In civilization, civil society, people — in some form or another — subsidize each other, give each other assistance. In modern capitalist societies, those subsidies are almost always measured in direct cash transfers with little attention, understanding, or incorporation of indirect (whether financial or otherwise) resource transfers and subsidies. For the energy/climate world, for example, the key to this are ‘externalities’ related to fossil fuel exploitation: that impacts health, economy, and security directly (like mercury impacts on brain development, particulates that cause cancers/asthma) and indirectly (CO2 driving climate change as most direct). While gasoline might only cost a few dollars per gallon at the pump, in the United States, a true accounting of all the costs (from providing security to oil movements to land impacts to health to …) typically puts the true per cost to society anywhere from $8 to >$15 gallon.
Few people, when they hop in the car to go to the Mall, consider their own fully-burdened costs of driving (insurance, repairs, amortization of the purchase price, the value of their home’s parking spot, …) let alone incorporating in the externalities associated with burning fossil fuel. In fact, driving to the Mall costs us — and society — far more than we realize.
Although these costs are easy to overlook, that doesn’t make them any less real. Sometimes we pay them up front, other times indirectly. But, at the end of the day, we still pay them, so we should consider them in our calculus when making big decisions.
That is a point made by George Poulos, a transportation engineer and planner, discussing a calculator developed in Vancouver, BC, that seeks to assess the full cost of a commute amid a debate over how to finance public transportation. When it comes to public transportation, there is a pretty good old adage: a passenger train running a profit is charging too much. Why? Because so many of the quite real costs AND benefits are not accounted for in the accounting process that determines a profit. People riding trains into a city mean fewer people on the road which means faster driving — shouldn’t the rail passenger be ‘credited’ with drivers’ time savings? That sort of calculation and valuation is just what the Cost of Commute Calculator seeks to account for in helping inform public discussion of and decision-making about transportation system options.
— 21st Century City (@urbanthoughts11) June 16, 2017
As per the graph in this tweet, try to consider the subsidy inherent in commuting options. If you walk, society has built the side-walk, there are police officers, etc … There is a ‘subsidy’ to burning shoe-leather which, according to the calculator, is somewhere in the range of 1% of your own cost. When you drive, that subsidy balance is really thrown a loop. If driving costs you $1 (under two miles driving according to the $0.535 per mile 2017 IRS rate), the societal subsidy — building roads, emergency services, pollution (noise, air, etc) — is $9.20.
To provide a context, the average US commute is about 15 miles each way — or 30 miles/day. While an ‘average’ driver might think that their daily comm
What does a commute cost you? What does it cost society?
ute ‘costs’ perhaps $3 in gas, the IRS calculation comes to $16.05, the Cost of Commuting calculation (in the Vancouver Metro area) would put the total societal cost at $276.
Honestly, I am somewhat of a ‘total ownership cost (TOC)’, ‘life-cycle cost’ (LCC), full-cost accounting geek — truly seeing how achieving a broader understanding of costs and benefits can enable more informed and better decision-making. Within that context, this floored me … $9.20 in subsidy per mile …
Think about that … $276 in societal costs day in, day out for the average single-passenger commuter. Now do you understand why the post is titled
June 9th, 2017 · Comments Off on For well over a century: #climate in #PopularMechanics
Popular Mechanics is an American institution, a window on “how your world works” for 115 years. Amid its myriad pieces fascinating to tech geeks of all colors and strains (including Energy COOL-loving geeks), it has published quite a few pieces directly on or related to climate change over the years. Little did I know, but that ‘climate change-related’ publishing history goes back at least 105 years.
The furnaces of the world are now burning 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.
Here is Popular Mechanics, in 1912, talking about CO2 as a blanket around the earth, sounding somewhat like Al Gore a century later.
As to “effect may be considerable in a few centuries”, note that 1912 coal use was about 2 billion/tons/year. We are a century later and, in addition to massive use of other fossil fuels (oil and natural gas), global coal use is about 8 billion tons/year. When you consider the increased fossil fuel use (and thus increased emissions), not surprising that a century after Popular Mechanics‘ ‘in a few centuries’ we’re already experiencing ‘considerable effect’ on the climate from increased emissions with even more significant ‘considerable effect’ in the decades to come (especially without serious mitigation efforts).
Put aside any other issue, just how much electricity might this create?
Some very simple calculations (after the fold).
If the solar panels cover the top of the wall, this would produce in the range of 23 million kilowatt hours (kWh) per day, on average, through the year (or 23,100 megawatt hours (mWh) or 23.1 gigawatt hours (gWh). Per year, 8,431 gWh or 8.4 terrawatt hours (tWh).
If solar panels were to cover the surface facing south (putting aside issues of angling or tracking), this could be increased roughly by an order of magnitude — e.g., in the range of 84 tWh/year.
Total US electricity demand is about 4000 terrawatt hours/year, thus Trump’s having solar on the top of Trump’s wall would would provide roughly 0.2 percent of total US electricity supply and about 2 percent if the entire wall were covered with solar panels when (okay, IF) constructed.
June 1st, 2017 · Comments Off on Nine Holes in Trump’s Paris Withdrawal
Donald Trump has made the reckless announcement to turn the tide backwards, toward higher pollution options and away from great economic opportunities.
As is well known, when he goes out to golf, Trump brazenly gets away with cheating his way through a course. In seeking to communicate in language and images that Trump might understand, here is how nine swings and misses in Trump’s Paris decision.
Debates are often presented as either/or, black/white, all/nothing when the complexity of reality is that most situations are not zero-sum, one-or-the-other. And, that is especially true in complex environments and situations like energy systems and climate change (science, mitigation, adaptation). In this overlapping space, some of the either/or, all/nothing type assertions:
Consumption reduction vs clean energy growth
Government regulation or market driven
Nuclear power vs renewables
Top-down vs bottom-up
Human behavior vs technology
Research vs deployment
Etc … etc … etc …
Simple reality of energy is that it is ‘all-of-the-above’ (not the Obama (or a worse GOP version of) ‘All of the Above’ with full throttle pursuit of fossil fuels along with renewables) —
Expanding renewable energy to displace fossil fuel polluting energy efficiency
Changing consumption patterns — whether via boosting energy efficiency or shifting ‘how’ we understand/measure our success in life
Changing business models
Government regulations along with individual actions …
Etc … etc …
The path toward a prosperous, secure, climate-friendly society involves a multitude of silver BBs (there is no single-point Silver Bullet), many rounds of silver buckshot. Anyone reading this space more or less ‘knows’ this, even if there will be lots of disagreement on details. Some silver BBs (sometimes mistakenly seem by people as Silver Bullets, even as they are significant), like solar on the rooftop, are highly visible. Others — like how much insulation there is in a home — are remote from daily thinking, seemingly out-of-sight/out-of-mind and even obscure from most people’s conception of ‘energy solutions’.
One of those arenas of ‘either/or’ relates to ‘techno-optimism’, both to those who seem to look to technology for ‘the’ solution and, conversely, those who decry technological ‘solutions’ in a perverse Luddite obsession. Technology, obviously, has enabled humanity to dig (literally, when one considers mining machines that are some of the largest pieces of equipment in the world) the ‘climate hole’ while technology also offers multiples of paths toward both ‘stop digging the hole’ and starting to fill it up.
And, many of these ‘technology silver BBs’ re climate change aren’t really perceived nor were they developed with ‘climate’ as a central focus. Take additive manufacturing (think 3D printing) and digitization of the economy. Both of these have a myriad of business-model reasons for development, have been significantly changing the world economy, and have the (very real) potential of massively shifting the global economy — perhaps quite rapidly.
Brian Motherway, who heads the International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy Efficiency Division, has a piece on ‘brightness as a service‘ that points to how 3D + digitization could drive major efficiency through the global economy. The title of the post (liking those words sparked writing this post) comes from what might be the extreme example of that payoff:
Floating Barry Wilmore
When astronaut Barry Wilmore needed to carry out repairs on the International Space Station in December 2014, he lacked a socket wrench needed for the job. Previously, this would have meant waiting months for the next supply rocket, or sending a specific flight at great cost. Not anymore. Back on Earth, engineers designed the specific tool on their computer, emailed the file back to the space station where it was manufactured on a 3-D printer and used successfully.
This story probably holds a world record for the single-most impressive energy efficiency action: firing an email instead of a rocket to deliver a tool.
What is the value stream here for ‘firing an email instead of a rocket’?
This guest post from Martin Smith provides a taste (and, truly, just a taste) of the things happening around the world, related to clean energy and reducing fossil foolish dependences. If Team Trump would get their minds out of promoting 19th century energy, leveraging knowledge of 20th century energy, and turn to 21st century realities — they could put in place policies that would leverage the amazing solar, wind, efficiency, etc advances to truly #MAGA (economically and in terms of world standing).
This may sound a wee bit melodramatic but something just happened that changes everything. The discovery of fire, the wheel, electricity and fossil fuels, combined with our self-destructive nature, actually doomed mankind and the earth to extinction. In the past few years we pushed our atmosphere beyond a sustainable level of CO2 (400ppm). Our planet is hanging on by a thread.
But something truly amazing just happened.
In January 2017, China announced the cancellation of 104 new coal-fired power plants, which would have produced about the same amount of coal electricity currently produced in the United States.
India just announced on Monday May 22, that it has canceled 14 gigawatts of coal-fired plants, about the same as the amount currently produced in the U.K.
These are world changing, historic developments and it’s not because China and India have a new found respect for the environment. It’s because the cost of utility-scale solar energy fell below the cost of coal for the first time in 2016, and it’s still falling.
And then, this happened. Tucson Electric just signed a record power purchase agreement to buy solar power at under 3 cents per kilowatt hour ($30 per megawatt hour). This cut U.S. solar prices in half, well below any other available source. The average U.S. residential price for electricity is nearly 13 cents per kWh, and the average commercial price is 10.5 cents per kWh.
Millions of activists have been pushing hard for decades, but could barely slow the growth of coal. But now the ground has shifted. Even large investment firms like Goldman Sachs are pushing investors into clean energy. This is opening up capital markets and helping proven green technology scale up.
So the world is saved but only if enough of us pitch in to help push us over the top. To survive, we have to reduce our atmospheric CO2 to about 350 ppm. We are at a significant and positive tipping point. We no longer have to appeal to people’s better angels and hope they grow a conscience. We just have to let more people know what is happening and get more people to help. Everyone likes great news! Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your family. We can do this!
2016 was first year wind and solar came in lower than coal and natural gas
Part of the reason … media both-siderism giving credibility to the incredible (the incredibly insane, damaging, etc … #AlternativeFacts) along with having ‘right-wing advocacy press’. As per Clinton,
The press, she believes, didn’t make it any easier. “Look, we have an advocacy press on the right that has done a really good job for the last 25 years,” she says. “They have a mission. They use the rights given to them under the First Amendment to advocate a set of policies that are in their interests, their commercial, corporate, religious interests. Because the advocacy media occupies the right, and the center needs to be focused on providing as accurate information as possible. Not both-sides-ism and not false equivalency.”
False equivalency … as per giving equal weight to a peer-reviewed climate scientist and an industry-paid science-denialist lobbyist so that ‘both sides’ get equal time.
Sadly, Clinton (and others) don’t see the situation improving.
The impulse toward false equivalency is only getting worse, in her opinion. “The cable networks seem to me to be folding into a posture of, ‘Oh, we want to try to get some of those people on the right, so maybe we better be more, quote, evenhanded.’?”
“Why … would … you … do … that?” she says. “Sixty-six million people voted for me, plus, you know, the crazy third-party people. So there’s a lot of people who would actually appreciate stronger arguments on behalf of the most existential challenges facing our country and the world, climate change being one of them! It’s clearly a commercial decision. But I don’t think it will work. I mean, they’re laughing on the right at these puny efforts to try to appease people on the right.”
Let’s take this in for a moment.
First, she’s right, who do they think they’re fooling? The NYTimes is begging people to provide them nice things to say about Trump and are hiring distorting columnists from the Wall Street Journal (Stephens). What do they think, all of a sudden Breitbart will suddenly start encouraging people to buy subscriptions? Clinton is right, “these puny efforts to appease” are being laughed at by the right while distressing those living in reality and concerned about real issues like climate change.
And, when it comes to reality, Hillary Clinton is (again) right — people want truthful engagement from outlets like the NYTimes and MSNBC.
People … would … appreciate stronger arguments on … the most existential challenges … climate change being one …
And, both George Will and Bret Stephens are columnists who have used their (pretty huge) soap boxes to promote confusion about climate science & the climate science consensus, to attack climate scientists and science, and to undermine efforts to make progress in addressing (mitigation and adaptation) climate change.
Hillary Clinton’s commentary evidently got under Bret Stephens’ skin:
Because Donald Trump was so egregiously bad that even right-wing pundits like Will and Stephens couldn’t stomach the situation, were #NeverTrump, evidently Stephens believes they are now beyond critique. Once they went #NeverTrump, reading Stephens’ implications, they evidently earned the right to be #NeverCriticized. Sorry Bret, the real world doesn’t work that way — no get out of jail card to play.
Since about the middle of the Obama Administration, with the Shale Revolution driving down natural gas prices, exporting of natural gas via liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities has been ‘hot and heavy’. The Russian seizure of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine along with use of gas as pressure on the Ukraine (and others around Europe) made international security an ever-stronger portion of the discussion. Discussions of LNG exports, including those around the world advocating for significant U.S. LNG exports as insurance and balancing against Russia, seem to miss some significant issues.
May 26th, 2017 · Comments Off on Deep Faith and Climate Change
This guest post from AstroCook is from just before Donald Trump took over the Oval Office but that timing is fundamentally irrelevant to the core of the discussion: an example of the challenge of leaping divides to spark changed thinking on climate science (and climate-science denial) even in a ‘civil’ conversation. From it:
“Faith, action, and climate change …”
“God gave us brains and the ability to learn about the environment around us, and we’d only have ourselves to blame if we fail to use them to protect the only planet we can live on.”
This was essentially the end of the conversation, as it did not progress beyond FoF’s reply that God will decide when the world will end, not humans.
I tried pleading, “But God made all the scientists too .. and they are here to understand the warning signs, so why dismiss them? Maybe God is giving us the people we need to help save ourselves.”
No answers here about how to solve/resolve bringing such a divide in weltanschauung but an interesting perspective.
May 23rd, 2017 · Comments Off on Musings on “Energy Independence” …
The mistaken priority of “Energy Independence” is in vogue in no small part because of the recklessly dangerous and backwards-thinking Trump Presidential Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth. The EO does not directly define the term “energy independence” (the word “independence”, for example, is only in the title) but the implication is clear. In short, that EO seeks to maximize (private profits from) exploitation of U.S. fossil fuel resources while minimizing any barriers (such as protecting human health and the environment (whether streams, wildlife, land reclamation, or the atmosphere)) to that exploitation.
[update] From today:
Today @EPAScottPruitt had a round table discussion with the Congressional Coal Caucus to talk about working toward energy independence. pic.twitter.com/tNpctACfPa
Does @EPAScottPruitt truly not understand that nearly 100% of U.S. electricity is provided already by U.S. fuel & renewable energy sources? https://t.co/CM9p7GEBtP
Recently, a journalist seeking to explore ‘just what is energy independence’ reached out for a conversation. After the fold are some musings as to ‘energy independence’, why it is simply a misleading term and rather absurd target, why energy resiliency/security/sustainability are likelier better terms, the power of efficiency, and how this EO really seems counter to any serious consideration or desire for energy independence and/or energy resiliency and/or energy security and/or energy sustainability.
