Climate Change: the hot planetary boundary

This is a look at the V2-GHL technologies, how they work, and how they are going to impact EVs & future energy and energy prices for not just EV, EV-PHEV EV-Hybrid owners, but for everyone. Its 3 years since the March 2022 "The electrical grid, V2G and EV Home Charging" web page was published on OneFinitePlanet.org website, and now in 2025 its all happening.

The question is, do we seriously disrupt an economic system transitioning too slowly from fossil fuels, or wait until the system is disrupted by extreme weather. Most likely, we deal with a mix of both disruptions. We are living through many trends that are unsustainable for even another decade, and while it is not certain which trend reaching its tipping point will cause the greatest disruption, the environment and rising CO2 levels will play a key role by at the latest 2033. While some righteous environmentalists protest for everyone to embrace austerity and simply just stop burning fossil fuels, the action required is putting in place alternatives. In practice we can't switch off without alternatives, and progress on alternatives is progressing too slowly in a failing effort to avoid disrupting economies and the establishment. Reality is both the extreme weather events that further motivate action and those actions themselves will cause disruption, which will both combine with the disruption from AI and the collapse of economic Ponzi schemes.

Despite many claims that EVs have a dirty secret in that they are not really green at all, the real secret is how long it takes for the green payback. The claims are based on two realities: 1) the driving of EVs still results in emissions when EVs are charged from our current dirty electrical grids, and 2) the building of EVs also creates emissions, and sometimes increased emissions over building ICEVs. However real data from critical studies shows that even in the worst case, overall, an high build emission inefficient EVs charged from a dirty grid still result in less emissions than ICEV. Just in that extreme case, only a marginal reducing in emissions! However, already not all grids are "dirty grids" and as vehicles have an average lifespan of over 20 years either dirty grids will improve during that 20 years or we may have bigger problems. Build emissions from EVs largely track EV prices, and Wright's law dictates both EV prices build emissions will soon fall below those for ICEVs. The real conclusion from examining this question, is there is no quick fix green EV transition, but any delay in reducing production of ICE vehicles is creating …

There is a real need to protect the environment, and advocacy for the environment is great, but that advocacy can acquire traits of a religion, which at the extreme can even result in far-right eco-terrorism, and more in the mainstream can result in righteous environmentalism and embracing austerity and sacrifices as "an opium". The "righteous environmentalists" preach this austerity as necessary life of the future to an audience that just see the rich becoming even richer. This blindly serves an alternate agenda and needlessly alienates and disenfranchises much of the population. The result is do-nothing politicians to get re-elected instead of motivating voters for real action on climate change and electing leaders who will act.

If coal fired power can no longer compete on price, then why is China building two new coal power plants per week? Is China somehow able to use coal fired electricity to gain a competitive advantage against western manufacturing which increasingly relies on "clean green" but more expensive energy, with the result that emissions and jobs are simply transferred to China? The current politics of climate agreements encourage rich countries to offshore some emissions to those countries often forced to be more reliant coal and with higher emissions. Could we fix the problem of China syndrome emissions if there was the political will?

Full sequestration of carbon is the reverse of burning fossil fuels. Full sequestration does work and is part of the process of producing E-Fuels and the process of photosynthesis in plants. But full sequestration requires at least as much energy as can be extracted from the forms of previously sequestrated carbon that we call "fossil fuels". What can't work, is the illusion of using energy from fossil fuels to reverse the process of burning those same fossil fuels, and then still having a form energy left to sell as a product. Yet that is exactly the "blue hydrogen" proposition.

At least, not a direct substitute. Solar and Wind have proven to be successful partial cost-effective substitutes for fossil fuels, but fossil fuels are stored energy, and solar and wind are not. Renewables are a disruption, and disruptions are usually not one-for-one substitutions. There are two strategies for replacing fossil fuels in the grid, and they can be used together: 1: Add energy storage for when renewable energy levels fall below a threshold. 2: Base load "solar and wind": Design to provide base load at a low threshold of wind and light. Without such strategies, it is impossible to reach the goal of removing reliance on fossil fuels. With the right strategy, it is possible to realise benefits go far beyond just replacement.

COP26. It sounds like a police officer who can't be named. For me it raises questions such as: Why "COP26" and what happened to the first 25 COPs?Are all decisions are made in advance, or is anything really agreed at the conference?Is there more than politicians and fossil fuel companies agreeing spin and token gestures?

Reports from COP27 seems indicate the key initiative this year to make wealthy nations cover the cost of the damages poor nations will incur as a result of emissions that have main originated from those wealthy nations. The proposal as it stands has a missing an essential piece, and trying to cover for that essential piece, appears most to likely to increase emissions, and move COP away from a focus on solving the climate crisis and instead toward just fighting over the cost. This is a troubled look at the key flaw in what has been put forward and the real solution that should be in place.

Yes, big oil with value at over US$7 billion per day in revenue at stake clearly has a vested interest in arguing against climate change and downplaying risks, but on the other hand, aren't there also vested interests exaggerating and overstating the risks of climate change? Effectively could 'big renewables', 'big science' or 'big climate', be out lobbying and out promoting 'big fossil'? Is this really a balanced fight, or is it more like the might of 'big tobacco' vs 'whistle blower medical research' all over again? This is a look at the financial might on each side of the argument, and the respective motives for each side to overstate their case.

From "the biggest corruption scandal ever" in Brazil, problems in Venezuela, human rights in Saudi Arabia and Iran, to the problems caused by lobbyists against action on climate change, an abundance of fossil fuels is a source of political power, yet rarely force for good, and Australia, with a wealth of coal and gas, is not spared. The current crisis in Ukraine not only drives up energy prices globally, but it also creates a dilemma for gas producing nations.

After friend told me "I am not interested in electric cars, because I will wait for hydrogen cars", I did the research, and found that such a future no longer makes any sense and will never happen. It turns out that hydrogen cars were never desirable and only viable if EVs remained impractical. Hydrogen vehicles have now been surpassed for charge times and range and they were only ever anexpensive to build and operate, higher emissions, limited interim stop gaps, for the time until we reduced the limitations of battery EVs.

Move to renewables for energy, and electricity for transport, and we solve the climate problem. But renewables require storage, and uptake of EVs requires home charging, and there is a cost to both. But what if electric vehicles could solve the "green power grid" problem, provide energy security, and avert a threat of increasing inequality, and reduce costs? It turns out this dream scenario is definitely possible but can be fully realised only if the home charging problem is solved.

After a long history resisting action on climate change, the Australian government finally 'committed' to net zero by 2050, and then did an about face from their previous 'anti-EV' stance and announced support for electric vehicles. Or did they?

If you were 'big oil', and you were trying to delay action on climate change impacting the fossil fuel industry, what would be your strategy? Would you point the finger elsewhere to create maximum division? This is a questioning look as to whether there is misdirection to create a distraction on for climate change, and just maybe, it is working.

The race to stop CO2, has led to many 'scam' projects involving hydrogen, but it is not always clear who is being scammed: the public, or the proponents of hydrogen projects. What is the attraction behind the obsession with hydrogen? This is a look at the motives, the myths and the facts around hydrogen projects. Spoiler: There are some valid roles for hydrogen, but hydrogen has no remaining role as an energy source, and even any potential role as an energy carrier is highly questionable.

To examine information on climate science, or anything else really, it may not hurt to be sceptic, but you do need to avoid confirmation bias. Genuine sceptics, as opposed to deniers, keep looking for answers, and in the battle to come to a conclusion on climate science there are a number of hurdles to clear. I feel most people just give up and decide to believe whoever they prefer to believe. This is a look from a sceptic's perspective, and with the key information needed to get things to add up. There is a second inconvenient truth behind climate change, and this one seems to be avoided by those advocating climate action. This truth is the one behind why we can't put the carbon from fossil fuels back into the air even though the carbon in CO2 emissions came from CO2 in the air.