Articles and blog posts to do with Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions. Describes the types of technology available, and how these programs may affect the process industries.
The good old days
This post is the second in the series ‘The Shape of Net Zero’. The series is based on an understanding that we cannot simply switch out one source of energy (fossil fuels) with another (wind, solar, nuclear and others) and carry on with Business as Usual. We need to consider the following parameters to do with a switch in the basics of our energy supply.
Renewable Energy. M.C. Escher's Waterfall (1961)
Renewables are growing faster than other sources of energy.
The fraction of energy provided by renewals is declining.
Most of the people reading posts such as this are aware that earlier this month the IPCC issued an alarming report on climate change that should make society change its ways. Failure to do so could lead to catastrophe and a possible breakdown of civilization within just 20 years. Yet nothing happened; the report changed almost nothing. It was just a blip in the torrent of news that we face every day.
In any performance-based program such as process safety, the work is never finished — there is always room for improvement.
In practice, most of the developments in techniques for improving safety analysis are improvements of existing programs or techniques. For example, the hazards analysis technique LOPA (Layers of Protection Analysis) has seen widespread application in recent years. Yet it is basically a development of the well-established Fault Tree and Event Tree techniques.
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