How we make things
13 important questions on How we make things
Bill Gates describes various materials that have become just as essential to modern life as electricity is, what materials is he talking about?
- Concrete
- Steel
- Plastic
- Glass
How much concrete does America and China use each year?
- America alone produces more than 96 million tons of cement, one of the main ingredients in concrete: that's nearly 600 pouns for every person in the country.
- China used more concrete in the first 16 years of the 21st century than the U.S did in the enire 20th century
The development that the world use more and more materials, also has an advantage, which is that?
- It also means that people's lives are getting better: more money, better education, and people get older.
- If you care about poverty, this is a good thing.
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The development that the world use more and more materials, has an disadvantage, which is that?
- Making this material emits lots of greenhouse gases" they are responsible for about a third of all emissions worldwide.
- In some cases, notably concrete, we don't have a practical way to make them without producing carbon.
What is the reason that we like steel?
- Steel is strong and easy to shape when it's hot.
It cost 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide to make 1 ton of steel, which is a lot, why do we do it this way?
- Because it's cheap
- Iron ore and coal (what you need to make steel) is inexpensive.
What do you need to make cement and why is this bad for the climate?
- You need gravel, sand, water and cement. To make cement, you need calcium plus carbon and oxygen and burn this with some other materials.
- The reason cement is bad for the climate, is because after you burn the materials, you end up with the thing you want, calcium for cement, but also with the thing you don't want: carbon dioxide.
- Unfortunately, there is no way to make cement without carbon dioxide.
Plastic is like steel and cement a material that produce carbon dioxide, but what is the important way that makes plastic different from cement and steel?
- When we make steel of cement, we make carbon dioxide as a by-product, but when we make plastic, half of the carbon stays in the plastic.
- The reason of this is because carbon likes bonding with oxygen and hydrogen.
What is the main environmental problem with plastic?
- Plastics can take hundreds of years to degrade, and becuase plastic get dumped in land and oceans, it stays there for a century or even more.
To make Green Premiums on materials, we need to understand where emissions come from when we make things. According to Bill Gates, they come from three stages, which are they?
- 1) when we use fossil fuels to generate the electricity that factories need to run their operations;
- 2) when we use them to generate heat needed for different manufacturing processes, like melting iron ore to make steel;
- 3) when we actually make these materials, like the way cement manufacturing enevitably creates carbon dioxide;
To make Green Premiums on materials, we need to understand where emissions come from, the second stage where the come from is "when we use them to generate heat needed for different manufacturing processes, like melting iron ore to make steel" How can we generate heat without burning fossil fuels?
If you need temperatures in the thousands of degrees, you'll have to either use nuclear power or burn fossil fuels and grab the emissions with carbon-capture devices. Carbon capture adds to the manufacturer's cost and gets passed on the consumer.
To make Green Premiums on materials, we need to understand where emissions come from, the third stage where the come from is "when we actually make these materials, like the way cement manufacturing enevitablyfont-style creates carbon font-styledioxide"font-style. What can we do about the processes that inherently produce greenhouse gas emissions?
What is, according to Bill Gates, the path to zero emissions in manufacturing?
- 1) Electrify every process possible
- 2) Get that electricity from a power grid what's been decarbonized.
- 3) Use carbon capture to absorb the remaining emissions.
- 4) Use materials more efficiently.
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