Giving Compass' Take:

• Bob North argues that a reasonable way to avert catastrophic climate change is to replace internal combustion parts to reduce energy waste. 

• Is it feasible and cost-effective to replace engine materials at the scale and speed required to avert catastrophic global warming? 

• Learn more about possible climate change solutions that need funding. 

We have a global infrastructure which relies upon internal combustion, and for some modes of transport, the renewable alternatives just aren’t practical. Container ships, cruise liners, heavy vehicles. Yet those categories are where some of the worst pollution occurs.

What caught my eye was a simple statistic: in an internal combustion engine only 30% of the energy in the fuel is usefully used. The rest is wasted. Think about the radiator in your car. All that does is take heat — energy — and throw it away.

The reason we do that rapidly becomes technical. It boils down to the fact that engines work most efficiently when very hot, but if you make them too hot, they melt. Since that’s clearly bad, we cool them down, which keeps them running, at the dual expense of throwing energy away, and running at an inefficient lower temperature.

There’s an obvious solution here, which is to make the engine out of something that doesn’t melt at the high temperatures that are most efficient. Ditch the radiator, and use all the energy. And it turns out this is possible: rather than a 30% efficiency we can get up to about 70%. In essence, halving fossil fuel usage wherever this is implemented — reducing carbon dioxide emissions and particulate pollution.

The news gets better. The technology for doing this — specialist ceramics and clever engine design — is under development now. What’s even better is this isn’t locked up in the R&D division of a single corporate, but is run by a non-profit charity, with the intention that vehicle manufacturers and suppliers of all types can license and use the technology together.

Of course, there’s a catch, but it’s an easy one to fix. As a non-profit, they need help funding their work.

Read the full article about increasing effieciency by Bob North at Medium.