Tag Archives: manufacturing

Why EV Batteries aren’t being recycled

Preface.  Talk to your typical capitalist / environmentalist and they will both agree that we will never run out of anything because we can recycle.  But we aren’t.  Especially since it’s cheaper to buy newly mined metals than to recycle … Continue reading

Posted in Batteries, Mining, Recycle, Recycling | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why EV Batteries aren’t being recycled

Index of best energyskeptic posts

This is an attempt to boil down 1500+ energyskeptic posts into the 200 of the best ones. Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com Women in ecology  author of 2021 Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy best price here; 2015 … Continue reading

Posted in An Index of Best Energyskeptic Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Life After Fossil Fuels: manufacturing will be less precise

Preface. This is a book review and excerpts of Winchester’s “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers created the modern world”. The book describes how the industrial revolution was made possible with ever more precision.  First came the steam engine, possible to … Continue reading

Posted in Infrastructure & Collapse, Jobs and Skills, Life After Fossil Fuels, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Life After Fossil Fuels: manufacturing will be less precise

Even Pencils will be hard to make

Preface. Most of us are unaware of how complex our society is, how things are made, how food is grown, how stuff is delivered, and the people, energy, transportation, and kinds and sources of materials in every day objects.  This … Continue reading

Posted in EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Localization, Supply Chains | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Fossil-fueled industrial heat hard to impossible to replace with renewables

Preface. Cement, steel, glass, bricks, ceramics, chemicals, and much more depend on fossil-fueled high heat (up to 3200 F) to make. Except for the electric-arc furnace to recycle existing steel, there aren’t any renewable ways to make cement, other metals, … Continue reading

Posted in Alternative Energy, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Can concentrated solar power be used to generate industrial process heat?

Preface. The bright future of solar thermal powered factories, makes some important points about using concentrated solar power to generate heat: “…A large share of energy consumed worldwide is by heat. Cooking, space heating and water heating dominate domestic energy … Continue reading

Posted in Concentrated Solar Power, Energy Infrastructure, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Going 100% renewable power means a lot of dirty mining

Preface. Everyone talks about oil spills, but what about the dirty mining that will have a huge polluting footprint on the earth of mercury, arsenic, and other toxic heavy metals.  The Pebble mine is canceled for now, but if the … Continue reading

Posted in Groundwater, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat, Pollution | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Going 100% renewable power means a lot of dirty mining