We all use energy to maintain our standard of living, lots of it! In simple terms energy use can be divided into three categories (1) Maintaining a comfortable environment in buildings (2) Making stuff and (3) Moving people and things around. The concerns over CO2 emissions leading to climate change have lead to a push towards using “renewables”, generally wind and solar power. I’m going to use simple Physics to discuss energy policy. Among other things I’m going to show that substitution of coal fired power stations by combined cycle natural gas does more to reduce CO2 than renewables. I’m also going to demonstrate that, without extensive energy storage, the contribution of wind and solar is very limited. Finally I’ll show that travelling long distances inevitably requires large energy inputs. If there’s time I’ll discuss electric cars and whether Mr. Musk’s hyperloop is more “hype” than “loop”!
