Despite considerable tension and even aversion in green communities to the subject, we cannot talk about “going green” without making it a discussion about growth through various hierarchies of human development. Really, the subject of growth should come as second nature to “green” thinkers and communities—after all, a blade of grass must grow to two inches before it can grow to six; a tree must grow from acorn to sapling before it can someday become a mighty oak. In much the same way, our consciousness, our values, and our cultures must also move through several distinct stages of growth before we can even begin to even see the problem, let alone care enough to do anything about it.
In other words, “going green” really means “growing green,” and represents the crux of almost all the global issues we presently face: it’s not a problem of human imagination, technological innovation, or even political will—it’s a problem of human growth
This provides a frame for thinking about growing an energy independent transport system, and about the multiple ways that local, regional, and inter-regional rail systems can help in that growth. [Read more →]
For Fiscal Years 2002-2008, the lion’s share of energy subsidies supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases.
The largest U.S subsidies to fossil fuels are attributed to tax breaks that aid foreign oil production
Thus, as this post’s title suggests, US subsidies through the Bush Administration promoted the production of dirty energy overseas to create jobs for foreigners and send US dollars overseas rather than promoting clean energy (cleanliness) that would create jobs for Americans.
September 17th, 2009 · Comments Off on How can one be “President” of the friends of the earth
Well, while one might not be able to be President of the earth’s “friends” (which we would hope would encompass essentially all humanity), there is Friends of the Earth, which is truly a top-notch environmental group, often carrying substance into the policy discussion far beyond the weight of its budget. (Perhaps the motto could be, when Friends of the Earth speaks, friends of the earth listen?) Led for decades by the thoughtful Brent Blackwelder, today FOE announced a passing of the baton across generations to Erich Pica, a ten-year FOE veteran of analysis and campaigning.
From his introductory video, here are Erich’s words as to why he became an environmental activist, creating the path to his new leadership position:
I learned that our economic growth, our gross domestic product is based on a lie.
It is based on the destruction of the environment.
And, I was outraged.
And, I wanted to come to Washington, DC, to help solve that problem.
And, for ten years, Erich has worked to find paths “to help solve that problem”, mentored by one of the environmental community’s doyens, Blackwelder, who has spent decades (including, for example, over 100 times testifying to Congress) on the front lines of environmental policy battles.
Pica’s announcement might come at a particularly a propos moment. One of Erich’s arenas has been the overt and hidden subsidies for fossil fuels, which few people realize overwhelm (in the US and globally) all the subsidies for all forms of clean energy (and energy efficiency) combined. Whether through gasoline price subsidies at the pump (Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc), tax subsidies for production and favorable tax treatment re reserves (United States), huge subsidies for paths to use fuels (road infrastructure, gasoline vehicles, etc — essentially every nation), military investment to protect oil (US, Europe, China, etc …), ignoring the “external” costs (such as health cost impacts), etc, fossil fuel subsidies undermine the entire concept of a ‘free’ market that could enable better solutions to come to the fore and ‘win out’ in the energy arena.
President Obama will be addressing the United Nations, next week, on climate change. The ‘rumint’ (rumor intelligence) is that he will propose a global agreement to end fossil fuel subsidies. Friends of the Earth’s new President will be a welcome voice in the national (and global discussion) if President Obama makes this proposal. [Read more →]
Comments Off on How can one be “President” of the friends of the earthTags:environmental
Among the energy holy grails out there are paths to take trash flows and turn them into value. Waste-to-fuel options range from methane digesters to biomass waste power plants to ways to turn trash dump streams into power. Envion, as reported in today’s Washington Post, has put up a demonstration facility at the Montgomery County, Maryland, Solid Waste Transfer Station to make synthetic oil from plastics.
Envion is not unique in developing paths for transforming trash to fuel, but there are several elements of their approach that raise interest:
Envion has put up a demonstration facility, in a public way, that will be processing plastics to fuel. This suggests technology ‘on the shelf’, ready to move into broader use.
Envion is providing direct fiscal cost estimates for the processing. Assuming that someone might actually look to invest the $6-7 million for a full-up system, Envion should (should) have the books & numbers to back up their claims.
Envion claims that it can convert one ton of plastics, depending on the type of plastic, to 3-6 barrels of fuel. With oil on the market for about $70, that suggests a post-processing value of $210-420 per ton of plastics. (Note, the value might a bit higher as the resulting synthetic oil is high quality, with very few contaminants compared to oil coming out of the ground.) Envion uses a “low-temperature far-infrared thermal cracking” Envion claims that the processing cost is $10 per barrel, leaving $180-$360 of value per ton — supposedly.
Let’s work these numbers for a moment.
$6-7 million for a plant capable of processing 10,000 tons of plastics per year.
Assume a plant life of 20 years (thus 200,000 tons/year), this would mean a capital cost (alone) amortized cost of $30-35 per ton or $5-10+ per barrel of oil.
That capital cost does not, of course, deal with the energy costs, labor, land, etc …
Thus, it might actually be interesting to see Envion’s books & numbers to back up their claims about the costs to convert the plastic waste — are they providing estimates that solely consider incremental (energy?) costs rather than fully burdening the full system costs to transform a ton of plastics into fuel?
Now, some items to consider:
Globally, plastics production requires about 8 percent of total oil production.
According to Plastics Europe, a record amount of plastic was produced in 2005 – over 230 million metric tons worldwide.
The EPA states that plastic waste accounted for over 12% of total municipal solid waste in the United States in 2007.
The US uses roughly 50 million tons of plastics per year with roughly 2 million tons getting recycled.
Plastics represent 9.5 percent by weight, or 3.8 million tons, of the total solid waste disposed in California. Plastic trash bags alone represent 1.0 percent, or 390,460 tons, of the total solid waste disposed in California.
This suggests a reasonably large market potential, a lot of plastics out there awaiting something better than permanent incarceration (or polluting the ocean). That 3.8 million tons in California could represent 10-25 million barrels of oil or getting into the range of one full day’s US oil demand.
Taking Envion’s material at face value, their processes seem to offer some interesting benefits including turning the remnant (non fuel) material into a benign ash (that could end up in cement?) and the ability to process contaminated plastics .
Let’s put this into perspective for a moment.
Okay, that 3-6 barrels of synthetic fuel from a ton of plastic sounds great, no? Well, perhaps
One ton of recycled plastic saves 16.3 barrels (685 gallons) of oil, 98 million Btus of energy and 30 cubic yards of landfill space (Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality). Recycling a ton of plastic also saves about as much energy as is stored in 197 gallons of gasoline
Hmm, it looks like recycling is more than three times effective, in energy terms than Envion’s reprocessing into synthetic fuel.
Thus, if you can recycle, recycle before considering reprocessing into fuel.
Of course, before consider that “recycling” or “reprocessing”, it is important to emphasize “reduce”: reduce the use and demand for plastics.
But, there are 100s of millions of tons of plastics sitting in America’s dumps, polluting our rivers, polluting the oceans, etc … Huge percentages of this are not recyclable (due to type of plastic) … Thus, if (a big if) all these could be ‘mined’ and transformed into (cleaner than drilled for oil) synthetic oil, that could be a useful path toward reducing plastic waste’s intrusive and extensive global reach. And, perhaps Envion could provide a useful Silver Speck of Dust to reducing this global blight.
September 16th, 2009 · Comments Off on Fighting the smears … and other emergent sites …
The falsehoods, errors, and misrepresentations in discussions of climate change and energy issues within the US debate are almost too numerous to count. They range from the most shallow (“CO2 is necessary for life, how can you call it to pollution.”) to “reports” and books of 100s of pages which require close reading of the footnotes to discover the games that have been played to give truth to the old adage “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. NRDC just put up a new website which offers the promise of serving as a clearing house for work documenting and dissecting these distortions, hopefully in real time, as the climate change debate heats up and continues. Check out (and contribute to?) Fight Clean Energy Smears.
Also relatively new on the scene, the Clean Energy Works campaign to help promote national understanding of the value and benefits of clean energy choices.
And, the Consequence09 campaign to mobilize the youth voice for supporting strong action on climate change.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation (DOT) today released proposed rules for implementating the increase in CAFE standards, beyond the Congressional mandate, as announced this past May. In short, this deal between the Obama Administration and the auto industry accelerates the improvement in light vehicle fuel efficiency across the fleet average (the CAFE) to 35 mpg from 2020, the Congressional mandate, to 2015. This action merits applause, even if far from as aggressive as it could (or should) be (check out US compared to other countries). This move should lead to cutting US liquid fuel (almost entirely oil) demand, reducing oil import requirements, improving US auto industry competitiveness in the world market, and helping to reduce US pollution loads (whether fossil fuel aerosols, carbon dioxide, or otherwise). All in all, even if less than what is possible, a win-win-win move.
As per Republican Roy LaHood, Secretary of Transportation,
“The increases in fuel economy and the reductions in greenhouse gases we are proposing today would bring about a new era in automotive history. These proposed standards would help consumers save money at the gas pump, help the environment, and decrease our dependence on oil – all while ensuring that consumers still have a full range of vehicle choices.”
As per EPA Administrator (Democrat) Lisa Jackson,
American drivers will keep more money in their pockets, put less pollution into the air, and help reduce a dependence on oil that sends billions of dollars out of our economy every year. By bringing together a broad coalition of stakeholders – including an unprecedented partnership with American automakers – we have crafted a path forward that is win-win for our health, our environment, and our economy. Through that partnership, we’ve taken the historic step of proposing the nation’s first ever greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles, and moved substantially closer to an efficient, clean energy future.
From the press release, the four key measurable achievements expected from this move
Specifically, the program would:
Increase fuel economy by approximately five percent every year
Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons
Save the average car buyer more than $3,000 in fuel costs
Conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil
Again, laudable goals and laudable achievements. A serious question to ask, however, is as follows: Is this underselling the likely impact of the overall program in terms of financial implications for both the average car buyer and the overall economy?
As discussed this past May, when the deal was originally announced, in Valuing cutting oil dependency, valuing savings at “$3,000 in fuel costs” simply takes a straight line assessment of how many fewer gallons the “car buyer” will burn using a more efficient car without seeking to assess or understand the financial implications of cutting global oil demand. Very simply, markets are (at least partially) driven by supply and demand functions. In economic terms, to determine prices, creating new (additional supply) is functionally the same as reducing demand. Analysis suggests that, come a decade from now, this program would reduce US oil demand in the range of 1.4 million barrels per day (roughly 7 percent) compared to the business as usual case (without considering any other possible world developments, technologies, etc …). In 2008, world demand fell by about 2.5 million barrels / day in the face of $140 barrel / oil. Prices fell into the $40s before coming back up to the $60-70 range. Was that demand destruction “the” reason for reduced prices? Likely not the sole, but a key factor.
With that in mind, how much would an average 1.4 million barrel/day demand reduction impact oil prices? Could we see $50 barrel/day lower prices? $25? $10? This is a form of predictive analysis that is very difficult to do and basically impossible to do with certainty, but we can be certain that lowered demand will foster lower prices on average.
Let us take a very low figure, reducing oil prices by $5 per barrel.
This translates to about 12 cents per gallon less expensive gasoline.
Assuming 15 million barrels per day of US usage (a 25% reduction from today), this would be $75 million per day of savings for US drivers and the US economy. This would translate to over $27 billion in annual savings for the US economy. And, that $27 billion would almost certainly be mainly in reduced oil imports (thus strengthening the US dollar due to improved (or less bad) balance of payments accounts).
Globally, assuming 80 million barrels/day of production (perhaps optimistic), this would mean perhaps $400 million/day or in the range of $150 billion/year in reduced expenditures on oil — freeing resources, globally, for spending on other priorities and requirements (whether clean energy investments, education, or otherwise).
In fact, $5 calculation as to the lowered per gallon cost of liquid fuels in 2020 due to this deal seems to be an absurdly low figure. But, using that “absurdly low” figure, it is quite evident that there is a huge societal benefit that has not been part of the overall discussion.
By the way, let’s take a look at “cost/benefit” analysis. Reporting is that the estimated cost, per vehicle, for this additional fuel efficiency would be $600. An upfront cost paid back five-fold (not counting net present value) due to those fuel savings. Okay, that sounds great. Now, let’s us take a higher level look. That $600 will represent, for the most part, additional economic activity in the United States in exchange for reducing oil imports. Wow, that makes the overall economic “win” even better by displacing imported fuel costs for domestic “green jobs”. Another ‘win’. However, what about that reduced fuel cost impact? Taking a figure of $600 per car and assuming 10 million light vehicle sales/year translates to $6 billion in costs (within the economy, for the most part, meaning jobs and recirculating money) for (using that absurdly low figure of $5 barrel/oil lower price) for $27 billion per year in reduced oil import costs.
Thus, seeking to take a step back and do a systems-of-systems look suggests that steps to improve transportation fuel efficiency have far greater payoff than simple stove-piped announcements suggest.
Tommaso Boggia provides, in this guest post from Campus Progress, some thoughts from the sand box that Barack Obama might find useful to deal with Glenn Beck and other little people throwing tantrums running around kicking sand in people’s faces.
It is time for President Obama to start dealing with the bullies who are threatening to take him down. Unfortunately, it seems like he does not yet know how to do this, despite having been an avid comic book reader (and thus a likely victim of bullies) and having sharpened his political mind in Chicago. As someone who has been pushed around a good amount as a kid and having done some pushing around myself, here are some pointers for how President Obama (hereon little Obama) can avoid losing more ground to the likes of Glenn Beck (hereon big bad Beck).
Big bad Beck is a bully through and through. His rocky childhood gave rise to deep paranoia, a bipolarpersonality, delusions of grandeur, and deep-seated anger at people he perceives to be different than him. He consciously and repeatedly attempts to cause psychological harm to little Obama, mostly by spreading false rumors, making threats, using put-downs and encouraging his base to take up arms. Big bad Beck’s attacks are not just criticisms of little Obama’s pet projects. His attacks are meant to destroy Obama’s spirit, self-esteem, and popularity and to get back at him for winning the elections by a wide margin. It must be said that, as Dr. Gary Namie (author of “The Bully at Work”) says, “Good employers purge bullies, bad ones promote them”. Fox News and talk radio stations are complicit in big bad Beck’s “bullyism” by providing him a bullhorn to spread his slanderous and deranged rumors.
It must be said that big bad Beck’s behavior is perfectly normal for a bully, especially one in the kindergarten playground spanning from New York’s media rooms to Washington D.C.’s halls of power. The unusual aspect of this bullying dynamic is that little Obama is passively taking all the blows. As Kidshealth.com states,
“Bullies tend to bully kids who don’t stick up for themselves.” [Read more →]
Last week, the New York Senate passed legislation to take revenues from New York’s ‘cap and tax’ on carbon emissions and leverage these funds into the private financing market to make energy efficiency improvements more affordable and more accessible to New York’s homeowners.
Passed unanimously in the New York House, a Republican Senator played a key role in making this truly a bipartisan measure in the Senate. Sadly, in the fossil-foolish funded and fostered mania against the sensible Silver BB of Green Jobs, too many Republicans are walking away from smart energy and fiscal policy to avoid, it seems, the wrath of frothing Glenn Beck / et al inspired mobs. [Read more →]
This video is interesting because it highlights practices used by Massey Energy to try to deal with protestors, from ‘psychological’ operations (offering them coffee, food; playing loud music and using noise makers to prevent protestors from sleeping) to entrapment actions to entice potentially prosecutable acts (such as encouraging protestors up in trees to throw down items, in ‘exchange’, that will be used as a pretext for claiming assault (‘throwing things at security guards’). [Read more →]
Comments Off on MTR from some security guards’ perspectiveTags:coal · Energy
September 14th, 2009 · Comments Off on Change via a Green Economy: A new branch of g Green Design Center
“Green” is the buzzword for business, seeking to greenwash themselves into warmer customer relations and “consumer” confidence.
“Green” also represents substance and represents giving people options, making it easier to do less harm to the planet while fulfilling needs for food, transport, and shelter.
Expansion of the second is a Silver BB / Dust mite to help us transition through the perfect storm of economic, energy, and environmental challenges. Around the globe, such increased ‘store front’ real green options are increasing, even if not fast enough and even if not dominant enough against our challenges. Here is a guest post from John Tehans, a ‘virtual’ friend/colleague, who has just opened a Main Street store to make “green” options more accessible to the average citizen.
Saturday, September 12, 2009 – the newest franchise in the ‘g’ Green Design Center chain opened its doors to the public with a ribbon cutting ceremony at 290 West Main Street in Northborough, MA. While we had planned for Lt. Governor Tim Murray to be in attendance, he was called away for a soldier’s funeral at the last minute – for more than purely selfish reasons, I’ll be much happier when we reach a day where soldier’s funerals don’t happen so frequently. State Senator Michael Moore was on hand for the festivities, as well as State Rep. Harold Naughton’s chief of staff Susan Templeton, who brought us a proclamation from the state house welcoming my new business to the town and state. Selectperson Fran Bakstran from Northborough also helped to cut the ribbon, and State Rep. Carolyn Dykema made it to the event after the ribbon cutting was completed.
Please join me over the fold for some pictures and more discussion…
them into value. Waste-to-fuel options range from methane digesters to biomass waste power plants to ways to turn trash dump streams into power. 
to mobilize the youth voice for supporting strong action on climate change.
This move should lead to cutting US liquid fuel (almost entirely oil) demand, reducing oil import requirements, improving US auto industry competitiveness in the world market, and helping to reduce US pollution loads (whether fossil fuel aerosols, carbon dioxide, or otherwise). All in all, even if less than what is possible, a win-win-win move.
hoped. 
his political mind in Chicago. As someone who has been pushed around a good amount as a kid and having done some pushing around myself, here are some pointers for how President Obama (hereon little Obama) can avoid losing more ground to the likes of Glenn Beck (hereon big bad Beck).