Man at B&Q wrote:
On Oct 19, 12:34 pm, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 19/10/2012 12:18, Man at B&Q wrote:

Well, maybe...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ene...itish-engineer...

The big question is how many kWh of electricity did they consume in
those 3 months to make a mere 5L of petrol substitute.

Indeed, but nothing beats petrol, as a fuel for long range vehicles.

The distribution infrastructure is already in place. So what if it
costs more but decouples us from our dependency on imports, gives a
viable storage medium for "renewables" and runs from cheap nuclear
power (assuming we pull our fingers out and build new nukes).

Shale oil in North America. Reserves exceed know Middle East oil reserves.
In most cases the oil shale fields are an extreme example, where the energy
to release it is almost equal to the energy obtained. But much of the North
American shale oil only needs to be warm to extract the oil. For the UK's
oil demand only 5 nuclear power stations dedicated to extract the oil from
shale. The oil can be put on tankers in the Great Lakes, half way across
North America, and transportation is then much cheaper. We will not run out
of oil quickly.

Internal combustion engined vehicles are an efficiency joke - the makers
have done little to improve/replace these old crocks. Some condensing gas
boilers are up to over 95% efficiency - burning natural gas at point of use
(in the homes) is highly efficient. Having smaller, local, cleaner, natural
gas power stations, again is far more efficient as there are less line
losses - also waste heat can be piped to local homes (Combined Heat &
Power). Most urban transport can be trams/electric urban rail. In
Scandinavia, local stations are about 90% efficient as the waste heat is
used. One station uses and underground heat store, to store heat in summer
for winter use.