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Renowned philanthropist and exterminator of typing pools Bill Gates has ordered a luxurious super-yacht, his first as it turns out.  The 112 metre LOA gin palace, first aired at the Monaco Yacht Show last September, will cost USD 500 Mn and is expected to deliver in 2024. It will have 14 guest berths and 32 crew berths, an infinity pool, helipad, a spa and - oh yes - it is going to by powered by hydrogen fuel cells. 

Liquefied hydrogen will be stored below decks in vacuum tanks at 20.25 Kelvin, which is -252.9 Celcius, rather colder than the balmy -160 Celcius at which methane liquefies. The hydrogen will power electric fuel cells via a chemical reaction with oxygen in the presence of a catalyst. The chemical reaction liberates electrons which are harvested as electricity, while the hydrogen is oxidised, becoming water which is the only by-product. The yacht designers say their boat can cover 3,750 nautical miles at 17 knots on a full fuel tank. 

Hydrogen has several advan...

Millions of virtue-signalling, eco-woke words have been written about the Australian bush fires and how they are a signal for the climate change the world is not only facing but currently undergoing. But as we’ve reported here before and as is plain to everyone, it’s not yet enough to stop humanity burning fossil fuels, only to slow down the growth in their use. And, as this global map of fires from NASA shows, Australia’s bush fires are nothing like as big as those in South East Asia or Africa or even the Latin American rainforests.

To keep global warming to the 2.0 C limit agreed in Paris, we have to wean ourselves off hydrocarbons, as is now clear, and especially off coal. The world cancelled 1,756 Gigawatts of coal-fired power generation between 2010 and 2018 according to Global Energy Monitor, but China alone increased five-fold its coal burning power generation capacity between 2000 and 2018 to 973 Gigawatts. China now consumes half of all the 8 Bn Tpa world coal production. China...