Could we dredge the Netherlands without fossil fuels? (2018)

BigTTYGothGF

> those ships would require enormous chemical batteries In many cases they can't be all that far from land, could one set up a way to run wires? I also wonder about the possibility for some kind of permanent installation in select places, where small amounts of sediment are continually removed (as opposed to large amounts of sediment occasionally removed). Being permanent means you can hook it up to the grid.

throwawayffffas

You do know you can burn stuff that is not dug up from the ground right? From ethanol to sun flower and coconut oil. You can pretty much just pour them in a gas tank and the engine will just work.

an_account

Electricity generated from wind and solar with some wires to the dredge would be way easier than dredging by hand. Why do many environmental activists seem to want to go back to a shitty past rather than move forward to bright future. The historical aspects of this article are a good read though. Very interesting technology.

amelius

Reminded me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1Af96gYVI "The insane plan to dam the North Sea."

arjie

I think, crucially, we cannot do so without damaging the environment even without fossil fuels. In time, presumably environmental concerns will result in sufficient acceleration of depolderization until the Netherlands no longer has such a large environmental damage footprint. Fortunately, they have made strides on this[0] but in time they will hopefully mitigate the terrible damage they have done here. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertogin_Hedwigepolder

fragmede

I wanna plug Fervo energy, as advanced geothermal, where they've got a plant in the US where it's up and running. They tunnel into the Earth and use that to heat up water, and use that temperature differential to generate electricity. Expertise in drilling oil wells can be translated into drilling geothermal pipes instead!