Bay2Bay

Bike the World with the Sun: Go Big Gery and I have decided to bike a long-distance race, which is solar only. The Sun Trip: The Solar Bike Adventure The Sun Trip concept combines adventure, racing, cycling, and solar energy. Cycling represents freedom, discovery, and meeting locals while exploring the earth. While electric bikes have revolutionized the cycling world, they still have a limitation: autonomy. Solar bikes provide an answer: the sun. The range becomes infinite, and the energy produced is non-polluting. The Sun Trip concept is a race that tests the robustness, reliability, and efficiency of solar bikes and riders by sending them on routes around the world. Participants design a wide variety of prototypes that embark on adventures to determine the fastest. In summary, the Sun Trip is an innovative cycling race that combines technology, sustainability, and exploration. 🌞🚴‍♂️ The Sun Trip - Destination Sahara: 2024 marks the 5th edition of the Sun Trip (original format), wh...

By not distinguishing between a fact and an opinion, by dint of confusing orders of magnitude and time scales, I wanted to find the large masses of carbon production and carbon sinks and share them here. We have included in the site under the "fact" tab the data we found in "the Project Drawdown - March 2020" and which states, by order of magnitude:   Carbon sources 1.       Electricity production                : 25% 2.       Cultivation & agriculture         : 24% 3.       Industry                                     : 21% 4.       Transportation            ...

3, 2, 1, ZERO Waste!!!   A company and a city in California, the perfect match to save the planet by making waste more valuable than ever.    Solena Group and Lancaster City are embarking on the production of greener-than-green hydrogen and will transform Lancaster City into the alternative energy capital of the world. The Lancaster plant will be ready to produce 11,000 kg per day. Working 24/7, 8,000 hours a year, the facility will be able to supply 3.8 million kg, the equivalent of 3,800 tons of green hydrogen per year.  This project will allow the Lancaster facility to become three times larger than any other green hydrogen supplier already in existence and with the advantage of using a method that will allow having clean hydrogen without going through methods that will increase the final price.   The primary material, which is waste, will be provided by the City of Lancaster. This project will allow the company to produce clean hydrogen from 40,000 tons...

As "green" hydrogen production and storage has become an EU green deal central strategic axis, more and more innovative solutions emerge from academic and industrial players. Early this month, the Fraunhofer institute published an article presenting a prototype of what we can call "hydrogen power paste": hydrogen power paste (source : Fraunhofer institute) The principle behind is to create a magnesium hydride paste (whereas a high quantity of hydrogen is stored). When water is added to the mix, hydrogen gas is produced and can be used in a fuel cell to create electricity.  In the previously published article describing hydrogen fuel principles and applications, we mentioned that this H2 energy source was particularly suited for heavy transportation such as trains, trucks, or boats. This power paste concept is particularly interesting for light mobility or applications where there are no refill stations neither H2 storage tanks easily available. One can think of Hyd...

Gery and I are back on the road this year 2021 for an electro-solar race.  One more name to be added to the list of the Green Deal.  We have our  circular economy plan . Let me explain: the  plan  is the map here above; the  economy  implies that we are going to recharge our batteries with solar energy that we will self-produce and  circular  because we are simply going all the way around Europe.   Even better, we will leave Brussels in June 2021, in the presence of Frans Timmermans, Vice-President of the European Commission, in charge of the Green Deal.   We will have less than 60 days to complete this tour of Europe which will pass through 33 countries (to be confirmed), will total 10,000 km and will have 5 checkpoints (Stockholm-Sweden, Constanta-Romania, Passo Stelvio-Italy, Pico Veleta-Spain, Porto-Portugal) with an expected arrival in Lyon.   Portugal will be our "far west" stage and we are so pleased that th...

Hydrogen: What colour? 19,4 KWh in Li-ion, H2 and NH3 In June, I had the chance to bike with my son Léopold from San Francisco (California) to Denver (Colorado). I planned several meetings with companies dedicated to developing solutions to overcome climate change. That's how I came to meet with Joe Beach, the president of Starfire Energy. From there, I started to learn about hydrogen and ammonia.    First, I realize that hydrogen is so colourful.  You have many different types of hydrogen: the "black," the "green," the "blue," even the "turquoise."   The black : Today, 95% of hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels and is responsible for 800 million tons of CO2 (1.9% of the 43.1 billion tons of CO2 produced in 2019). In 2019, 75 million tons of hydrogen were produced worldwide (one ton of H2 creates 10 tons of CO2).  The technique used is called methane reforming. We take water (2*H2O) and methane (CH4) that we heat, and we obtain after cooki...

  After long weeks of absence, I take up the pen again.  The vacations of this summer 2020 were an opportunity to discuss and meet brilliant people with whom I had the chance to exchange on what tomorrow could be like.  I have to write "could" because here, there are no exact sciences anymore, but relatively strong hypotheses. Remember the book  "The limit to growth" in 1972. The book was based on The World3 model, a system dynamics model for computer simulation of interactions between population, industrial growth, food production, and limits in the earth's ecosystems. These hypotheses tell us that the energy mix road will be 35% renewable energy and 65% nuclear energy. However, in Europe (Belgium, France, Germany), we turn away from nuclear power due to a lack of political courage or even the capacity to simply decide.  And yet we have developed all the technology.  What has become of it? The only EPR reactors (European Pressurized Water Reactor) operatin...