Room for improvement but Cyprus on track to lower polluted air emissions

[Paphos Life]

A EU study published on Friday revealed that, like most European countries, Cyprus needs to step up efforts across all sectors to make sure citizens can breathe clean air, preventing respiratory diseases and premature death.The study points out how Cyprus did not submit a national plan outlining its emissions reduction commitments before the deadline set for May 24, 2019....

Read the article and chat about it below...

[Kili01]

Yes, they do. But they also need to use more efficient new gas burning generators to replace old ones which are burning heavy fuel oil. But they don't really care, as the fines levied on Cyprus by the EU are in effect paid by extra charges which are levied on all electricity bills...

Dee

[cyprusmax47]

One of my customers paid recently a extra charge for greenhouse gas emissions levied by EU, more than 160 Euros on his 2-month bill...and is going to install photo-voltaic to avoid most of it in future...

Max

[Mirek]

Am I missing something when we have a country blessed with an abundance of free god given sunshine, a country with plenty of idle land, with close ultra rich neighbours and "acquired mega rich citizens" who would certainly invest in massive solar farms and more wind farms in the Troodos to generate electricity



This small beautiful country could become the first 0 carbon country in the world if the political will was there


Instead they import to burn oil pumping C02 into the atmosphere and don't seem at all bothered that the citizens drive pollutant spewing old vehicles and the preferred choice of building material needs seriously reconsidering



Just thinking aloud

[cyprusmax47]

Am I missing something when we have a country blessed with an abundance of free god given sunshine, a country with plenty of idle land, with close ultra rich neighbours and "acquired mega rich citizens" who would certainly invest in massive solar farms and more wind farms in the Troodos to generate electricity



This small beautiful country could become the first 0 carbon country in the world if the political will was there


Instead they import to burn oil pumping C02 into the atmosphere and don't seem at all bothered that the citizens drive pollutant spewing old vehicles and the preferred choice of building material needs seriously reconsidering



Just thinking aloud

I could not agree more what you are saying Mirek, except the idea of installing more wind farms in Cyprus as there is not enough wind to run them with any profit. Capital invested in wind power is a waste of money, but photo-voltaic is the best solution, specially if the produced energy is stored in batteries....

Max

[Kili01]

You've got it in one! AIK has been importing heavy fuel oil for decades, they just haven't replaced their old generators. Though after the Mari disaster , which I won't go into again here, When several of their generators were very badly damaged, They should have done.

Dee

[jeba]

I´m not sure it´s technically viable to increase solar production ad libidum if you feed it directly into the grid. There is a limit to how much fluctuation in production the grid can handle. In my area there seem to be problems with keeping voltage constant now already (which will shut down my PV-installation). Not to speak of the problem with "storing electricity" for when there is no sunshine. Until there is an affordable solution to the storage problem gas might be the way to go.

[jeba]

From the article:

During the rush hours from 7am to 9am the pollutant concentrations in some situations fell up to five times below the corresponding January levels.

What does that even mean? A reduction to 20% ?

[Devil]

I´m not sure it´s technically viable to increase solar production ad libidum if you feed it directly into the grid. There is a limit to how much fluctuation in production the grid can handle. In my area there seem to be problems with keeping voltage constant now already (which will shut down my PV-installation). Not to speak of the problem with "storing electricity" for when there is no sunshine. Until there is an affordable solution to the storage problem gas might be the way to go.

Absolutely correct! With a normal grid, like ours, there is a viable maximum of about 20% of the consumption at any time that can be supplied from variable sources like solar. Might up it to 30% with a smart grid and adequate energy storage. Exceed that and ... boom! ... unreliable power supply. If we had a reliable affordable storage method, we can up these figures but how? Countries like Norway and Switzerland can store electricity by their topography.

There is only one, real, viable answer today, nuclear fission, warts and all. One or two mini-thorium reactors could supply the answer safely, on this island (not a big uranium one). However, we do have a source that I've promoted here for many years: waste! 9% of the country's energy needs could be supplied cleanly by incinerating all our waste in two purpose built power stations of types found throughout the world,1,000 times over. This would have the double-whammy of reducing the volume of waste to just 10%.

[Mirek]

At least someone seems to be talking some common sense

Maybe someone will take a bit of notice now

https://cyprus-mail.com/2020/07/19/gree ... backwards/