magic new electrickery they can have a hybrid narrowboat with super-low energy consumption which runs entirely on solar power (while going just as fast as they used to in their diesel-powered boat) may indeed be falling for clever marketing which is not backed up by reality -- the average can certainly be lower than the figure above, but not when cruising along at "full speed" (you know, usual caveats, no breaking wash...).

 

If it helps convince people, the recent Ortomarine test which tried to compare diesel and hybrid boats concluded that real energy savings -- without relying on stored energy in the batteries which wasn't replaced i.e. cheating like car hybrids used to do -- were something like 50%, which stacks up pretty well with the numbers I came up with (40% with no solar, 70% with 50% solar). And all the hybrid boats had -- and used -- onboard generators.

 

34 minutes ago, blackrose said:

 

So run a diesel generator to charge batteries to run an electric drive. How is that of any environmental benefit exactly? With all the losses and inefficiencies incurred in converting from diesel to chemical energy (batteries) and then drawing on that chemical energy store it might even be less environmentally sustainable than a direct diesel propulsion engine.

 

 

Please read the numbers from a few posts back -- or indeed, this one.

Edited by IanD
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It looks to me that humanity, by a sort of informal global democracy, has elected to commit self extinction, and so a few canal boaters messing with hybrid drives can do no more than frustrate this democratic decision by a few seconds. 😀

 

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1 hour ago, IanD said:

 

Please read the numbers from a few posts back -- or indeed, this one.

 

Yes, it looks like they're based a lot of theoretical assumptions. They said the same thing about diesel emissions a few years back, which proved not to be the case in practice. I've met people with generator/electric boats and their experience didn't match what you're sayingn in terms of fuel savings. Maybe they didn't have the optimum setup but that's the difference between theory and practice.

 

The other thing missing from the figures is all the embedded energy and resources used to manufacture the extra generating energy storage equipment and electric motor, especially if a perfectly good diesel engine is ripped out to install the new equipment.

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8 hours ago, Keith M said:

Ian D you do like putting people down who have a better knowledge than you 

Good Bye.

 

IanD is like the ruddy faced boorish loudmouth spouting off sat at the end of the bar drowning out everybody's opinion.

 

Eventually people stop listening to him.

 

I did months ago.

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10 hours ago, blackrose said:

 

Yes, it looks like they're based a lot of theoretical assumptions. They said the same thing about diesel emissions a few years back, which proved not to be the case in practice. I've met people with generator/electric boats and their experience didn't match what you're sayingn in terms of fuel savings. Maybe they didn't have the optimum setup but that's the difference between theory and practice.

 

The other thing missing from the figures is all the embedded energy and resources used to manufacture the extra generating energy storage equipment and electric motor, especially if a perfectly good diesel engine is ripped out to install the new equipment.

They're  based on calculations which are backed up by measurements on modern systems. If the people you talked to used lead-acid batteries then they won't see anything like as big a saving due to the Peukert effect (energy back out of batteries maybe 70% of energy put in) plus the need to run the generator for hours to fully charge the batteries. Lithium cells are essential to fix this.

 

BYW diesel cars having lower C02 emissions was the case and still is, not realising particulates were a huge problem was the issue.

 

It doesn't make sense either environmentally or financially to rip out a perfectly good diesel engine and replace it with a hybrid system, any more than it would to do the same in a car. It does make more sense in a new installation, for exactly the same reasons as it does in a car.

 

Still doesn't really make sense financially though, a dirty noisy diesel is still a lot cheaper even including fuel savings over lifetime, and will be until charging stations mean the generator can be removed. It's the same problem that is holding back renewables in many places -- so long as fossil fuel is cheap because the C02 consequences of burning it are not priced in, people (and governments) will continue to use it.

 

Yes renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels as a source of energy into the grid, but if you can't connect to the grid that's of little help...

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Thanks for all the replies, it has certainly clarified things for me. It would be cheaper tbh, as I am about to buy my first boat, to buy a new boat, although at my stage of training I am in the wrong place, and it would be too expensive.

If I remember correctly the Greenline engine is bigger, and then there is the amount of batteries, and fitting as many additional solar panels as possible. I don't have a car anymore, but a few bikes, so that will be a green contribution, and the health spin off as well.

It's an interesting conundrum and something that will become more common till things change at some stage. That is a concern, but more for the younger people coming through. The younger are deadly serious about the ecology of things. The one boat I looked at, did not use coal, but composite pellets and blocks. There are organisations now that do not use bleach in domestic cleaning, and all that will be come more noticeable in time in every aspect of our lives. In time, we will just not be able to buy certain things.

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3 minutes ago, OCM said:

There are organisations now that do not use bleach in domestic cleaning, and all that will be come more noticeable in time in every aspect of our lives. In time, we will just not be able to buy certain things.

 

Correct, and a good example will be diesel-powered canal boats.

 

2050 is the cut-off date for CO2-emitting canal boats IIRC, but Alan will be probably be along shortly with far more detail than anyone needs at this stage ;)

 

This suits CRT perfectly I suspect, as it seems to have an undeclared policy not to support navigation. Maintenance of the system seems to focus on cycle paths, signage saying how great canals are. 

 

Regarding comforting yourself with using a motorcycle rather than a car, this is the 'offset' argument that the world is using to avoid the CO2 issue. It is comforting to think 'every little helps', but it doesn't really. Have a good read of why not, here: http://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml

 

image.png.b6de2a820dc6b16b64d519566263b4e7.png

 

(Credit Private Eye)

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20 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

And, of course changing the means of propulsion means the RCR requires re-validation with a PCA (cost around £2000)

How will this effect older boats or those without RCD/RCR paperwork?

 

Bod

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21 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Correct, and a good example will be diesel-powered canal boats.

 

2050 is the cut-off date for CO2-emitting canal boats IIRC, but Alan will be probably be along shortly with far more detail than anyone needs at this stage ;)

 

 

(Credit Private Eye)

 

No it isn't.

 

There's no stated requirement anywhere for all boats on uk waters to be emission free by 2050.

 

The relevant government document here is the "Clean Maritime plan" but it's not a plan at all, it's a vague statement of expectations as to how boats in future will be emission free with no concrete aims or targets and certainly no detail on how the nation is supposed to meet these expectations.

 

 

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1 hour ago, OCM said:

Thanks for all the replies, it has certainly clarified things for me. It would be cheaper tbh, as I am about to buy my first boat, to buy a new boat, although at my stage of training I am in the wrong place, and it would be too expensive.

If I remember correctly the Greenline engine is bigger, and then there is the amount of batteries, and fitting as many additional solar panels as possible. I don't have a car anymore, but a few bikes, so that will be a green contribution, and the health spin off as well.

It's an interesting conundrum and something that will become more common till things change at some stage. That is a concern, but more for the younger people coming through. The younger are deadly serious about the ecology of things. The one boat I looked at, did not use coal, but composite pellets and blocks. There are organisations now that do not use bleach in domestic cleaning, and all that will be come more noticeable in time in every aspect of our lives. In time, we will just not be able to buy certain things.

Fitting as many solar panels as you can is a no-brainer, even with a diesel boat it means you don't have to run the engine (or generator) as often (maybe not at all in summer) to keep batteries charged, and they're not expensive nowadays.

 

Going hybrid is currently an expensive luxury for those who can afford it and are willing to pay the premium for silent cruising, because you need an onboard generator which burns fuel (even HVO) and costs money.

 

From an ecological point of view hybrids still make sense if you look at the boat market as a whole, which needs new engines feeding in at the top to replace those that fall out of the bottom and are scrapped -- it's better if hybrids go in instead of diesels because of C02 savings over lifetime. This is true even if they are retrofitted into existing boats, so long as the diesel that is removed moves down the chain and into another boat that needs a replacement engine to replace a dead one. But whoever does the swap has to pay for it, and that's not cheap, and they won't recover the outlay on fuel savings.

 

Getting the cost down to compare with diesels would be great, but difficult so long as generators are needed, and cost is what is stopping this "hybrid in -- diesel out" idea working for most people. The only thing that will change this is network-wide charging points, but don't hold your breath... 😞

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47 minutes ago, OCM said:

Thanks for the reply - I have bicycles, not motor cycles!

 

Lol, well done, you're excused then! 

 

You just need to convince the other 8 billion people who really are not that bothered, and everything will be fine. 

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1 hour ago, IanD said:

Fitting as many solar panels as you can is a no-brainer, even with a diesel boat it means you don't have to run the engine (or generator) as often (maybe not at all in summer) to keep batteries charged, and they're not expensive nowadays.

 

Going hybrid is currently an expensive luxury for those who can afford it and are willing to pay the premium for silent cruising, because you need an onboard generator which burns fuel (even HVO) and costs money.

 

From an ecological point of view hybrids still make sense if you look at the boat market as a whole, which needs new engines feeding in at the top to replace those that fall out of the bottom and are scrapped -- it's better if hybrids go in instead of diesels because of C02 savings over lifetime. This is true even if they are retrofitted into existing boats, so long as the diesel that is removed moves down the chain and into another boat that needs a replacement engine to replace a dead one. But whoever does the swap has to pay for it, and that's not cheap, and they won't recover the outlay on fuel savings.

 

Getting the cost down to compare with diesels would be great, but difficult so long as generators are needed, and cost is what is stopping this "hybrid in -- diesel out" idea working for most people. The only thing that will change this is network-wide charging points, but don't hold your breath... 😞

 

The conclusion I am coming to is that whether it's the guys selling hybrid systems or the outlandish claims of Motherships etc. it is just a distraction to the main issue which is the need for charging points.  

 

This is what happens when you try to tackle a global problem in a market led economy.  I'm sure the likes of Finesse and Motherships are genuinely concerned about the environment, but once you transfer that concern into running a business the need to make a profit takes over and everything becomes smoke and mirrors.

 

You could even say that if these companies were first and foremost concerned about emissions and energy conservation they would take a more holistic view and campaign for a proper infrastructure to take us into the next century.

 

Back in the 1990's Graham Booth was predicting an "electric future" for narrowboats, we've made virtually no progress in over twenty years and all we get from the government is meaningless waffle dressed up as a "plan".  

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Neil2 said:

 

You could even say that if these companies were first and foremost concerned about emissions and energy conservation they would take a more holistic view and campaign for a proper infrastructure to take us into the next century.

 

 

Or more accurately, they would only build widebeams with 4.6KW of solar, no diesel engine and second hand lithiums, which as one poster here has demonstrated, works just fine.

 

 

 

:) 

 

 

Edited by MtB
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13 minutes ago, Neil2 said:

 

The conclusion I am coming to is that whether it's the guys selling hybrid systems or the outlandish claims of Motherships etc. it is just a distraction to the main issue which is the need for charging points.  

 

This is what happens when you try to tackle a global problem in a market led economy.  I'm sure the likes of Finesse and Motherships are genuinely concerned about the environment, but once you transfer that concern into running a business the need to make a profit takes over and everything becomes smoke and mirrors.

 

You could even say that if these companies were first and foremost concerned about emissions and energy conservation they would take a more holistic view and campaign for a proper infrastructure to take us into the next century.

 

Back in the 1990's Graham Booth was predicting an "electric future" for narrowboats, we've made virtually no progress in over twenty years and all we get from the government is meaningless waffle dressed up as a "plan".  

 

 

 

Unfortunately the likes of Finesse and Mothership can do absolutely nothing about charging points, this needs to be driven by CART which really means the UK government, and they don't seem to have any real plan for how to make this happen apart from maybe a few flagship charging points -- to be useful the whole network needs to be covered, just like with water points. But so long as the mentality of the government is profit-driven ("leave it to the market and the private sector") this won't change, because money would need investing in the network now to make long-term ecological and societal gains, and that's not how the shareholder-driven private sector works.

 

All the hybrid boatbuilders can do -- regardless of their reasons, be they eco or profit (probably both) -- is to build boats to meet the (small, well-off) market demand, which today means they need onboard diesel generators, however undesirable this is from both cost and environmental points of view.

 

If only there was a strong well-funded waterways association whose priorities were the interests of boaters and the future of the UK canal system, which could maybe apply pressure to try and change this... 😉

 

9 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Or more accurately, they would only build widebeams with 4.6KW of solar, no diesel engine and second hand lithiums, which as one poster here has demonstrated, works just fine.

 

 

He's also got a 6kW diesel generator...

Edited by IanD
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Talking to my children yesterday, they live in Bristol and are big fans of the electric scooter hire scheme, trouble is, like most people, they use the scooters to replace journeys that would have been walked or cycled and still use the car for car journeys. So,  a net increase in energy usage plus lots more manufacturing. Over a typical lifespan I wonder if hybrid boats actually make a negative contribution to saving the planet?

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24 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

He's also got a 6kW diesel generator...

 

Ah but that doesn't count, because he runs it on HVO....

 

 

 

Oh, hang on a minute, that gives me an idea. What if all the boats switched over to using...... 

 

Oh forget it. 

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36 minutes ago, dmr said:

Talking to my children yesterday, they live in Bristol and are big fans of the electric scooter hire scheme, trouble is, like most people, they use the scooters to replace journeys that would have been walked or cycled and still use the car for car journeys. So,  a net increase in energy usage plus lots more manufacturing. Over a typical lifespan I wonder if hybrid boats actually make a negative contribution to saving the planet?

The answer is likely to be yes for the market as a whole, for the same reason as for cars -- the lifetime C02 savings outweigh the initial CO2 investment in manufacturing. Whether this is true for hybrid boats as being built now is debateable, like cars it needs charging points powered by renewable energy to make it really worthwhile.

 

If you want some numbers, the equivalent CO2 emissions of the inland waterways fleet are roughly 300kt/year, or about 10t/boat on average. This compares up about 30Mt/year for cars, which is about 1t/car on average. For BEV (with plug-in charging) the CO2 manufacturing cost is paid back in the first few years, so the same should be even more true for boats.

 

But of course the emissions are not spread equally across all boats -- 10t seems huge, but I expect this is pushed up by the hire fleets which spend far more days per year travelling (maybe 150 or so?) than most owned boats (and far more hours running the engine than almost all cars). But of course the hire fleets will be reluctant to go hybrid because of the cost, unless they can sell the boats to the hirers with a "green premium"...

 

As for saving the planet, since all the UK boats contribute about 1% of the CO2 of all the UK cars this isn't going to happen. But if you look at it from a position of individual responsibility -- what "my boat" is contributing to "my CO2 burden" the difference is significant. Otherwise you can make the same argument about flights -- "my one holiday a year emits far less CO2 than the jetsetters and private plane owners" is true, but doesn't stop it kicking out a lot of CO2 with your name on it.

13 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Ah but that doesn't count, because he runs it on HVO....

 

Oh, hang on a minute, that gives me an idea. What if all the boats switched over to using...... 

 

Oh forget it. 

 

Already suggested it. Guess what reception that got from people who don't want to pay any "green premium" for HVO, even if it does "save the planet"... 😞

Edited by IanD
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I am a realist, I dont believe that they will leave us alone if the rest of the transport industry and private cars are cleaning up their act in 4 years time electric vehicles will be what people are buying, yes there will be lots of older vehicles around but they will with the new parts rules have a very limited life [EU rules on selling parts for cars only by the car maker] I suspect we will adopt these rules as they get rid of old vehicles, they could easily get carried over to boat engines as well?

This year we have the climate conference which the nations will attempt to greenwash but I suspect the young activists wont wear it.

As for me my system works fine for me plenty of power to cruise when I want no bills for electric and silent cruising which I really enjoy, the big bonus is of course 25% discount on a very expensive license.

I have proved that for very little cost you can convert o electric drive, I really dont care if others are bothered or not because it works fine and the BSS man likes it

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3 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Already suggested it. Guess what reception that got from people who don't want to pay any "green premium" for HVO, even if it does save the planet... 😞

 

Curious, this "save the planet" bollux. 

 

The planet doesn't need saving, it will save itself regardless. "Save the planet" is a euphemism for "save the human race" from the consequences of its own actions, ultimately a considerable reduction in numbers of humans, or at least a much less comfortable environment to live in. But any politician saying this out loud will just get accused of scaremongering, probably. 

3 minutes ago, peterboat said:

I have proved that for very little cost you can convert o electric drive,

 

If ever there was an irrelevance, it is the cost. We need to stop burning fossil fuels even if the cost is massive. 

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12 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Curious, this "save the planet" bollux. 

 

The planet doesn't need saving, it will save itself regardless. "Save the planet" is a euphemism for "save the human race" from the consequences of its own actions, ultimately a considerable reduction in numbers of humans, or at least a much less comfortable environment to live in. But any politician saying this out loud will just get accused of scaremongering, probably. 

True, but this doesn't excuse not trying to do something about it.

 

People don't want to be told that -- for example -- the days of cheap flights should be over because of the horrendous CO2 burden of aviation -- one long-distance flight per person emits more than an entire year of driving a car. And they also don't want to be told that stuff shipped from China should be more expensive to pay for the CO2 burden of container ships. And they shouldn't be eating vegetables flown in from Chile. And they don't want to be told that "gas-guzzling SUVs" are an emissions abomination. All lifestyle choices, not essentials of life.

 

And because people don't want to be told all this -- they want to think it's all "somebody else's problem" not their lifestyle that's the issue, and that there should be some magic technological fix so they can carry on as before -- politicians don't want to tell them, because they'll get thrown out of office and somebody else will get their snout into the gravy trough...

Edited by IanD
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