Pebble reactors are arguably safer than coal-fired power! They can be mass produced in factories and then trucked onsite, as ready to produce modules, which can simply be endlessly added to with demand, making them ultra-competitive with coal.
The design feature which coats pebbles of fissile fuel, with grapefruit sized balls of carbon; effectively preventing any melt down, even where the coolant, helium, were shut down for any reason.
Then we have thorium reactors, which fell out of favour in the seventies, because there was no weapons spin-off. They produce very little waste, which is far less toxic than oxide reactors, and is eminently suitable for very long life space batteries, communication satellites etc. And therefore, another cheaper than coal option?
City dwellers produce 2.5 times more carbon than their country cousins.
This could probably be reversed by converting all biological waste into localised electrical power!
Given the efficiency of the system, [40% with a stationary engine and 60% with methane fuelled ceramic fuel cells,] for far less than we shell out for, [20% efficiency,] centralised coal fired power.
Moreover, both of the localised options provide endless free hot water!
Furthermore, the local options are rarely vulnerable to heat, forest fire of flood event caused breakdowns, brownouts or blackouts; nor is the captive market energy consumer, asked to carry the can for entirely unnecessary infrastructure renewals, private corp debt servicing, shareholders dividend demands and or, the eternally rising cost of fuel.
Human waste is always freely available, wherever we have human populations, and we should stop wasting it or sending trillions of tons of increasingly expensive fertilizer out to sea, where it causes inevitable environmental damage!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty,
Yes, BMW did burn the hydrogen in IC engines. Unfortunately it is there
that the most energy is lost in heat.
The alternative is to use fuel cells. Unfortunately as I was told
directly by the MG of Dennis, the fire engine and bus manufacturers,
who did a lot in this area, the lifetime of fuel cells just is not economic.
For cars, they cannot be parked in underground car parks.
We could use natural gas, economically, for vehicles but the cost is
very high to convert everything.
Also we would have to immediately stop export of natural gas.
We use about 1 million barrels of oil a day in Aus, and to replace it
with anything else is a really big job.
Some say that we just cannot borrow enough money to do it.

I understand that electrolysis for hydrogen is possible but it would
require eight times the number of present petrol tankers to distribute the hydrogen.
Also the tanks for the cars are quite big and leak.

I think the ultimate solution is to forget cars altogether.

Rhrosty,

I can't understand why some are so dead against solar thermal being a viable part of a sustainable energy strategy - as by absorbing part of the sun's energy falling on the planet it could both supply energy (electricity) and reduce part of any global warming caused by the greenhouse effect on our industrial emissions. A win, win?

Some quote the area (and the cost) of the very large scale arrays required as being a major obstacle, but I could see, as you have mentioned at least once, that we have large arid areas which could lend themselves to such arrays. Additionally, I have proposed establishing massive greenhouses beneath the array mirrors, requiring only sea water and treated or untreated human waste to be pumped from the coast to provide these greenhouses with the remaining ingredients required to achieve large-scale food and/or bio-fuel production - probably incorporating algae farming. Cities could also be established in the precincts of such arrays, and, with sufficient water pumped from the coast (and desalinated by distillation using part of the array's energy) arid land surrounding the array could conceivably be reverted to productive farmland. Oases in the desert.

Ok, we don't really want a substantial increase in population, but such arrays could support the development of satellite cities to alleviate part of the congestion and related deficiencies being experienced in our major coastal cities, and these satellites could have all the mod-cons, including artificial lakes, streams and even forests. If Dubai and such can turn desert into five star resorts, we could conceivably develop cities. Perhaps, eventually, such an approach could eventually convert our arid inland to a new Gondwanaland?

Who knows, if such an approach could be effective here, deserts around the world could be rehabilitated, reliance on fossil fuels be substantially reduced, and oil use diverted to those products totally reliant on it - such as lubricants, plastics, etc.

A brave, new world?

Saltpetre, interesting suggestion on inland solar thermal.
I suspect that the amount of energy needed to pump water from the coast
to the plant might use up most of the energy produced.
Water after all is very heavy.
Like many of these ideas I think yours will fail because of ERoEI,
Energy Return on Energy Invested, even though the energy invested is free.
The cost of the plant would make the energy too expensive to use.
Still someone could do the maths. There must be some data now on the
cost of large scale solar arrays and the cost of pipelines per 100km
plus the pumping costs.

That should keep you involved for a few weeks, hi !

I Apologies to the Forum for straying off topic.

However, as Baz points out, ERoEI is at the heart of the question of why there are NO easy substitutes.

The suppression of that true and correct ERoEI information is actively pursued by our Federal Government and State Governments, making discussions here fruitless.

None of us here are ALLOWED to explore this important avenue in assessing which future fuels can "non-easily" substitute for coal & oil and WHY they are urgently needed.

It's already clear to me that the only two baseload, 24/7/367 options with the ERoEI credentials are nuclear and Geothermal.

I dare not say any more as I need to explain why neither is meaningfully in the current government mix.

And THAT friends is off topic ..