General Election 2020 manifestos

KCross

Hydrogen
Surprised to see this in the Green party manifesto for GE2020

Develop a new ‘power to gas’ infrastructure converting renewable electricity to hydrogen as a means of developing new energy storage and a transport fuel alternative.

They didnt elaborate if they see that for private cars or commercial use. I hope they havent fallen for the Toyota fuel cell hype.


EV's
Very little around EVs, they seemed a bit neutral on them actually with nothing really new around EV's other than tax ICE to the hilt. Their transport focus is almost entirely on walking/cycling. That shows a lack of understanding of rural Ireland, imo.


Solar
They do seem keen on Solar PV and said they will support installs of same and also of a Feed-in-Tariff and removing the planning limitations currently in law. Thats all good.

KCross

Grants
Here's something that needs to be taken on board...

As an alternative to the current grant regime, we will consider a car- scrappage scheme in advance of our first budget in 2021...

FG have already reduced grants for hybrids. The above is a clear sign that the current grants are going to be short lived.


Solar

By 2021, we will have established a new microgeneration scheme to allow homeowners, schools, farmers and communities that generate renewable electricity to sell back to the grid any electricity they do not use.

Most people are saying FiT by 2021 at this stage so that is positive from every party. Further removes the justification for batteries in SolarPV, imo.

KCross

EV's

• Accelerate roll out of fast charge points.
• Continue SEAI grants to boost E-car sales.
• Waive the VRT for E-cars.
• Implement free charge points for E-cars.
• Ensure 25% of the car fleet purchased by the state should be EVs
• Ban diesel cars from Irish cities from 2030
• Aim for a complete removal of fossil fuel cars by 2035
• The total cost of these measures is €118.4m.

Some interesting ones in there inc keeping the grants going and free charge points.... not sure I like the free charge points idea unless its for slow charge points only.

Solar
Support for it but nothing too specific and I didnt see a mention of FiT. A bit too vague for my liking.

KCross

EVs
Not much in the area of specifics either from them other than support for much higher carbon taxes which would hit ICE hardest, but this is true....

As regards transport, clearly grants and financial incentives have not worked. Other policy options must be considered. Current transport policy has failed to achieve anything remotely approaching a low carbon pathway for transport......... Again, an answer in this sector may be to move away from grants and incentives and towards public policy decisions and mandatory regulation.

They have made reference to why taxis and buses arent electric at this stage but havent detailed what they plan to do to make it happen. Alot of their climate change stuff is just asking questions rather than providing answers.... hmm.

This will ruffle a few feathers with anyone that has free city based parking...

Should the long-awaited benefit in kind tax on car parking places at work not be put in place, with an exemption in favour of electric cars only?

EDIT: They have another document with some more detail...

...we will incentivise the switch to low-emission vehicles and create an Electric Vehicle Charging Network.

That doesnt seem at all viable. Private operators is the way forward for charging networks unless they are talking about local authorities.

To incentivise the uptake of low-emission vehicles, the Labour Party will

• Commit to carbon-free transport, with incentives for drivers and operators to make the switch
• Ring-fence carbon tax revenues to invest in infrastructure and grants for electric vehicles
• Adjust VRT, VAT and Motor Tax to promote the uptake of low-emission vehicles
• Impose stricter environmental criteria for the significant number of company cars on our roads
• Phase in Zero-Emission Zones (ZEZs) in cities while ensuring commuters, particularly from disadvantaged communities, have access to public transport connections into urban areas

Solar
Cant find any reference to Solar PV or FiT from them.

unkel

KCross wrote: »

Hydrogen
Surprised to see this in the Green party manifesto for GE2020

Develop a new ‘power to gas’ infrastructure converting renewable electricity to hydrogen as a means of developing new energy storage and a transport fuel alternative.

They didnt elaborate if they see that for private cars or commercial use. I hope they havent fallen for the Toyota fuel cell hype.

No, don't worry. That's just taken out of some article with a vision for the future. At some point we will produce far more renewables at times than we need and we can preferably store it some better way like in EVs or in home or grid storage or even in pumped hydro or sell it on interconnectors, but where none of the above is possible, we will produce hydrogen with our excess electricity

This is all a good few years away, hard to say at this point what the most likely use of the hydrogen will be. Added to the natural gas supply, stored for use in heavy duty transport / industry , used for heating, etc.

Joseph SEE

Anything about banning sales of diesel, restrictions on solid fuel heating in new builds and a proposed ban on new sales of fossil scooters and motor bikes?

I fear the Greens are nothing, but a bunch of ideologues when the green party above all needs to be comprised almost solely by competent technocrats that understand the problems we're facing.

The Greens did a lot of damage with their promotion of diesels the last time they were in government. Those policies have killed and continue to prematurely kill thousands of people in Ireland.

liamog

Joseph SEE wrote: »

The Greens did a lot of damage with their promotion of diesels the last time they were in government. Those policies have killed and continue to prematurely kill thousands of people in Ireland.

Not so much an Irish Green Party problem as a multinational conspiracy to hoodwink EU regulators into believing diesel was fully clean when using modern adblue systems.

The real blame for any environmental damage should be placed on those in power after 2015 when the nature of the scandal became apparent and no changes were made.

Kramer

Thanks KCross - great synopsis of the current crop of our future, would-be leaders.
Not in the slightest bit encouraging, is it .

KCross

Joseph SEE wrote: »

Anything about banning sales of diesel, restrictions on solid fuel heating in new builds and a proposed ban on new sales of fossil scooters and motor bikes?

tbf, the Green's did mention banning diesel, stopping subsidies for it, equalising excise between petrol/diesel, smoky coal ban and a whole load of other stuff.

I havent listed everything from every party. Just the things that stood out in the context of this forum and I could have missed some things too. Reading manifesto's isnt exactly exciting!

JohnC.

Your sacrifice is appreciated.

graememk

The mobile website doesnt show the post title, was fun trying to guess who's manifesto was who's!

kaahooters

ok, i have to ask, whats the issue with hydrogen?

its not hard to make, its basically boiling water and bottling it, power to make it isnt hard to get with the amount of wind energy we can produce, why cant we have turbines powering banks of batteries, to power the hydrogen fuel creation, then transport that hydrogen to service stations.

the service stations already have massive tanks we can fill with the hydrogen, that hydrogen can either power generators directly to power evs, or be pumped into "ice" vehicles?

or, am i missing something?

Mickeroo

kaahooters wrote: »

its not hard to make, its basically boiling water and bottling it, power to make it isnt hard to get with the amount of wind energy we can produce, why cant we have turbines powering banks of batteries, to power the hydrogen fuel creation, then transport that hydrogen to service stations.

I think that's the main problem there, why would we want to do that when the power from the turbines can go straight into a car?

kaahooters

Mickeroo wrote: »

I think that's the main problem there, why would we want to do that when the power from the turbines can go straight into a car?

because, theres time when theirs excess power, and they deactivate turbines so the powers not wasted.

so, if in the middle of the night, theirs very little power usage, and the wind farms arent operating at 100%, they can operate at 100%, store the energy in batteries and convert it to hydrogen.

were going ot be expanding the turning farms anyway, why not keep it going and use hydrogen as extra power?

to me , its like, why not use all of what i can now and save the excess?
same as in the middle east now, convert to solar, make hydrogen and then your done.

i dont get why its not an option.

kanuseeme

kaahooters wrote: »

ok, i have to ask, whats the issue with hydrogen?

its not hard to make, its basically boiling water and bottling it, power to make it isnt hard to get with the amount of wind energy we can produce, why cant we have turbines powering banks of batteries, to power the hydrogen fuel creation, then transport that hydrogen to service stations.

the service stations already have massive tanks we can fill with the hydrogen, that hydrogen can either power generators directly to power evs, or be pumped into "ice" vehicles?

or, am i missing something?

Hydrogen is so small it needs a higher standard of storage tanks to stop it leaking out or causing embrittlement, and its density is low so there is more Hydrogen in a litre of petrol than in a litre of liquid Hydrogen.

The liquefied hydrogen has lower energy density by volume than gasoline by approximately a factor of four, because of the low density of liquid hydrogen — there is actually more hydrogen in a litre of gasoline (116 grams) than there is in a litre of pure liquid hydrogen (71 grams).

Requires a lot of energy to electrolyse it from water, plus the fact it likes to blow up airships etc, but I have been told thats a minor detail.

mp3guy

Mickeroo wrote: »

I think that's the main problem there, why would we want to do that when the power from the turbines can go straight into a car?

It does seem to be a decent storage mechanism for energy. Won't decay away like batteries do (once there's no storage leaks).

Joseph SEE

mp3guy wrote: »

It does seem to be a decent storage mechanism for energy. Won't decay away like batteries do (once there's no storage leaks).

It's a pretty terrible storage medium. The efficiency is 20% to 25% once you factor in all the loses from hydrolysis and the process of liquifying or compressing the gas.

The carbon fibre tanks are extremely expensive with a limited self life. Any leakage is potentially catastrophic and hydrogen can ignite with extremely small leaks.

Then you have the long wait times between fill ups as the system needs to repressurise.
At the very least it's a really poor choice for land based energy storage.

graememk

mp3guy wrote: »

It does seem to be a decent storage mechanism for energy. Won't decay away like batteries do (once there's no storage leaks).

Hydrogen is ridiculously hard to store, with it being the smallest atom there is, It can leak through stainless steel tanks.

Theres an energy loss of 20-30% in electrolysis and then another 40-60% loss on the fuel cell end too.

Hydrogen/methane will have its uses tho in heavy industry where diesel is still king. But for general day to day use, Going straight into a battery is currently the best option for general motoring.

Lumen

mp3guy wrote: »

It does seem to be a decent storage mechanism for energy. Won't decay away like batteries do (once there's no storage leaks).

The problem is that the more engineering you do to a hydrogen storage tank (e.g. using metal hydrides) the more it starts to look like a battery, and that pushes up the cost and carbon footprint.

mp3guy

I guess Toyota must see a justifiably big potential market if they're willing to invest the money in making it commercially viable, in the face of all of these technological challenges.

Mickeroo

Mickeroo wrote: »

I think that's the main problem there, why would we want to do that when the power from the turbines can go straight into a car?

I wonder also. There must be a fuller truth. Why else are BMW, Daimler-Benz, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai investing in the technology?

unkel

We will never see hydrogen fueled cars on a mass commercial scale (unless heavily subsidised). Toyota has made the wrong choice and, not strange in the Japanese culture, can not / will not admit it. BMW also made this same mistake but has long since abandoned the hydrogen ship while it started to sink.

kaahooters

unkel wrote: »

We will never see hydrogen fueled cars on a mass commercial scale (unless heavily subsidised). Toyota has made the wrong choice and, not strange in the Japanese culture, can not / will not admit it. BMW also made this same mistake but has long since abandoned the hydrogen ship while it started to sink.

they said the same about evs.

fricatus

kaahooters wrote: »

they said the same about evs.

True, but the engineering challenge around cars for the past 20-30 years has been on one hand, how to engineer a fuel source or energy delivery method that would allow us to move away from fossil fuels, while at the same time allowing much simpler and reliable electric motors to be used in place of pistons and crankshafts.

Battery technology has now advanced past a tipping point where it is the favoured method for storing energy from the grid and supplying it to a motor that drives the wheels of a car. It had long been thought that hydrogen would be the storage method that would allow this to happen, and had we stumbled upon some very efficient fuel-cell discovery, and also some ultra-reliable storage membrane to stop all the leaks, etc., then it's plausible to think that hydrogen would have been the dominant technology.

However this particular challenge is now solved (at the scale of passenger cars anyway) and mass EV adoption looks like a question of when, rather than if. That means hydrogen is redundant unless some stunning discovery comes in late and saves the day. However the same challenge now needs solving for trucks, ships and planes, and it may be that hydrogen works better on the larger scales involved for ships, or for weight-saving reasons in aircraft.

kaahooters

graememk wrote: »

Hydrogen is ridiculously hard to store, with it being the smallest atom there is, It can leak through stainless steel tanks.

Theres an energy loss of 20-30% in electrolysis and then another 40-60% loss on the fuel cell end too.

Hydrogen/methane will have its uses tho in heavy industry where diesel is still king. But for general day to day use, Going straight into a battery is currently the best option for general motoring.

ok, its challenging to store, and you lose aprox 50% of the energy from the turbine, but, if that turbine wasnt being used due to grid being at capacity, its 50% of the wind energy stored, and, with our energy needed expanding, would it not be better to have that extra then not have it?

KCross

KCross wrote: »

EVs
Not much in the area of specifics either from them other than support for much higher carbon taxes which would hit ICE hardest, but this is true....

As regards transport, clearly grants and financial incentives have not worked. Other policy options must be considered. Current transport policy has failed to achieve anything remotely approaching a low carbon pathway for transport......... Again, an answer in this sector may be to move away from grants and incentives and towards public policy decisions and mandatory regulation.

They have made reference to why taxis and buses arent electric at this stage but havent detailed what they plan to do to make it happen. Alot of their climate change stuff is just asking questions rather than providing answers.... hmm.

This will ruffle a few feathers with anyone that has free city based parking...

Should the long-awaited benefit in kind tax on car parking places at work not be put in place, with an exemption in favour of electric cars only?

EDIT: They have another document with some more detail...

...we will incentivise the switch to low-emission vehicles and create an Electric Vehicle Charging Network.

That doesnt seem at all viable. Private operators is the way forward for charging networks unless they are talking about local authorities.

To incentivise the uptake of low-emission vehicles, the Labour Party will

• Commit to carbon-free transport, with incentives for drivers and operators to make the switch
• Ring-fence carbon tax revenues to invest in infrastructure and grants for electric vehicles
• Adjust VRT, VAT and Motor Tax to promote the uptake of low-emission vehicles
• Impose stricter environmental criteria for the significant number of company cars on our roads
• Phase in Zero-Emission Zones (ZEZs) in cities while ensuring commuters, particularly from disadvantaged communities, have access to public transport connections into urban areas

Solar
Cant find any reference to Solar PV or FiT from them.

New doc available today from Labour...

EVs

Labour will target electric vehicle grants to those who need them, especially in rural Ireland, where people may be car dependent. People with a disability who are also car dependent will be given an electric vehicle grant. However, the Fine Gael plan for everyone to buy an electric car is not realistic and would provide larger subsidies for wealthier households, with nothing for those who cannot afford car ownership.

So, EV's are just for rural folks now?!
I dont know how they would implement a grant in that way. Ridiculous idea, imo.


Solar

Labour will roll out a scheme to provide all schools and colleges with solar panels. This will lower their energy bills and ultimately pay for itself.

Still nothing on FiT.

KCross

Finally Sinn Fein's was published today...

EV's... not much.. This is all I can find:

Massive public investment in state-owned electric vehicle charging points

Accelerating the roll-out of public EV charging infrastructure by investing €50 million

They see it as state-owned. Not sure if that means putting it in the hands of ESB or whether it would be a new state owned company or local authorities.

They see the charging infrastructure as important anyway which is to be welcomed but not sure about the state owned side of it and it doesnt differentiate if its slow or rapid chargers they are talking about.


Solar. They support SolarPV and FiT.

Allowing private citizens to sell any excess energy they produce from, for instance, roof top solar panels or small-scale wind turbines would also increase the proportion of renewable energy sources. Sinn Féin published the Micro-generation Support Scheme Bill 2017 to facilitate this. This would also aid in reducing the price of a family’s electricity and heating bills.