Likely Impact On The Broads?

[JennyMorgan]

We can only guess at the moment!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51366123

[grendel]

well at the age of 75, i might just stop driving at that point, or just keep driving my (by then) ancient volvo, i do note this is only the sale of new vehicles, so with some broads cruisers now nearing 50 years old, that seems to leave them good to outlast the ban until 2085 or longer (i know there are older cruisers around, but most will have been re-engined.)

[Regulo]

Not going to happen, so don't worry about it. 

[JennyMorgan]

Broads boats and their engines may well outlive the ban but if fuel is no longer required for cars and lorries then will it still be available for boats?  

[D46]

This only applies to New cars not existing ones for which fuel will still be produced , that's if it happens anyway as the infastructure isn't in place  .

As far as the Broads it's obviously going to have an impact on new build boats private or hire if boats are even included ,I haven't seen trucks mentioned yet nor boats just cars .

[Chelsea14Ian]

Think if this is to happen, the powers that be need to speed up charging points. There are only a small amount  anywhere at present. All in all very few on the broads. 

[JennyMorgan]

37 minutes ago, Chelsea14Ian said:

Think if this is to happen, the powers that be need to speed up charging points. There are only a small amount  anywhere at present. All in all very few on the broads. 

All very true. In my case, if I were to have a motor cruiser,  it would mean some 130 meters of hefty extension lead if I go from house to mooring, I dread to think what the cost would be. No doubt that there would be calls to see such cables being laid underground. Maybe steam is the answer! 

[SteveO]

Sounds like another instance of our barely competent politicians being unduly swayed by the voices of pressure groups and swivel-eyed activists, amplified out of all proportion by (anti) social media. I don't know much about hydrogen propulsion, but it would take an awful lot of electricity to produce all the hydrogen we would need.  If we go down the electric car route, we will need four  expensive nuclear power stations of the size that EDF has not been able to build at Hinkley point. and a massive new charging infrastructure. Either that or we cover the country and the seas around our coasts with wind turbines. As a result, we may find that travel by private vehicle becomes highly expensive or severely restricted, in which case, we won't be visiting our boats very often. Not to worry, because by then, the Environment Agency's "Managed Retreat" programme combined with sea-level rise will have turned much of the broads back into a salt marsh and Packman and his cronies/successors will have turned  the rest of it into a bird sanctuary.  Do I care? No because I will most likely be dead or dribbling by then. 

[ExSurveyor]

Given the limited range for any electric vehicle at present, they will need to.make huge strides to make electric lorries viable.

Some days i do more mileage than the best range currently available, travel time is already dead time for me without having to spend time charging a car.

I suspect by the time this all happens I will be driving an electric buggy down to an empty High Street.

Battery is all very well and ' Green' until you factor in the incredible damage caused on land and now under the sea to extract the rare precious metals to mske the batteries.

[grendel]

my daily commute is above the limit of the majority of electric vehicles, and that assumes that I can charge at work as well as at home, neither of which are viable at present, we do have a pair of charging points locally (about half a mile from the house) but charging from my house is not possible as the road runs at right angles to the row of houses, plus the electrical infrastructure is at maximum loading already. every road would have to be dug up to replace the cabling for greater loading.

[Cheesey69]

The problem is that as the use of fossil fuel goes down, the cost and availability of it becomes a problem. Those local petrol stations will close rapidly and the cost will rise

[Regulo]

Listen to a man who knows - Grendel! That's why it won't be happening anytime soon.

[JennyMorgan]

1 hour ago, Cheesey69 said:

The problem is that as the use of fossil fuel goes down, the cost and availability of it becomes a problem. Those local petrol stations will close rapidly and the cost will rise

Inevitably there will then be an aging and increasingly large fleet of static houseboats on the Broads, unlike today, of course! A business opportunity for an electric tug service perhaps? 

[rightsaidfred]

Speaking as an old codger who no longer knows anything about the world I have grown up in I will leave it to the generations that want to change everything to solve the problem they are creating and will have to live with while I  spend my dotage just enjoying what I have always enjoyed in the bliss and luxury of my ignorance.

Fred

[JennyMorgan]

3 minutes ago, Regulo said:

Listen to a man who knows - Grendel! That's why it won't be happening anytime soon.

If my local town is anything to go by then the majority of cars are parked in the streets, often some distance from the owner's house. A system of power points, akin to parking meters, might provide a solution but even that would require a culture swing of biblical proportions.

Some mobile phones can be charged just by being laid on a charging pad, perhaps the same system could be developed for cars, even to the extent of them being charged as they drive along? 

As for boats, they could pick up power from above! We would need a tidal barrier in order to maintain water levels otherwise contact might be lost as the tide drops. 

[grendel]

10 hours ago, JennyMorgan said:

it would mean some 130 meters of hefty extension lead if I go from house to mooring, I dread to think what the cost would be

at our current rates you wouldnt be looking at change from £6000 for a 130m cable  direct buried at the correct industry standard depth in turf, the biggest proportion of the cost being the trench.

as for electric propulsion, this is just a stop gap measure before converting vehicles to hydrogen gas as a fuel, once the natural gas network is converted over to hydrogen, then there will be a plentiful supply of hydrogen to power vehicles, and it can be filled up in a similar manner to petrol or diesel, by a nozzle from a pump (ok a foolproof gas seal for the connector will be required) which will then either supply a hydrogen fuel cell for electric propulsion, or a conventional engine using the fuel directly.

[JennyMorgan]

30 minutes ago, grendel said:

as for electric propulsion, this is just a stop gap measure before converting vehicles to hydrogen gas as a fuel,

As something of a Luddite and simpleton that comment seems to beg the question as to why the stopgap? Why not put all our resources  into hydrogen rather than into a system with a very limited life?

[Cockatoo]

6 minutes ago, JennyMorgan said:

A something of a Luddite and simpleton that comment seems to beg the question as to why the stopgap? Why not put all our resources  into hydrogen rather than into a system with a very limited life?

The cynic in me thinks that the answer is tax.

 

It was only a short time ago we were all encouraged to buy diesel cars, now the fad is electric and the tax on diesel will rise. Until the next fad when the tax on electric will rise to encourage us to change.

[MotorBoater]

I find it very difficult to take any of this seriously, not because I don't want to but because I really can't imagine any government won't wake up to the economic consequences.

If they really want to be seen to do something then start with the worst polluters in the form of trucks and buses, not joe public. I think you are then more likely to see people do their bit.

A by-product of electricity however produced is heat. Let's see all "A" roads turned into canals and all motorways into rivers. We'll need a nationwide horse breeding program to provide for all the stagecoaches (Needed for those who can't afford a sailing dinghy) and a national manure policy to avoid a whole new meaning to the term fly-tipping.

Any boat hire companies still in business will need to turn car parks into carriage parks and erect stables.

Boats will be renamed with snappy politically correct names like "Greta One".

Meanwhile tractors banned from farms means we will produce even less food than we do now so we will import from all over the globe. These imports will arrive in gas-guzzling container ships from every country that has ignored their zealots and continued to grow their economies.

Chlorinated chicken for Sunday Dinner anyone ?

[Cheesey69]

The cost of hydrogen infrastructure is massive compared to oil based production that's been around for a century plus. And don't forget that there will be a period that the two technologies will be side by side so double the cost. What country is going to take the huge financial hit first? Plus hydrogen under pressure is a different ball game to oil, imagine leaving a pressure vessel long term in your boat under hundreds of pounds psi long-term . Also oil gives a lot more bang for your pound than hydrogen in more was than motive power. There will be a change in life style as it will make more sense for the pleasure boaters to return to sail and any frivolous use fuel maybe frowned upon and or taxed very highly. I can see a slow walking back from our wasteful life's as the cost of raw materials becomes prohibitive. At least not in my lifetime I hope. 

[TheQ]

2 hours ago, grendel said:

at our current rates you wouldnt be looking at change from £6000 for a 130m cable  direct buried at the correct industry standard depth in turf, the biggest proportion of the cost being the trench.

 

or about £80 for above ground extension cable you have to put away + another tenner for the plug and socket..

+ you'll need an external 16Amp supply at your house probably another £200-300.

[grendel]

2 hours ago, JennyMorgan said:

As something of a Luddite and simpleton that comment seems to beg the question as to why the stopgap? Why not put all our resources  into hydrogen rather than into a system with a very limited life?

In reality they know we cant just switch over to hydrogen until the gas network has been converted over, also the technology for hydrogen engines is still in its infancy, so work still needs doing to get there, in the mean time they are trying for a halfway stage of electric propulsion but using batteries rather than fuel cells, unfortunately this leaves the problem of charging the batteries, which we dont really have the infrastructur for yet. its a catch 22 - without the charging facilities people wont buy electric vehicles, but until people buy the vehicles companies and councils are wary of spending large amounts of money to install charging points when they dont see the number of cars on the road to warrent the infrastructure.

[Wussername]

We could of course have battery exchange banks, simply change your depleted battery for a fully charged one. Pays your money and away you.

A bit like the Chep Pallet actually. You never really own it. 

 

[jeffbroadslover]

Maybe the next thing that Mr Johnson and his cabinet of experts will come up with will be that all new houses will have to be fitted with built-in charging points at no additional cost to the buyer.

Also anyone living in a house already built will have a charging point provided free gratis !!!

 There would also have to be guaranteed maximum charges for the power. 

Jeff

[grendel]

There is already a requirement for kerbside charging points (or electric charge parking bays) on most new developments as well as masses of bicycle storage for developments in london, the problem is that each full spec vehicle charging station is the equivalent consumption to about 10 homes (a standard 2 bay charging pillar uses 16 kVA whereas a house averages at 1.5kVA) - the reason for this is while a house is rarely using everything at once, a charging point is either on or off, so diversity cannot be applied - it has to be assumed that overnight the charging point will have cars plugged in and charging, diversity is a calculation whereby the average use is spread across all of the houses and then divided out, rarely are everyone using everything all at the same time, years of comparative readings have averaged out the average 3 bed house at 1.5 kVA a 4 bed house at 1.8kVA (for gas heated houses), as appliances are turned off and on through the day and night and this is factored into the substation loadings, car chargers are a fixed usage when on so have to be factored as on all the time when calculating the substation loading.

 so for every charging point 10 less houses can be supplied from any given substation.

if you have an existing substation at full capacity for the number of houses, you would need to build at least 5 more to supply the charging points for every house to have access to one. (remember a charging point can charge 2 cars)