Tony's Climate Change Blog

New Report on Corporate GHG Policy

2008-12-15T08:40:00.000-06:00

A report issued last week compared 63 well-known companies for the efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with some surprising results. Apple’s bad rating surprised me, for example. Few companies seem to be taking it seriously, though there are commendable and already well-known efforts from companies like WalMart.

Companies were scored based upon their performance in five areas: board of director oversight; management execution; public disclosure; emissions accounting; and strategic planning and performance. The detailed criteria are quite complicated, and the authors warn against comparing scores of companies in different sectors. Winners and losers in some of the sectors studied are as follows (all scores being out of 100):

· IBM with 79 vs. Apple with 28
· Tesco with 78 vs. CVS with 12
· Intel with 72 vs. Texas Instruments with 28
· Nike with 71 vs. Abercrombie and Fitch with 0
· Johnson and Johnson with 71 vs. Roche with 49
· WalMart with 69 vs. Bed Bath & Beyond with 10
· Coca-Cola with 65 vs. Anheuser Busch with 38
· L’Oreal with 54 vs. Estee lauder with 24
· Marriott with 53 vs. Las Vegas Sands with 7
· Starbucks with 52 vs. Burger King with 6

The report was commissioned by Ceres from RiskMetrics Group. For more information click here where you can also download the full 316-page report.

USPS Should Embrace Electric Vehicles.

2008-12-11T16:03:00.002-06:00

As posted before, the United States Postal Service has been required to use so called Flex-Fuel vehicles even in places where E85 is not available. There is an interesting report on various trials of alternative-fuel vehicles available on the web at http://www.govenergy.com/2007/pdfs/strategy/Rios_Strategy_track_S8.pdf.

On the face of it, local mail delivery is an ideal application for electric vehicles. The USPS calls the current vehicles LLVs or Long Life Vehicles. They average just 16 miles per day and do about 10 miles to the gallon. True to their name, the average age is about 16 years, but as there are 140,000 of them this still implies that they get replaced at about 9,000 a year. Also, since the fleet comprises only a few different vehicle types, and since they typically get through a couple of engines and transmissions during their lives, a mass retrofit might be feasible.

Electric vehicles seem well suited to a number of local delivery jobs, and also maintenance vans which may do few miles and spend most of their lives waiting at worksites. In London I noticed that stores like Tesco used electric delivery vehicles, which are readily available in Europe.

The USPS last tested pure electric vehicles, supplied by Ford, in 2001. It is not clear why they did not expand the program, as the vehicles seem to have performed well. They said they were unsure of long-term battery viability, but that surely is changed by the availability of lithium ion technology.

So, how about it, USPS?

Flex-Fuel Scandal

2008-12-02T10:20:00.000-06:00

The Washington Post has an article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/22/AR2008112200886.html) exposing the waste inherent in the Federal Government’s usage of alternative fuel vehicles. These vehicles can in theory run either on regular gas or on an 85% ethanol blend known as E85. Years ago GM had obtained concessions on the CAFE standards in return for producing these vehicles, even though there was nothing to require owners to use E85. Indeed, for many years GM did not even identify the fact that the vehicle was able to use E85, the only way an owner would know being to look up the VIN number somewhere. And of course, E85 is not available everywhere.

To make matters worse, the Flex-Fuel vehicles are invariably big V8s like the Cadillac Escalade.
Leaving aside the doubtful benefit of using corn-based ethanol anyway, this meant that most Flex-Fuel vehicles are run mostly on gasoline and the net effect on greenhouse gas emissions is positive rather than negative.

The Post article reveals that even in the government’s own program, many such vehicles are in areas where they don’t have access to E85 and that 92% of them are run on gasoline. Furthermore, the vehicles could have been replaced by more economical conventional vehicles.

Poznan: Why Meet Now?

2008-12-01T10:18:00.001-06:00

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meets today in Poznan to try to hammer out a new global climate change pact to replace the Kyoto Treaty, which expires in 2012. Over the next 12 days, some 10,000 representatives will negotiate a new pact aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions to be signed next year in Copenhagen.

My question is: would it not have been better to have waited a couple of months so that the U.S. could be seriously represented by an administration that actually cares?

Disappointing Tesla Roadster

2008-10-26T12:04:00.002-05:00

I was invited to California this week to test drive a Tesla electric roadster on a closed course. A short course was marked out with cones at a small general aviation airport, and drivers got to try the car out one at a time, each driver getting five runs.

Early cars had two forward speeds, perhaps to reduce noise at speed, but they had clutch problems so now there is just one forward gear. (Electric motors give maximum torque from 0 rpm, so neither a clutch nor multiple gears are necessary.) With no gear box, there was nothing to do but hang on and steer. And of course accelerate and brake.

Acceleration was impressive, all the more so because it required no skill and was accompanied by almost no noise. The brakes were strong but the ABS seemed to allow enough slippage to induce violent squeals from the tires and for me to wonder whether it was actually functioning. While on the subject of brakes, Tesla claim that the car has regenerative braking but it really doesn’t, at least not as normally understood. When you lift off, there is some engine braking effect, as the motor functions as a generator, but there is no attempt to capture energy from actual braking. I did not consciously test how great the engine breaking effect was, but it did not seem any more than a normal car to me, suggesting that one would probably have to be very gentle on the brakes to get the advertised range of 240 miles out of the batteries. Which is not the way one normally drives a sports car.

Unlike the ABS, the traction control is very obtrusive, and unfortunately the track layout made this shortcoming very obvious. It incorporated a long 180-degree bend during which the car would understeer violently. At least, the Tesla engineer blamed this behavior on the traction control, which in theory can be switched off though we were not allowed to do so for this test. I suspect there might be more to it than that. In any case, it defeats the object of traction control if you have to switch it off to make the car safe.

These shortcomings may be less obvious in daily use, though this is not the sort of car in which one is likely to be doing a lot of motorway cruising. The car has more or less zero luggage space, so can be regarded only as a toy or maybe a commuter car. Given its price ($109,000) and heritage (it is built by Lotus on a stretched Elise chassis) one would hope that it would be fun to drive, but from my short test I think a Honda Fit might be more enjoyable. Everyone I met from Tesla was friendly and appeared knowledgeable, and I wish them well, but somehow I feel that the company at its core doesn’t quite get it. Not that there is anything about the car which could not be fixed, especially if they could involve Lotus in developing out the flaws.

TightWatt Pool Pump Controller

2008-10-08T16:50:00.001-05:00

I told myself I would post regularly from London during my summer sojourn there, but you know what they say about good intentions. I am now back in Houston and am glad to report no damage from the hurricane. None except for the pool, that is. I am not sure about the exact order of events, but the large amount of tree debris in the pool combined with the lack of electricity for a couple of days triggered a visit from the pool guy. He could not get the TightWatt pool controller (see my blog in February) to work and bypassed it. I emailed the manufacturers, Allen Concepts, and was given instructions to “reboot” it by switching off the power and removing the battery. This worked a treat, but the pump itself was still not working properly so the pool guy came out again, after which I found the TightWatt was not working again. This time the reboot did not work, but Steve Allen of Allen Concepts offered to replace the unit. So I just wanted to publicly commend the company for its customer service.

The product itself worked faultlessly for about a year prior to the hurricane and credit it with saving me in the region of $900 per year. (Say a reduction in usage of 4 hours per day on a 4kW motor, at 16 cents per kWH.) Check it out at www.tightwatt.com, and btw I do not have any affiliation with the company other than as a satisfied customer.

2,000 Watt Society

2008-08-22T09:58:00.003-05:00

We are getting towards the end of our summer sojourn in London and I was hoping I would have an electricity bill to compare with our life in Houston. But they bill only quarterly here – which itself may be a commentary on how much less they use! – and so the only bill I have to hand is for the period from early March until early June when my tenant was in the flat. Total usage was 724 kWh, less than I have ever used in a single month in Houston. Bear in mind that the Houston house has gas for cooking and heating, whereas the London flat has only electricity, and the contrast is even more remarkable. The price by the way was about 12 pence per kWh, about 50% more than in Houston.

All this remind me of the 2,000 Watt Society, so-called because that is what the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology believes is sustainable. If each of us consumed 2000 watts continuously, this would amount to 17,520 (2000 times 265 times 24 divided by 1000) kilowatt hours per year. The typical American or Canadian uses about 6 that.

Of course this is meant to cover ALL our energy usage; not just electricity but natural gas, gasoline, and all the energy content in the things we buy. Nevertheless, our electricity consumption is a major element and it is interesting to find that in London my wife and I are running on the equivalent of about 330 watts, whereas in Houston it’s over 2200 watts. (This is based on the calendar year 2007 when we used about 19,400 kWh. With new double glazing and insulation we are looking forward to a lower number for 2008.)

Vertical Farming & Climate Change

2008-08-18T03:51:00.001-05:00

There was an interesting program on BBC radio this morning about technological solutions to the problem of feeding a growing world population. Among other things, it dealt with vertical farming. The idea is to grow crops – and even small animals and ultimately maybe cultured meat – in high rise urban buildings. A quick Google found this site which is well worth a look: http://www.verticalfarm.com/.

Of course, efficient land use is the main objective, but some of the of the other advantages of vertical farming listed on the site may surprise. For example, the absence of pests would make organic farming the norm. More obviously, it brings the food production closer to the market, saving transport costs and making urban living even more eco-friendly than it already is. By drastically reducing the competition for land it might even make bio-fuels a viable solution to our transportation needs.

Taken at its most basic, our energy problem – of which producing food is just a special case – is how to convert enough of the energy arriving from the sun into forms we can use with zero net emissions of greenhouse gases. Skyscrapers growing plants for food and fuel might just be the way to go.

Setbacks in UK

2008-08-01T05:46:00.001-05:00

Britain suffered two blows to its climate change credentials today. It looks as if the proposed acquisition of British Energy by the French government-controlled EDF will not go through, leaving a hole in the UK government’s energy plans. British Energy operates eight nuclear power stations in the UK, providing about 20% of the country’s electricity, but several of these need decommissioning over the next few years. The sites of most of these reactors are also on the shortlist for new nuclear power stations, so EDF’s experience (France produces over 70% of its electricity from nuclear sources) would have been very useful in modernizing the UK’s nuclear energy industry.

Meanwhile the government has also got some not entirely warranted bad press concerning its progress on greenhouse gas emissions. It claims a 13% reduction in emission relative to 1990 levels, which puts it well on track to satisfy its Kyoto commitments, but a report by York University suggest that in fact emissions have increased by 13% if the effects of aviation, shipping, and imports are included. Aviation and shipping were excluded from the Kyoto agreement for a number of reasons, while emissions from manufacturing accrue to the manufacturing country rather than the consuming one. Globalization has moved a lot of manufacturing to developing countries, and the associated emissions move with it, thereby making the developed world’s progress seem better than it is. (In addition, industry in the developing world is often less efficient, while transporting these goods around the world adds still more emissions.)

In the UK government’s defense it should I think be pointed out that they are no different from other developed countries in this regard, and that they are merely reporting progress against the yardstick agreed in Kyoto. This progress is I believe better than that of most other developed countries. The government also points out that the report was in fact commissioned by them to point out the problem with that yardstick. Hopefully, 2012 will see a better replacement for Kyoto.

New Ads from We Campaign

2008-07-31T02:30:00.000-05:00

Al Gore’s “we” campaign plans to run new ads in major newspapers this week, suggesting that three current problems – high gas prices, soft economy, and what they call the “climate crisis” – can best be solved if they are tackled together. Here's a link to the PDF of the ad.

They are also promoting a “remix” of Al Gore's challenge to America and in the last week, and say that over 100,000 people have already watched it. Watch it here.

F1 Goes Green

2008-07-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

Formula 1 cars are not known for economy, but the major teams met yesterday at Ferrari headquarters to discuss new rules for the 2010 season. The intention is to limit the amount of fuel which can be used in a race, instead of limiting the capacity of the engines, putting the emphasis on fuel efficiency and encouraging innovation relevant to today’s world. This follows changes for 2009 to allow regenerative braking.

Nissan's Electric Car Plans

2008-07-23T04:18:00.001-05:00

Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan, reaffirmed the company’s commitment to pure electric vehicles rather than hybrids in a recent speech marking the opening of Nissan’s new factory in Tennessee. He said he expected to have these on the market by 2010 and that he expected them to be price-competitive and profitable from the outset. I think this is the way to go, because adding a range-extending gasoline motor adds weight, cost, and complication.

It is also a bold move given the current state of battery technology, because the range is likely to be somewhat restrictive. Ghosn said that vehicles would be tailored to individual countries’ needs. He stopped short of saying that the cars would be available in the US, saying only that any car sold in the US would have to have a range of at least 100 miles. He thought some European markets might accept shorter ranges. It seems to me that this is at best acceptable only in a second car. But that would be a good start, and battery technology will surely improve over the next few years.

No doubt sister-company Renault’s deal with the Israeli government to provide the infrastructure to allow quick battery changes at a network of “filling stations” will help provide the volume necessary to be profitable from the outset.

Gores' Speech

2008-07-18T08:41:00.002-05:00

Al Gore’s much-awaited speech yesterday proposed making US electricity generation entirely carbon-free in ten years. He is right to focus on electricity generation rather than on cars and other transport, if only because the most promising alternatives to gasoline pre-suppose a clean supply of electricity. But one has to doubt the feasibility of making this change so rapidly, especially as he seems to eschew nuclear power as part of the solution.

Gore is also right in saying we need to act now, but that does not mean that we could or should change a whole industry in ten years. Already, most of the new coal fired plants planned in the past few years are on hold and these are unlikely ever to be built. Gore seems to favor clean coal power station, using sequestration, but this is hardly proven technology. We can and should press ahead with wind and solar power, but we still need to solve the problems of storing electricity produced when the sun shines or the wind blows, and of transporting it to where it is needed. Without this, these renewable sources cannot be relied upon for a base load.

In contrast, nuclear energy is a proven technology which can be relied upon to provide clean energy when and where needed. It should be a major part of the solution in the short term, while other technologies are still in the development stages. Meanwhile, the lowest-hanging fruit is energy efficiency, where big improvements could be made very quickly.

A carbon tax or cap-and-trade system is the best way for government to promote all of these efforts: efficiency; nuclear power for base-load power; solar and wind power; and research into sequestration and into new storage and transmission technologies.

Perhaps most importantly, doing more to help the developing nations, especially China, to build clean power stations would be more cost-effective than replacing existing power stations in developed countries like the US. Ratifying Kyoto might be a good start!

Ghost Flights

2008-07-16T02:51:00.004-05:00

Various UK media report that British Midland, Britain’s third largest airline, plans to fly empty or near- empty planes during next winter in order to retain valuable slots at Heathrow airport. This is just an extreme example of what all airlines expect to be doing; namely not reducing flight schedules in the face of the anticipated reduction in demand. (Some airlines may cancel individual flights, which would be a major inconvenience to the few passengers booked on such flights. And there is a limit to how much they can do this, because a flight must operate at least 80% of the time in order to retain the slot.)

This situation is crazy, both on economic and environmental grounds, but it is difficult to know what to do about it. Some advocate requiring a certain average percentage of seats to be filled, but when this was tried at the much smaller Norwich airport at least one airline responded by hiring actors to fill the seats.

Another suggestion is to change the way airport taxes are charged. Currently, they are charged per passenger, whereas a charge per seat (regardless of whether it is occupied) or per plane, would provide an additional disincentive to flying empty planes. It is not at all clear that this would work, however, as there is already a substantial financial cost to flying empty planes. Indeed it seems doomed to failure; if an airline is prepared to pay an actor to fill an empty seat, and to pay the tax for that actor, it would save money if it were able just to pay the tax on the empty seat.

The real problem is the use-it-or-lose-it policy on slots. This might make sense when slots are at a premium, but if flights are leaving empty in order to retain slots, that is clearly not the case and the policy should be suspended while demand is reduced. Better still, the policy should be abandoned altogether and slots auctioned afresh each year.

Piezoelectric Dance Floor

2008-07-10T04:40:00.000-05:00

The BBC and others today report the opening of an allegedly eco-friendly night club in the Kings Cross area of London. This area used to be rather sleazy but is being gentrified, a process stimulated by the new high speed rail line to the channel tunnel. The night club features a piezoelectric dance floor which the owners say will harness the energy of the dancers to provide about half of the club’s electricity. Since the energy has to come from somewhere, I am wondering whether the dancers will tire more quickly than on a regular dance floor. If the idea catches on maybe it could be used in airports; those who eschew the moving walkways could help power those walkways for the less mobile, or more lazy.

Car's that run on water!

2008-07-09T05:35:00.004-05:00

This is my second post of the day, but I think I need to make a comment about an ad which appears frequently on this blog. (Unfortunately I have no control over the ads except to suppress them altogether.) It's headline is "Run Cars on Hydrogen" but actually claims that cars can run on water. Anyone with any scientific training at all will know that these two conepts are more or less directly opposite to one another; chemical energy is released when hydrogen combines with oxygen (in combustion or otherwise, as in a fuel cell) to produce water, so running a car on water is not a promising idea. As far as I can tell, the proposition is to use the car's battery to produce hydrogen from water and then burn the hydrogen in the engine, which presumably charges the battery. In other words, perpetual motion! Needless to say, this is a scam.

Boris Johnson and London's Congestion Charge

2008-07-09T05:31:00.001-05:00

Boris Johnson, London’s new mayor, announced yesterday that he would not implement his predecessor’s plan for a two-tier congestion charge based upon fuel consumption. The current charge, applied in central London between the hours of 7am and 6pm on weekdays, is £8 a day. The proposal was to raise this to £25 for gas-guzzling vehicles and I argued (February 27th) that this was a misuse of a system designed to control congestion. Porsche had also mounted a legal challenge, alleging among other things that the policy was counterproductive insofar as it encouraged people to drive around central London rather than straight through it.

I am not sure I agree with Porsche’s argument, and I am not entirely happy being on the same side as Boris, but I think this is the right decision for reasons expressed in my earlier post. Greenhouse gas emissions need to be addressed at national level – indeed at an international level – rather than in a few square miles of one city.

Perhaps I should ad that I am very much in favor of the original congestion charge which will remain. (Actually I think it should not have been extended to the more residential areas to the west of the city, which I think has been counterproductive for reasons that do not concern us here but that is an entirely different argument.)

Honda CR-Z

2008-07-02T12:47:00.001-05:00

Last week’s mention of the Honda CFX Clarity Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle prompted some controversy over the worth of such technology compared to batteries. To redress the balance a bit, it should be noted that Honda is hedging its bets and is also very active with hybrids. The next generation of Civic hybrids is on the drawing board and expected to reach US shores by 2011. The range should include a sports version based upon last year’s CR-Z concept car, though this may not be called a Civic.

Suburban Slums?

2008-06-28T02:59:00.000-05:00

In February and again in April I posted about the threat to the future of the suburbs caused by higher energy costs, so I felt vindicated by an article in Thursday’s NYT business section taking the same view. (“Fuel Prices Shift Math for Life in Far Suburbs”) According to Moody’s, real estate prices in the suburbs are declining faster than in city centers. The article quotes urban land use expert Christopher B. Leinberger, writing in The Atlantic Monthly that “many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s — slums characterized by poverty, crime and decay.”

With oil recently hitting a new high, and with carbon taxation or trading almost certain within the next few years, I see every likelihood that the trend in fuel prices will continue upwards (though of course there may be temporary dips) unless and until we actually start using a lot less of it.

Meanwhile I am 3 weeks into life in central London, where the population density is such that I can reach almost anything I want on foot and where an abundance of public transport makes the occasional longer journey a breeze. I realize not everyone can live here, but most cities in Europe offer good public transport and America is going to have to follow. According to the NYT article, the average suburban household in America already spends over $3000 a year on gasoline; as this increases the incentive to move inward will increase and the value of the suburban property will decrease.

My message as before is to get out of the suburbs while the getting’s relatively good.

2008-06-27T09:31:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I expressed my disbelief that the White House could ignore an EPA report merely by refusing to open the email. Let’s put a little more flesh on the bones of the story. Over a year ago the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA was wrong to refuse to regulate greenhouse gases as had been demanded by a number of States, led by California. (The EPA had said it had no mandate to do this since CO2 is not toxic and therefore was not a pollutant in the normal sense.)

More recently, the Department of the Environment ruled that Polar Bears were an endangered by the loss of habitat due to global warming, which should have required the EPA to act. Apparently the EPA has rather reluctantly agreed that it has a duty to regulate greenhouse gases, and has made some proposals in a report emailed to the White House, but the White House won’t open the email. This strikes me as childish in the extreme, and it is hard to credit that this is happening in the USA and not in a Banana Republic or a Gilbert and Sullivan opera.

The same group of States and environmental groups has petitioned the court to force the EPA and the administration to act quickly on the Supreme Court decision of April 2007, but this petition was rejected by a Federal Court of Appeals yesterday. I do not know the next step on this, but presumably it could go to the Supreme Court. It seems to me that we might as well just wait out the remainder of the Bush term and be ready to move ahead in January.

Speechless in London

2008-06-26T05:16:00.000-05:00

I am left speechless by a report in the NYT that the White House refused to open an email from the EPA because they didn’t like what it said. Best to read for yourselves:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/washington/25epa.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&oref=slogin

Fuel Cells vs Plug-In Hybrids

2008-06-25T04:19:00.001-05:00

The Economist this week has a section on energy and an editorial suggesting that electricity is the only practical solution for transport. They discount hydrogen due to the high cost of providing the infrastructure.

Undaunted by this potential problem, Honda has announced the start of production of its FCX Clarity sedan, powered by Honda’s own hydrogen fuel cells. The car will initially be leased to selected customers in California. Just five cars will be delivered in July, with 200 planned over the next three years. Clearly this is still in the experimental stage, but equally clearly Honda is very committed to the technology. It has a dedicated factory in Japan and a dedicated service center in California. The car itself is a stylish 4-door sedan with a range of up to 280 miles, much more than appears likely from batteries for some time.

Of course, its overall carbon footprint depends upon how the energy to create the free hydrogen is produced -- and therefore could ultimately be zero -- but just based upon energy usage the Clarity is rated at the equivalent of 74 miles per gallon. Apart from the lack of infrastructure, production cost seems like the biggest problem. Honda expects the price to come down to under $100,000 once volume production starts, but this is still way beyond most budgets. My bet is that technology advances – for example, storing hydrogen in some kind of nano-structure instead of having to compress it -- will reduce the price further.

By contrast, others such as GM, Toyota, and Renault/Nissan are backing plug-in hybrids, but only a fool would count Honda’s fuel cell solution out.

Duke Energy

2008-06-23T04:38:00.002-05:00

Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, is the subject of an interesting article in Sunday’s New York Times magazine. With the objective of eliminating CO2 emissions from electricity generation by 2050, one of his ideas is to install solar panels on customers' roofs free of charge. This presupposes that if he were to buy these in bulk the price would come down enough to make it economically viable, but I am not sure that’s the case. Inevitably however new technology and/or carbon pricing will bring the price down to economic levels within a few years. To read the whole of this interesting article see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/magazine/22Rogers-t.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&oref=slogin

Cheap air fares and holiday homes.

2008-06-22T04:35:00.003-05:00

Settling into the London apartment and noticing that British TV seems obsessed – even now – with real estate investment. There was a program last night about investing in apartments in Montenegro. Breathtakingly beautiful as it was, it seems to me that the investment potential depends upon two things: the continued desire to vacation in hotter climes; and the continued bargain prices of European air travel. Seems to me both are doubtful. Investing close to where people work makes more sense to me; hence the London apartment.

The Price of Oil

2008-06-21T04:08:00.001-05:00

I have been “off the air” for some weeks due primarily to the time it has taken to get broadband in the London flat which will be my summer home, but also due to being sick. I woke up this morning to the sound of Malcolm Wicks (UK Minister for Energy) explaining why going to Jeddah to discuss oil prices was not only worthwhile but also consistent with the government’s commitment to reduce Britain's use of fossil fuels. I cannot say it made a lot of sense, but with demonstrations in various parts of Europe about high fuel prices, and discussion on both sides of the Atlantic about reducing or removing fuel taxes, a politician must pander. (To his credit, Obama has not called for a “tax holiday” though he stopped short of giving the real reason.)

The truth is one might as well protest about the color of the sky. The market is sending us a message; our reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable, and the only way we will see prices go down is if we use less. And as the Asian countries increasingly meet their populations’ legitimate aspirations we in the west who can best afford it need to set an example by using much less. As for fuel taxes, this would be a good time (for a suicidal politician!) to increase taxes; in the current supply/demand scenario the money would come almost exclusively out of the producers’ pockets, leaving the consumer price unchanged. Producers would have reduced incentive to develop ever more costly sources of oil, while the extra tax revenue could be used to encourage energy efficiency and clean energy.

Big Hybrids

2008-05-31T14:29:00.003-05:00

GM has had disappoining results selling its Tahoe and Yukon hybrid SUVs. It planned to sell 12,000 this year, but so far has sold only 1,100 through May. Fuel consumption is claimed to be 20 mpg vs. 14 mpg for the gasoline versions. Environmentalists may scoff at the idea of a green SUV, but consider this. At 14 mpg it takes a little over 7 gallons to go 100 miles, at 20 mpg this drops to 5 gallons. To get the same saving relative to a small sedan which does 30 mpg (3.33 gallons per 100 miles) you would have to switch to a scooter doing 85 mpg.

It would be nice if SUV drivers could be persuaded to drive smaller cars. For my part I cannot understand why anyone would want to drive one, for many reasons unrelated to gas mileage. But if for some reason people want them, SUVs are the low hanging fruit when it comes to energy saving. We should see a number of diesel SUVs soon, but in the mean time it is a real shame that hybrid SUVs are not selling better; the Prius drivers among us should encourage the SUV guys to go green rather than looking down their noses at them.

Two New Reports

2008-05-30T10:57:00.004-05:00

The first is from the Brookings Institution. The report (click here for PDF) quantifies transportation and residential carbon emissions for the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Not surprisingly, the report finds that the carbon footprint of the average city dweller is substantially lower than their rural compatriots. More surprisingly perhaps, the carbon footprint of city dwellers is also increasing more slowly than the national average, 7.5% between 2000 and 2005 compared to 9% nationally. The fact that it is still increasing rather than decreasing is depressing though.

The report also found that per capita emissions vary widely between cities, largely due to the availability of public transport and the fuels used for electricity generation. Each of the 10 metro areas with the lowest per capita electricity usage hailed from states with higher-than-average electricity prices. The report also made the following policy recommendations:

Promote more transportation choices to expand transit and compact development options
Introduce more energy-efficient freight operations with regional freight planning
Require home energy cost disclosure when selling and “on-bill” financing to stimulate and scale up energy-efficient retrofitting of residential housing
Use federal housing policy to create incentives for energy- and location-efficient decisions
Issue a metropolitan challenge to develop innovative solutions that integrate multiple policy areas

The second report was released reluctantly (in fact, in response to a court order) by the federal government and is a summary of recently published research on the effects of climate change on American life, including agriculture. Click here to download the full report, which is about 270 pages long. (I found the 2.75MB download very slow, perhaps because it is a popular download, or perhaps because the government deliberately put it on a slow server. The ability to download just the 17-page executive summary would be welcome.)

After reciting the evidence for climate change, the executive summary refers to the conclusions of previous government reports that “it is very likely that temperature increases, increasing carbon dioxide levels, and altered patterns of precipitation are already affecting U.S. water resources, agriculture, land resources, biodiversity, and human health, among other things” and that “it is very likely that climate change will continue to have significant effects on these resources over the next few decades and beyond.” It then goes into more detail about the effects on agriculture, health etc.

The report identifies benefits as well as costs and some of the conclusions are almost laughably obvious; for example the report predicts a decrease in energy used for heating and an increase in the energy used for cooling and that more people will die from the heat while fewer will die from the cold. (The point about energy use is not entirely trivial however, since while we use electricity for cooling we often use natural gas for heating.) While far from alarmist, the overall picture painted by the executive summary gives ample cause for alarm.

The body of the report is packed full of information for those interested in the details, including geographically detailed historical information about changes in precipitation, temperature etc. over the past century.

Pressure Sensing Valve Caps

2008-05-26T07:58:00.002-05:00

A few months ago I bought my wife a set of pressure-indicating valve caps from TerraPass. These contain a red LED which flashes when the pressure in the tire is more than 4 pounds below the correct pressure, which is preset the first time you attach them to the valve. I bought them primarily because my wife had suffered two flat tires in a short period. Both times the tire was destroyed and she was convinced she had driven a significant distance with them partially deflated. She says she cannot tell whether they are inflated properly or not, and indeed it is impossible to detect under-inflation visually until it is quite extreme. Modern tires have much firmer sidewalls than the cross-ply tires of old, so the pressure has to get down to about 10 pounds per square inch or less before under-inflation is obvious. This is exacerbated in the case of my wife’s Subaru Legend GT Wagon by its low profile (45 series) tires.

Driving with under-inflated tires is dangerous, and – more important at least in the context of this blog -- even a relatively small loss in pressure increases fuel consumption. Fortunately we have not yet had cause to see the new valve caps in action, though I did test one of them by deliberately deflating the tires. They have the potential to pay for themselves quite quickly in saved gasoline.

Sign Petition on Gas Tax Holiday

2008-05-24T11:56:00.003-05:00

I have blogged before about the gas tax holiday proposed by Clinton and McCain. It sends a bad message but in fact my main objection is that it is stupid; since there is little scope to increase supply, the benefit would go to the oil companies as the price at the pump adjusts to the current price to balance supply and demand. In fact, now would be a good time to increase gas taxes, for the same reason; it would not affect retail prices in the short run, but would send a message that high gas prices are here for the long term.

To sign a petition on this go to http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/sign-the-gas-tax-holiday-petition?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter-b&utm_source=bronto&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Sign+the+%26lsquo%3Bgas+tax+holiday%26rsquo%3B+petition&utm_content=twelsh%40barbecana.com&utm_campaign=Newsletter+05%2F14%2F08+-+segment+B

Double Pane Window Update

2008-05-19T16:03:00.002-05:00

Just a quick note about the first few weeks with the new windows mentioned last month. The latest electricity bill is 40% less than the average for the same month in the previous 3 years. There is obviously a lot of variability between years due to different weather etc. but I think this is very promising, especially as the bill includes only about 3 weeks with the new windows.

I also think the house is more comfortable; a bigger temperature gradient across the window means smaller temperature gradients inside the house, so the whole house is closer to the temperature at the thermostat.

Hollow Victory for Polar Bears?

2008-05-14T15:40:00.001-05:00

AP reports that the Interior Department has agreed to list the polar bear as an endangered species. It has been widely thought that such a listing would mandate the department to take action against global warming, but Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne does not seem to see it that way. He cited dramatic declines in sea ice over the last three decades and projections of continued losses. These declines, he told a news conference, mean the polar bear is a species likely to be in danger of extinction in the near future.

But he also said that it would be ''inappropriate'' to use the protection of the bear to reduce greenhouse gases, or to broadly address climate change. Reflecting views recently expressed by President Bush, Kempthorne said the Endangered Species Act was ''never meant to regulate global climate change,' and that the decision to list the bear includes administrative actions aimed at limiting the impact of the decision on energy development and other climate related activities. I must say this leaves me confused, and I suspect we will need to wait for the next administration to act.

Nissan Promises Electric Car by 2012

2008-05-14T10:45:00.000-05:00

Nissan announced yesterday that it planned to offer electric cars to a small number of fleet users in the US in 2010, followed by full scale sales to the public by 2012. Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of both Nissan and Renault, said that market pressure from consumers for green vehicles was a more powerful influence than government regulation.

Nissan has been perceived to be behind other manufacturers like Toyota and Honda, but no company has made such a clear commitment as Nissan made on Tuesday. It should not be a surprise, though. Nissan’s partner, Renault, had announced its part in an electric car project supported by the government of Israel. (See my posting on February 13th 2008.) The range of the vehicles announced then was only 40 to 70 miles, and the plan was to provide stations where quick battery changes could be made, rather than waiting for them to be charged.

The new news in yesterday’s announcement is therefore that electric cars will be marketed in the US. There was no mention of the range, which I think would need to be quite a bit better than 70 miles for the cars to be generally viable.

Climate Skepticism Increases

2008-05-13T09:02:00.000-05:00

On April 25th I posted a comment about how it was going to be difficult to sustain belief in climate change over the next few years because of potential short-term cooling effects due to cyclic factors, namely La Nina and sun spot activity. Today the NYT reports that a recent Pew survey showed belief in global warming slipped from 77% in January 2007 to 71% in April 2007. I am not sure they asked the right question, however. An informed person might well say that he did not believe there was “solid evidence that the earth is warming,” precisely because of the short term effects already mentioned. A better question would be whether there solid evidence that the earth will warm.

Apparently the decline is mainly due to Republicans, among whom affirmative answers to the answer to the question declined from 62 to 49%. I am not sure why this should be a party-political issue, but it is ironic that it came out the same day as John McCain gave his most emphatic support to date for a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

OTC Part II

2008-05-09T16:01:00.001-05:00

Well, the Offshore Technology Conference finished yesterday and I feel slightly less depressed. Offshore generally refers to offshore exploration and production of oil and gas, but it turns out that a lot of the technology is applicable to offshore wind farms and to hydrokinetic sources from waves, currents and tides. The reason for this is that the biggest challenges are not so much the turbines and whatever but the methods used to plant or tether the equipment at sea, and also getting the electricity (as opposed to the oil or gas) to shore. There were conference sessions on renewable energy, “CO2 security” and CO2 sequestration, but these were very much in the minority.

I went to a breakfast session put on by the UK Trade and Investment group and was impressed at all the ideas out there to harness wave power in particular. The Scots in particular have ideal offshore sites for both wind and wave and seem to see these industries replacing employment in the declining North Sea oil wells. They even have a test site where anyone with an idea can not only test it out but plug into the grid and sell the electricity.

Offshore Technology Conference

2008-05-05T15:41:00.001-05:00

It’s OTC time in Houston and everyone in the oil business is in town. I went to a welcome reception last night which was preceded by five industry presentations. Most of the presenters started off paying lip-service to climate change and the need for conservation and for renewable energy sources, and also for Houston to become the “Energy Capital” of the world instead of just the “Oil and Gas Capital,” and then went on to say how many billions of barrels of oil there was left to exploit. Quite depressing, and maybe I should give them some slack in view of their target audience, but I have to think the current guard at the oil companies needs to retire.

One presenter described how the next phase in the Gulf of Mexico is Tertiary deposits which are not on the continental shelf but way off shore in water which is 15,000 feet deep and the oil itself another 35,000 below that. It is also at 400 degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius?) and under unprecedentedly high pressure. In spite of this pressure, they would still need pumps to get it to the surface because of its depth, and all this presented enormous technical problems. For example, new materials will be needed to withstand the temperature and pressure. Then of course there are the hurricanes. One has to wonder whether the billions which will be spent on this technology could be better spent on renewables.

The experience reminded me that high oil prices are a 3-edge sword. On the first two hands, it encourages consumers to conserve and entrepreneurs to come up with alternatives, but on the third hand it makes it economic to pursue more and more inaccessible sources of fossil fuels. Next time someone tells you that wind power is capital intensive, remind them that oil is getting increasing so too.

Voinovich Bill

2008-05-03T09:26:00.002-05:00

Senator George Voinovich has introduced a bill to the senate which purports to be a global warming measure but which is a lot weaker than most people think necessary. For more details and to take action see http://action.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/oppose_voinovich_bill/wie5i55rp76w3im5.

Why Tax Holiday Won't Work

2008-05-01T11:01:00.006-05:00

Both McCain and Clinton have proposed a gasoline tax holiday for the summer. Fortunately for the environment, it won't work.

McCain, whose idea it was first, admits he does not understand economics, but Clinton should know better. There is very little short-term elasticity on the supply side, so the price at the pump is determined by demand. This price won't change much if there is no tax; rather the money which would have gone to the government will go to the oil companies. Which is ironic, given Clinton's idea of a windfall tax on these companies.

So, it's bad for the federal deficit, makes the oil companies richer, and has little or no effect on he price at the pump. And to the extent that it does reduce prices at the pump, it is bad for the environment.

Shake-up at Exxon?

2008-04-29T09:01:00.001-05:00

Exxon Mobil recently recorded the highest quarterly profit ever made by a US company, so you would think the shareholders would be pleased. Not the Rockefeller family apparently. Reuter’s reports that the family wants to appoint an independent chairman and is holding a press conference tomorrow. Family members have previously been critical of the company’s stance on climate change, which until relatively recently was outright denial, so it will be interesting to see what they propose tomorrow. For the Reuter's story see http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2850626520080428.

Future of the suburbs.

2008-04-26T09:36:00.002-05:00

A couple of months ago, on February 16th, I suggested moving to the city as a way to reduce one’s carbon footprint and cost of living. Clearly, we cannot all do that at once, but I suggested that it might be prudent to move sooner rather than later for purely economic reasons. Now it seems it might be too late. NPR and others reported recently that house prices in the suburbs have decreased considerably more than in city centers, where prices are actually still rising in some places. (See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89803663 for this report and links to earlier related reports.)

It is interesting to me that this is all happening without any government action on climate change, just because of the price of gasoline. (Indeed, the cost of the externality of greenhouse gas emissions, and hence of any likely carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, is only a few cents per gallon, paling into insignificance compared to recent increases in gasoline prices.) With Saudi cancelling plans to expand its output, and Russia and Nigeria both announcing that their supply has peaked (at least in the short run) there seems every likelihood that the price of oil will continue to climb. Meanwhile, a recent study by Rice University indicated that gasoline prices are at a low point in comparison with crude oil prices, so I think we have seen the end of cheap gasoline until such time as we don’t need it any more.

I suspect that prices in the suburbs may never recover (in real terms) from their recent falls. An article in the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime/3) even suggests that today’s suburbs may become the slums of 2025, though that seems unlikely to me. If people are moving into the city because suburban life is unsustainable (read “too expensive”) it is hard to imagine that the poor will be able to afford the cost of heating/cooling large family houses or of commuting. I suppose single family houses might get divided into apartments and convenience stores, and maybe occupied by those who don’t need to commute because they don’t have jobs. I think it is more likely that they will continue to be occupied by the relatively well-off, but that the price of houses will decline further and further to compensate their occupants for the high costs of maintaining that life style. Or maybe we will all have hydrogen cars using hydrogen from clean sources, and the suburbs will come back.

A Difficult Few Years Ahead for AGW?

2008-04-25T09:24:00.001-05:00

I was not going to do much climate change science on this blog, but it has not been lost on me that my recent posting about a climate skeptic provoked more controversy than any other posting. So, I decided to delve a little more into some of the skeptics’ claims. I am not talking about the more mainstream skeptics who accept the science but believe there are better ways to spend our limited resources than on combating climate change, which is a defensible position. Rather I am talking about those who dispute that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a reality.

The typical claim here is that global warming stopped in 1998, and more recently that January 2008 was actually colder than January 2007. I decided to try to get to the truth behind the truthiness. I think the first thing to point out is that while it is accepted by almost all scientists that greenhouse gases tend to increase the mean temperature of the earth, nobody has suggested that this is the only factor affecting the earth’s temperature. One well-known additional factor is the presence of CFCs and SO2 in the atmosphere, both of which tend to reflect some of the incoming radiation and make the earth cooler, and this tended to counter the effects of greenhouse gases until regulation reduced emissions of these gases in the 1990’s. (Indeed it has been suggested that we may need to create a similar effect deliberately if we fail to act soon enough on greenhouse gases.)

Two other factors are sun spots, and the “Southern Oscillation” between El Nino and La Nina ocean currents and winds. The latter may not seem relevant to the mean temperature of the earth, but it is; as well as I can understand it, La Nina forces more of the heat into the lower depths of the ocean and thus makes the surface temperature (which is what we measure) cooler than it would otherwise be.

The effect of sun spots is also somewhat unintuitive; since they are dark, one might expect then to reduce the irradiance of the sun, but in fact they do the opposite: more sun spots means more radiation from the sun. Sun spot activity is roughly cyclic, increasing for about 4 years and then declining for about 7, though it is not entirely predictable. Since about 2001 we have been in the declining phase of “cycle 23” and we are now just about at the bottom of the cycle. There has been some concern that the start of cycle 24 might be delayed. (But see http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/14dec_excitement.htm for the possible first evidence of cycle 24.)

Even if cycle 24 starts on schedule, there will be a couple of years of lower temperatures (than might otherwise pertain) because the earth’s temperature lags the sunspot activity by about 2 years. In addition, we are at the beginning of a La Nina period, which also tends to cool the earth’s surface. What we have is an upward trend due to greenhouse gases superimposed on two somewhat regular cycles both of which are approaching their low points, plus of course quite a bit of noise. The net result is that we probably will not see exceptional temperatures in the next year or so; the skeptics will have a field day and the faithful will be tested. (A good summary of where we are can be found at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007.) We can be fairly sure however that by 2012 at the latest we will see new records broken. We must all hope that we don’t have to wait that long for more aggressive action.

Earth Day Surprise from EPA.

2008-04-23T15:58:00.001-05:00

Second blog of the day, but it is my car day and this is a car story. The EPA surprised everyone (well, at least me) yesterday by moving to increase fuel efficiency faster than mandated by Congress. Standards will be increased 4.5% a year for the 5 years 2011 to 2015 inclusive, compounding to a 25% increase to 31.5 mpg by 2015. In doing their cost-benefit analysis they also, for the firat time I think, put a price on carbon dioxide emissions -- $7 per ton, which translates to about 2 cents a gallon.

The current law requires an increase to 35 mpg by 2020, but my bet would be that this gets increased over the intervening period; just continuing the 4.5% per annum compound rate would get us to about 40 mpg by 2020. How exactly they will handle plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles, let alone hydrogen vehicles, I do not know.

Cars and Earth Day

2008-04-23T09:09:00.002-05:00

In honor of Earth Day, I was pleased to see that Autoweek, a weekly car magazine aimed at enthusiasts, devoted most of this week’s edition to green cars. Here are a few highlights.

They point out that the 2008 Honda Fit is a lot less economical than the 1992 Civic, 31 mpg versus 43 mpg, and even the Civic Hybrid at 42 mpg doesn’t quite match the old Civic’s EPA numbers. (These are all EPA combined numbers, using the new-for-2008 test.) Part of the reason is the 17% weight gain in the new car, in turn due to safety features like air bags and improved crash standards. (The 1992 Civic had only one airbag, and prior to 1998 there was no side impact crash test.) Safety is of course a good thing, but it just shows what we are up against when 16 years of “progress” results in a 25% decrease in mpg. (The most economical car back in the nineties was the Geo Metro at 46 mpg using the new test, better than the new Prius. The magazine suggests that the nearest thing today is the Smart ForTwo, rated at only 36 mpg and as it’s name suggests only a two-seater.)

There are also articles on: the ZENN urban electric vehicle (federally mandated maximum speed 25 mph); the Mitsubishi i MiEV 470 kw car, which looks a bit like a Smart car but has four seats; the Chevy Volt; plug-in hybrids; relatively green SUVs (the Ford Escape hybrid achieved 28 mpg, while the Mercedes ML320 CDI achieved 27 mpg on diesel.); and the Audi R8 diesel supercar. Regrettably only the SUVs are available right now.

Perhaps the most interesting article was about new rules for ALMS (American Le Mans Series) sports car racing which will allow hybrids and cellulosic ethanol. They already allow diesels, which have been very successful at Le Mans itself. ALMS also plans a special Green Racing Challenge award, criteria for which are still being worked out with the EPA. Some tree-huggers may scoff at this but think of it this way: the amount of fuel used in the race is small compared to the fuel used by fans to get to the event, so in that respect it is no different from any other sport, and it just might help diesels and hybrids gain greater acceptance.

There’s more on http://www.autoweek.com.

Double Pane Windows

2008-04-19T10:02:00.001-05:00

As I write this the builders are finishing up the installation of our new double-pane windows. After much research I went with PowerPane3 from Home Craftsman. These windows are slightly less efficient than the same company’s SuperPowerPane product at filtering radiated heat (Solar Heat Gain Coefficient of .2 instead of .18) but transmit more visible light (45% compared to 28%; they are virtually indistinguishable from regular glass) and are slightly more efficient at insulation (U-value of .31 against .32). I will be monitoring the energy bills carefully and will report back.

Surely you’re joking, Mr. Bush.

2008-04-17T14:44:00.001-05:00

George Bush presented his climate change plan in a speech yesterday, on the eve of international climate talks in Paris, and it is hard to believe they are meant seriously. He proposes to allow greenhouse gas emissions to continue to rise until 2025, yet he vows to support an international agreement to succeed Kyoto and the administration also said that he had not ruled out endorsing a cap-and-trade scheme. I suppose we should be grateful that at least he accepts that there is a problem, though in reality it does not matter much what he believes any more. Any of the three candidates to replace him will likely take a much more robust stance, though McCain’s recent proposal to temporarily eliminate gasoline tax makes one wonder.

This on the same day that Lord Stern told the Financial Times that he believed he had underestimated climate change risks in last year’s report. (See http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto041620081713149198 ) Some skeptics call this report alarmist, but in reality it is a rather low-key document. See http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm to download the whole Stern Review or for a choice of two levels of executive summary.

Fisker Karma

2008-04-16T15:12:00.004-05:00

Yesterday's post was unexpectedly controversial, so today being car day we get some light relief in the form of another plug-in hybrid which impinged on my consciousness yesterday.

A company called Fisker Coachbuild claims its 4-seat sports sedan, the Fisker Karma, due out in 2010, will do 50 miles on battery power, after which a “small” gasoline engine will charge the battery. They make a lot of rather doubtful claims about the car, and it is difficult to see how they would have the wherewithal to develop such a car so quickly. The powertrain is being developed by a company called Quantum Technologies, an unprofitable but growing public company (Stock symbol QTWW) with 2006 revenues of under $200 million.

There is no indication where the chassis technology will come from. Fisker also claim that they will “initially” produce 15,000 a year at $80,000 a pop, which would suggest revenues of $1.2 billion. Compare Toyota at $200 billion to see how unlikely this scenario is.

But it gets worse; the reason I became aware of Fisker is because it is being sued by Tesla for stealing trade secrets. It is actually quite a good story; see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/technology/15tesla.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tesla+fisker&st=nyt&oref=slogin.

By the way, Click and Clack of Car Talk fame will be driving the Tesla and other green vehicles in an upcoming Nova program, which I think will be aired next Tuesday on most public television stations.

Krysten Byrnes

2008-04-15T10:38:00.002-05:00

I had thought that GW would be the last skeptic standing (see previous post), but they seem to be coming out of the woodwork lately. I reported yesterday about Nigel Lawson’s new book. This morning, NPR did a long piece (www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89619306) about 16-year-old Kristen Byrnes taking on Climate Scientists with her web site home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder. It seems in part to be a way for her to collect donations to her college fund; let’s hope that succeeds because she might learn something. Right now her scientific credentials seem minimal. For example, she said on the show that CO2 does not reflect heat back to earth, which is quite correct but irrelevant; the mechanism of global warming, known since 1850 by the way, is that CO2 absorbs certain frequencies from the earth’s radiation and then radiates energy in all directions.

White House Reversal?

2008-04-15T10:37:00.001-05:00

Associated Press reported late yesterday that the White House has reversed its opposition to a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases, though it stopped short of support for the Lieberman-Warner bill aimed at reducing emissions by 70% by 2050. See ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jJbf8oA_G6zwKdTKlJJNq_G_g8RQD901SPS81 for the full AP story.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Keith Hennessey, domestic policy adviser, presented the new White House view in a meeting with conservative House republicans at a meeting first reported by The Washington Post on Monday. (washingtontimes.com/article/20080414/NATION/676175489/1001)
Apparently the congressmen were not persuaded.

Whether this is a real change of heart remains to be seen. It could be just a reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision that the EPA has a duty to regulate greenhouse gases, or the pressure on the administration to declare polar bears an endangered species which would also require the government to control emissions. Or it could be another attempt by GW to find a positive legacy. Solving the Israeli Palestinian conflict is after all a long shot. And since he knows something will be done under the next president why not take the credit?

An Appeal to Reason

2008-04-14T20:59:00.002-05:00

This is the name of a new book by Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet. I have yet to read it, but from the reviews suspect it contains similar material to the lecture he gave to the Centre for Policy Studies in 2006. (I suggest a free download of this lecture from http://www.cps.org.uk/cpsfile.asp?id=641 rather than spending £10 on the book.)

Billed by the Financial Times’ reviewer as “the climate heretic’s handbook,” it is (if the lecture is anything to go by) actually a lot less controversial than that. He cedes pretty much all the science, and has no exception to a reasonable carbon tax, but claims the best solution is to adapt. Adaptation is of course a major part of any strategy, since we know that there is not much we can do about climate change over the next two decades or so. Nicholas Stern’s review, which Lawson dismisses as “alarmist,” says that “adaptation policy is crucial.”

Perhaps more alarming are some of the reviews. That in the Sunday Times of London (http://www.cps.org.uk/cpsfile.asp?id=641) bemoans the fact that he concedes the science.

WeCanSolveIt.org

2008-04-03T09:51:00.002-05:00

Al Gore launched his $300 million advertising campaign yesterday with full page ads in major newspapers. The purpose is to raise awareness of climate change and to encourage people to sign up to indicate their concern. Go to http://www.wecansolveit.org/ to sign up.

Diesel vs. Hybrid

2008-04-02T09:27:00.001-05:00

In several posts I have advocated diesel as a better alternative to hybrid cars. At the risk of being accused of posting another BMW advertisement, here is news which tends to vindicate my position. The Sunday Times of London did a test comparing a Prius with a BMW 520d. The 520d has the regenerative braking system described last Wednesday in relation to the 118d, but is a substantially larger car.

The test comprised a 460-mile drive from London to Geneva, combined with 100 miles of city driving. The BMW won by 41.9 miles per (US) gallon, compared to the Prius at 40.1 mpg. By American standards, this test may seem biased towards long-distance freeway motoring, which would favor the diesel. (In Europe, cars are used less around town because there is good public transport but are more often used as an alternative to short-haul flights.) It should also be noted that a gallon of diesel both costs more and produces slightly more greenhouse gases per gallon burnt. Even so, this is an impressive result. The 5-series is after all the second-largest car in the BMW range, and 500 pounds heavier than the Prius. The BMW driver also reportedly used the radio and A/C while cruising at 75, whereas the Prius driver eschewed these luxuries to save energy. The 118d would surely have been quite a lot more economical.

Kyoto Replacement

2008-04-01T12:47:00.003-05:00

The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and yesterday representatives of 160 countries met in Bangkok to continue discussions, started in Bali last November, about its replacement. At the Bali meeting, the US delegation found itself at odds with most other countries and ended up on the defensive. As the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, spectacularly so on a per capita basis, it is hard to see much progress being made without the US being on board, so I don't expect much to happen. More likely the can will be kicked down the road until a new president is inaugurated next January.

Majority favor Energy Conservation

2008-03-31T09:36:00.004-05:00

A recent Gallop poll shows that a plurality of Americans continue to favor protecting the environment over economic growth, in spite of the slow down in the economy. Most expect the US to face energy shortages in the next few years, and a solid majority favor conservation as the best way to counter that. Full survey at http://www.gallup.com/poll/105715/Half-Public-Favors-Environment-Over-Growth.aspx

Green BMW

2008-03-26T09:58:00.001-05:00

The BMW 1-series was introduced to the USA recently with 3-liter 6-cylinder engines. Unfortunately we will not get the diesel model, the 118d. As its name suggests, this is powered by a 1.8 liter diesel engine, producing 141 horsepower and 221 pound feet of torque. This is enough to propel it to 60 in 8.8 seconds, which is not exactly blisteringly fast but is fast enough for most people, and a lot better than a Prius. It was also enough to win the World Green Car of the Year award in New York this week.

The car also boasts what BMW calls Efficient Dynamics, which as far as I can ascertain comprises regenerative braking and automatic stop/start. The latter works by switching the engine off when the car is stationary and put in neutral. It restarts when the clutch is disengaged. The regenerative braking is more problematic; the regained energy is used to charge the battery, but since -- unlike a hybrid -- there is no electric motor this can ultimately be used only for the car’s electrical systems. (Which include electric power steering, by the way.) It does however reduce the demands on the alternator, which disengages when the battery is charged thus reducing the drag on the engine. I would have thought the contribution of that feature towards fuel efficiency would be small, but every little helps. And you certainly cannot argue with the overall result. The car is rated at 59mpg on the highway. (An independent test by the German magazine AutoZeitung achieved 47.9 mpg in mixed driving, compared to 39.8 for a Toyota Prius.)

My only concern was that they use low-rolling-resistance tires to squeeze a few extra miles per gallon out of the car. Such tires normally mean low grip, but in this case it seems my concern is misplaced. British magazine Autocar reports great handling and stellar braking performance; 155 feet from 70mph, which is about as good as it gets.

Double-Pane Windows

2008-03-22T09:55:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I ordered our new double-paned windows. This is a major investment, but one I expect to pay off in ten years even without factoring in any increase in electricity prices. Selecting the best windows is not easy though. Manufacturers quote U-value, Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC), Visible Light Transmission (VLT), and sometimes R-value and Ultra-Violet Light Transmission. I will try to explain what they all mean, insofar as I understand them myself.

As far as I can make out, the R-values and U-values are reciprocals of each other, so quoting both is redundant. They measure thermal conductivity, and as a general rule it seems that U-values are used for windows and R-values for walls and roofs. A high R-value (i.e. a low U-value) indicates a good insulator. R-values for roof insulation are typically over 10. However, the interpretation of U- or R-values for windows is problematic because heat transfer through the window is not only due to conduction, and indeed maybe not be primarily due to conduction. I think this depends upon the direction of the heat flow; it hot climates when the house is being air conditioned, a lot of the heat coming in is radiated, whereas in colder climates when the house is being heated most of the heat going out is conducted.

Living in Houston, I decided the SHGC number was the one to concentrate on. This measures the proportion of radiant energy falling on the glass which is transmitted rather than being reflected. Good windows by this measure have SHGC of .18 or .2. There is a trade-off however, in that VLT tends to be lower too. VLT numbers are deceptive however; I saw an installed window with an SHGC of .18 and a VLT of .27. It was noticeably different from plain glass, but it did not seem subjectively that only 27% of the visible light was transmitted. Note however, that even plain glass transmits only about 60% of visible light, and I think these numbers do not match our subjective experience. (A bit like decibels and sound sensations.) The glass manufacturer offers an alternative which looks like it might be a better compromise, with SHGC of .2 and VLT of .44. I have left the final decision on this until I speak to a technical expert at the factory next week.

Tesla in Production

2008-03-19T10:26:00.001-05:00

Tesla announced that they have started series production of their electric car. Rather than duplicate it, here is a link to the press release.

http://www.teslamotors.com/media/press_room.php?id=841

NYMAX Carbon Market and Oil Prices

2008-03-17T16:41:00.001-05:00

The New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) opened its carbon exchange today, competing with the Chicago Climate Exchange and the markets in London. The Green Exchange, as it is called, offers trading in global carbon-based contracts, such as carbon allowances under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EUAs), carbon credits under the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism, and verified greenhouse gas emission reductions used in accordance with voluntary carbon standards. EUAs closed at 21.90 euros per metric ton.

This seems almost superfluous compared with the price of oil. I think a barrel of crude is equivalent to about 1/3rd of a metric ton of carbon dioxide. And the experts don’t expect that price to come down. For the first time ever, all futures through 2016 are trading at over $100 a barrel. The Financial Times quotes Jeffrey Currie of Goldman Sachs predicting prices as high as $175 a barrel.

Meanwhile Dick Cheney is in Saudi Arabia trying to persuade them to increase their production. This is pure theater, because Cheney is well connected in the oil business and must know the Saudis’ dirty little secret; they are already pumping all they can.

SmartStrip Saga

2008-03-15T09:45:00.000-05:00

As previously posted, my experience with SmartStrips has been mixed. The one controlling my entertainment system seems now to be working reliably, except that there is a delay of about 30 seconds between when I switch off the controlling device (the tuner/amp) and when it shuts down the other devices. (I don't know why this is but it is not important. Maybe the tuner/amp goes thourgh some power-down procedure.)

The other SmartStrip still refuses to respond to switching the printer on and off. As noted before, the printer draws 13 watts even when off, so that would hardly be satisfactory anyway. I ended up replacing the wall socket with one with a switch and a light to indicate when it is on. The wall socket happened to be about waist height, so this just allows me to switch everything on and off without crawling under the desk to get to the power strip.

Blue is Green at Mercedes-Benz

2008-03-12T11:26:00.001-05:00

On February 20th I mentioned the Mercedes-Benz E-class Bluetec diesel, available now in the US. The company made two more big announcements at the Geneva Motor Show last week. The first was that they are ready to introduce lithium-ion batteries in a hybrid version of its top-of-the-range S-class sedan next year. Dubbed the S400 BlueHybrid, this large sedan uses a 3.5 liter V6 which together with the electric motor delivers about 299 horsepower. The company claims 29.7 mpg, and the car will reach US shores in the third quarter of 2009.

This will be followed by a turbodiesel-electric hybrid version, the S300 Bluetec Hybrid, delivering 221 horsepower and no less than 43.6 mpg. Finally, this same power train will be used in a version of the GLK SUV; the Vision GLK Bluetec Hybrid will deliver 39.7 mpg. The nomenclature is a bit confusing, and I am not sure why blue is the new green in Mercedes-speak, but if verified by independent tests it will be difficult to argue with these impressive results.

Lithium-Ion batteries are used in electronic devices like laptops, where they have been known to catch fire, but this is the first mainstream application for cars. (My Tesla will also have lithium-ion batteries when they finally deliver it, while Chevrolet cites the need to perfect these batteries as the reason the Volt will not be available until 2010.) Mercedes-Benz have integrated the batteries into the cooling system to keep them at an efficient and safe temperature.

Does Daylight Saving Time Waste Energy?

2008-03-10T09:09:00.002-05:00

I have always hated daylight saving time, but believed it could be justified on the basis that it saved energy. Now, a new study syggests otherwise.

As reported by NPR and USA Today, the study was done in Indiana where until recently most counties did not observe daylight saving. It seems that the study was based solely upon comparison of domestic electricity bills, comparing those before and after the change in counties applying daylight saving for the first time and using the counties which did not change as a control. Which makes it hard to see how it would have data to justify the conclusion like that while people saved money on lighting they spent more on heating and cooling. The study also did not consider non-domestic consumption, for example in schools and work places, so I would not regard it as definitive.

However, this is an area which warrants further study because it could be one small contribution to energy conservation and hence to combating climate change.

For the full interview with study leader Matthew J. Kotchen in USA Today see http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-08-daylight-saving-time_N.htm

Canada's Letter to Robert Gates

2008-03-10T08:33:00.003-05:00

The Financial Times today leads with a story about a letter sent to Robert Gates by the Canadian ambassador about the Energy Independence and Security Act 2007. Signed into law in December, this act requires among other things that government procurement of alternative fuels cannot include those whose lifetime greenhouse gas emissions are no better than that of conventional oil. Canada is concerned about its large reserves of oil sands, which would not qualify. The letter to Gates says that Canada "would not want to see an expansive interpretation" of the act, though it is hard to see how the act could be interpreted to favor the oil sands.

Oil being fungible, it is not clear to me that prohibiting purchases by the federal government would have any effect on the overall usage the oil sands. The provision in the act seems to me to be purely symbolic, since private purchases of oil from the oil sands would reduce price pressure on other sources and the federal government would benefit from this just as if it were buying the Canadian oil itself. Canada is apparently worried that the act may provide a precedent which might be copied by state governments and other countries. I would add environmentally consious corporations.

We should not be using this oil, and Canada and the oil companies should have known this before they embarked on the enormous investment which they are now trying to protect. Unfortunately, since I think all of the major oil companies are heavily invested in the oil sands, there is not much we as consumers can do about it.

Kill-a-Watt, SmartStrip, etc.

2008-03-08T17:36:00.005-06:00

[Sunday, March 9th. After I posted this last night, I switched off the printer and again the SmartStrip failed to switch the other stuff off, as a reslt of which I have made substantial revisions to the posting.]

I bought a Kill-a-Watt power monitor, among other things to help me work out why the HP printer did not seem to reliably switch the SmartStrip (see last Saturday’s posting). The Kill-a-Watt fits between the outlet and whatever device is plugged into it, allowing one to measure the power used by that device. Unlike the Cent-a-Meter described last week, which measures total household usage and is very useful in its own right, this is not influenced by extraneous factors going on in the house like the refrigerator cycling on and off.

I found that the printer is quite consistent: it uses 7 watts when plugged in but switched off, and after going as high as 37 watts during its power-up sequence it settles at 13 watts when switched on. This seems not to be a large enough difference to make the SmartStrip work reliably. I adjusted it as carefully as I could, and at first it seemed to work, but as noted above it later failed to switch the SmartStrip off. I also wonder why the printer draws any power when switched off; that 7 watts costs $10 a year. Maybe time for a new printer.

I also tried using the DSL controller, which draws only 8 watts when on, as the controlling device. This turned out to be inadequate to switch the SmartStrip on, even when the sensitivity was turned up to he maximum.

I had similar trouble with the entertainment systems being switched by the tuner/amp when this was done using the remote. The unit draws 24 watts when working and 14 when on standby, and again the SmartStrip does not seem to be sensitive enough to detect the difference. If I switch off using the switch on the unit instead of using the remote it works fine, so I guess I will be doing that in future. (Saving that standby power is worth $20 a year, so I should be doing that anyway.)

The Kill-a-Watt is quite expensive at $45.95 (from http://www.smarthomeusa.com/) but it has a number of other features. Most useful, in addition to measuring the rate of power usage in watts, it can be used to integrate that over time to measure kilowatt hours used over a measured time interval. This is perfect for monitoring things like refrigerators which cycle on and off. It can also be used to switch between active power and apparent power readings, and can also display the power factor. These are rather esoteric measures which take account of phase differences between the voltage and current, and I doubt many users will understand or care about them. Other features include monitoring voltage, current, and frequency, and again I am not sure what use these would be put to.

To test the kilowatt hour capability, I turned my attention to our ancient refrigerator and found that it used 0.16 kWh in 2 hours, so averaging about 80 watts. This does not sound much, but it is on 24/7 so over a year this is about 700 kWh. At my price of 16 cents this is $112 a year. According to the energy star site, a typical modern top-freezer 18 cubic feet energy star rated refrigerator consumes about 400 kWh per year, so replacing our old model could save about $50 a year and pay for itself in 9 years. That may not sound like a great return, but what bank is gong to give you 11 percent? And that assumes energy prices do not go up in those 9 years. Bottom line is that old fridge will soon be history.

Finally, I used the Kill-a-Watt to test some chargers. It seems almost a cliché to say one should unplug chargers when not in use, but I found this not to be worthwhile. I tried two Dell computer chargers. Both registered 0 watts when the not plugged into the laptop. When plugged into a fully charged laptop, they registered 1 and 2 watts respectively. I also tried two mobile phone chargers and found that both registered 0 watts when not charging a phone. I also tried an electric toothbrush charger and a cordless phone charger and found that these registered 0 or 1 watt even when they were charging. I therefore think one should not lose sleep over chargers.

New Gadgets at Energy Technology Venture Capital Conference

2008-03-07T16:11:00.004-06:00

This conference, organized by the Houston Technology Center, took place yesterday and today. I did not register for the conference because I could not make the first day and today was just a half day, but I was invited to lunch today and to see the exhibits. The lunchtime keynote speaker was John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil. I had heard him give the keynote at another conference last week, and it was essentially the same speech though it seemed more polished this time. (He gave it at least one more time in between also.) It wasn't what most climate change activists would want to hear, but at least he was unequivocal in saying that we needed a cap-and-trade system. He said it was time to stop arguing about whether climate change was real and get on with doing something about it.

More interesting to me were some of the exhibits, which I hope to cover in more detail at a later date. Here are three that caught my attention.

A Company called EnerPlus (www.pulstarplug.com) has a new kind of spark plug which utilizes a capacitor to greatly increase the size of the spark, resulting in more complete combustion and a claimed improvement of 6% in economy and up to 12% in power output.

A company called Adaptive-AC allows each room in your house to be controlled by a programmable intelligent thermostat built into the air conditioning outlet. The thermostat adjusts the temperature by opening and closing flaps so as to regulate the air flow, thereby balancing the temperature over the house. (Or not balancing it, if for example you don’t want A/C in the living room when you are asleep in bed.) The unit is powered by a small generator driven from the air flow, and stored in an ultracapacitor for when the A/C is off, so there are no batteries. The product is not in volume production yet. (For technology junkies, the protypes were made with a 3-D printer, which is the first application of this technology I have come across.)

A company called DBLive (www.dblive.com) controls sprinkler systems by using the weather forecast to generate soil moisture forecast by location, this information being transmitted along with a local FM radio signal. This product is not in production yet, but will soon be undergoing trial in the Houston area.

The Lifecar

2008-03-05T04:33:00.002-06:00

In my February 5th post I mentioned a prototype electric car shown at the Detroit Auto Show and based on the Saturn Vue. Its claim to fame was the use of ultracapacitors to store energy recovered from regenerative braking. (Ultracapacitors take advantage of the high surface area to volume ratio of nanomaterials to store energy more compactly than could be done with a conventional capacitor or battery. Capacitors in general have the advantage over batteries of being able to store and release their energy very quickly, making them ideal for regenerative braking.)

The BBC is now reporting that the same idea appears on a hydrogen fuel-cell powered car which will be shown at the Geneva Motor Show which opens tomorrow. Called the Lifecar, and developed by Oxford and Cranfield Universities together with private industry, it is based upon the Morgan Aero 8 sports car. The Morgan’s already light weight is reduced further by removing luxuries and even air bags. Even then, the performance is not sports-car-like. Indeed it is barely adequate for a family sedan, with a top speed of 90 mph and 0-60 time of 7 seconds. (It is not clear whether this is with the aid of the ultracapacitors or not.) A range of 250 miles is claimed, at which point one would have to find a hydrogen station.

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7265267.stm for full story.

Skeptics Conference

2008-03-04T07:53:00.002-06:00

[It is now Friday 7th and, although the conference ended on Tuesday, google ads are still appearing for it, for example on this blog. As I say in this posting, they don't seem to be very well organised.]

The International (skeptics) Conference on Climate Change enters its last day today. They seem a bit disorganized, running a 7/8ths-page ad in the NYT only yesterday, the second day of the conference. Speakers include Czech President Vaclav Klaus, and ABC’s resident idiot John Stossel. Vaclav Klaus is not to be confused with his predecessor Vaclav Havel, who has written against climate change for example in a NYT Op-Ed last September (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/opinion/27havel.html). It is not clear to me why politicians have independent (i.e, not informed by expert opinion) opinions about scientific issues, and in this case I think their opinions are about as useful as Mbeki’s views on HIV.

They claim the conference is sold out, but apparently that is only 500 people. They also say that James Hansen and Al Gore were invited to attend but declined. Even the organizers don’t seem to be saying that climate change is not happening, btw, but rather that it is not a crisis.

The NYT published a story on the conference today. See http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntget=2008/03/04/science/earth/04climate.html&tntemail1=y&oref=slogin

For a simple reposte to skeptics on the science see my post yesterday.

Dealing with Skeptics

2008-03-03T06:29:00.003-06:00

The New York Times reported on Sunday that climate change skeptics are drawing attention to the recent cold weather in China and other places to cast doubt on climate change. (See http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntget=2008/03/02/science/02cold.html&tntemail1=y&oref=slogin) I have not written on the science before, because I did not think it was necessary, but maybe this is an excuse to rehearse the argument I use on the increasingly rare occasions when I am faced with a skeptic.

Frequently I find there is a misunderstanding that scientists are somehow struggling to explain observed climate change. Nothing could be further than the truth. Climate change due to human activity -- anthropogenic climate change – was predicted by John Tyndall as early as 1860 (see http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/general/history/) and has been vigorously promoted by James Hansen of NASA (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen) since the 1970’s. In other words the theory preceded the observed effect.

Because of this, the focus over the past decade or so on whether we are actually observing climate change has been a diversion which has had the effect of wasting a lot of time during which we could have been taking action. Of course, the scientific method requires that we test our theories by observation, but there are different kinds of scientific theories. Testing climate change by observation is not a defining moment for science, like for example demonstrating that light gets bent by gravity validating the general theory of relativity. It is more like watching a heated kettle of water in the expectation that steam will appear from the spout. If it does not, we have some serious rethinking to do, but nobody seriously doubts that it will. Arguing about whether we actually can see the first wisp of steam is not very productive.

In the case of climate change, if it did not happen then we would have to rethink a good deal of the physics we thought we have known for over a century. It is a simple energy imbalance due to the absorption spectra of greenhouse gases and the different spectra of incoming radiation from the sun and the outgoing radiation from the earth. More heat comes in than goes out, so the earth warms up until it reaches a new equilibrium. Except that right now we are adding to the greenhouse gases to this equilibrium temperature keeps rising.

(It is perhaps worth noting here the amount of inertia in the system. Even if we could stop all greenhouse gas emissions today, stablizing the current concentration of these gases at 380 ppm of carbon dioxide equivalent, the average temperature of the earth would still continue to rise for decades. And then of course there is inertia at the next level down, in that we cannot stop the emissions today. The goal of IPCC efforts is to stabilize the concentration at 450 ppm.)

The precise effects of climate change in specific regions are much less certain, and skeptics often seize on this uncertainty. The reason for the uncertainty is that the heat landing on the earth is concentrated towards the equator, whereas the radiation from the earth is more evenly spread. Heat gets transferred from the equator towards the poles by air and sea currents, and predicting how these will be affected by climate change is much more difficult than the simple energy-balance model which tells us that the average temperature of the earth has to increase. Some places may get wetter, others drier, some may even get colder. There are very complex computer models but they probably cannot be relied upon as definitive. What we can be pretty sure of is that there will be disruptive changes.

If all the above fails to convince a skeptic, one can always fall back on the last resort sometimes known as the precautionary principle. If there is even a significant chance of catastrophic effects of anthropogenic climate change is true, does it not make sense to act as if it is true? If we were in a car heading towards what looks like a concrete wall we would not delay braking because it might be a paper mock-up, still less because we could not predict exactly which bones we would break.

As I write this, NPR is running a story about one example of a possible local effect. The locks on the Panama Canal are being widened and deepened to take larger ships. Its operation is however threatened by climate change because it depends upon rainfall. The canal rises 85 feet above sea level and the water for the locks on both sides is gravity-fed fresh water from artificial lakes. Climate change could reduce rainfall and threaten its operation. Of course, by then the Northwest Passage may be a viable alternative.

My Experience with a Smart Power Strip

2008-03-01T08:45:00.005-06:00

[Amended March 2nd. It seems the sensitivity problem with the printer, mentioned towards the end of this post, is still an issue. I will investigate further and report back, probably next Saturday.]

I recently tried out a SmartStrip surge protector from Colman Cable Inc. It is a combined power strip and surge protector intended to save electricity by automatically switching off peripheral equipment when one controlling device is switched off. It seems rugged and well made. The model I bought cost $43.95 from SmartHomeUSA.com (there is a smaller model for $30.95) and has a total of 10 outlets: one for the control device, 6 for controlled devices, and 3 which are always live (unless you switch the power strip off). It has a lighted switch, a light to indicate whether the controlled devices are on and another to indicate that surge protection is working properly. Finally, there is a screw to control its sensitivity.

So, how useful was this in practice? Firstly one has to find a suitable application, and I had two in mind. One was entertainment. In one room I have a TV, satellite receiver, CD player, DVD player, and a tuner/amp used for the sound for everything except the DVD (because I ran out of amplifier inputs and rarely use DVD). All these devices are on standby. I also added a cordless phone charger to the mix, thinking that I listen to the radio enough to keep the phone charged and in any case there is another phone in the house. One hears a lot about not leaving things on standby and not leaving chargers plugged in when not in use, but I was not sure how much electricity was involved. Using the Cent-a-Meter described last Saturday I was unable to measure any difference very reliably – of course there could be other things going on in the house, and I might try again later with a monitor specific to the outlet – but it would seem that all these 6 devices used about 0.1 kW between them. This might not sound much, but at 16 cents per kWh it adds up to about $120 per year if left on when not needed 20 hours a day, which would pay for the SmartStrip in a few months.

I chose the tuner/amp as the control device, for two reasons: firstly, it mostly needs to be on when anything else is in use; and secondly, if it has been switched off (not on standby) it powers up with tuner on. I also found that I could not switch the satellite receiver completely off because when power returns it goes through lengthy signal acquisition process. So, this needs to be plugged into one of the permanently on outlets and the overall saving may therefore be less than 0.1 kW. Incidentally, I found that two of the devices – the tuner/amp and the satellite seem to use more power on standby than when on. I consistently measured a 0.03 kW difference on each. The TV is the only one which had a significant increase in power usage – about .15 kW – when on rather than on standby.

Now for the other case. In another room, I have a computer, external hard drive, printer, DSL internet connection, and wireless network controller. Between them they use about 0.3 kW when on. (Note that this is a case of equipment which in the past we have tended to leave on rather than just on standby. I have a computer in another room, which gets access to the internet though the network.) The internet and wireless network use transformers, and it seems these are not suitable for the controller. Likewise the computer, partly because it may not be needed when the network is and partly because it is a laptop with a charger so power consumption does not correlate well with whether it is on. So, I chose the printer as the controller. I found it quite hard to adjust the sensitivity to cope with the quite small power usage of the printer, but it now seems to be working and based upon the same assumption as above I project savings of about $350 per year.

I started out thinking the benefits would be minor, but overall savings of $470 per year on a total bill of $3000 is not to be sneezed at. Second only to the pool pump controller discussed in an earlier blog, which I estimate to be saving about $900 per year.

Canada's Kyoto Commitments

2008-02-29T04:24:00.002-06:00

I am still digesting all I learnt at the conference on Wednesday, but here is a small and self-contained item, namely Canada’s feeble response to its Kyoto commitments. This is not hot news, and frankly I am not sure why this had not come to my attention before.

Unlike the US, Canada ratified the treaty in 2002. In so doing, Canada made a binding commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. In January 2006, Canada elected a conservative government which had opposed Kyoto, but even before that Canada was seriously off-track. GHG emissions rose 27% between 1990 and 2004, whereas in the US (which has never ratified the treaty) they had gone up by ‘only’ 16%.

In 2006, Canada belatedly introduced legislation (Bill C-30, “The Clean Air Act”) to deal with GHG emissions. As far as I can ascertain this bill has still to pass into law, but I think it may be close. For an account of the legislative process through last June (I can find nothing more recent) see http://www.mcmbm.com/Upload/Publication/GlobalWarming_0607.pdf.

More troubling, it has been amended over time to favor intensity-based targets rather than absolute ones. An intensity-based target limits GHG emissions per $ of GDP, and is ineffective for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it prevents Canadian companies from participating in carbon markets (for example the EU’s Carbon Trading System or buying credits under the Clean Development Mechanism to finance clean projects in China and elsewhere) and thereby getting the biggest bang for their buck. Rather than my repeating all the arguments see http://www.climateactionnetwork.ca/e/resources/publications/member/dsf-intensity-targets.pdf for a discussion of what’s wrong with intensity based targets.

(With the recent change in government in Australia, that country became the 107th country to ratify the treaty, which came into effect in 2005. There is a very useful Wikipedia entry on the efforts of various countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol.)

Business & Climate Change Conference

2008-02-28T05:07:00.005-06:00

Yesterday I attended this conference sponsored by The British Consulate General of Houston, The Climate Group, and Shell Oil Company. I was there for almost 12 hours – ok, the last hour or so was a rather well catered reception – and picked up enough information to fill the blog for weeks. This will take some time to organize, however, so this is just an introduction.

The venue was the Federal Reserve's very impressive Houston building, which is even more impressive when one considers that this is just a branch of the 11th district, headquartered in Dallas. Security was strict; rather like an airport except that we did not have to take off our shoes and I had the impression that the guards actually knew what they were doing. No photography allowed. The building houses the Fed’s largest vault. There is a collection of historical bank notes on display in the lobby, as well as a gold bar with an on-line electronic display of its current value. With recent increases in the price of gold, yesterday the bar (about the size of a brick) was worth $383,549. As one might imagine, there was considerable criticism of the Bush administration during the conference, and it is at least nice to know we live in a country where you can do this in a federal building without getting arrested!

Yesterday’s event was relatively small, allowing plenty of interaction with the speakers, who included the British Consul, Paul Lynch, and Rick Lazio of JPMorgan Chase and a four-term congressman who ran against Clinton for the senate in 2000. The keynote speech was given by John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil Company, and was curiously off-topic. His concern seems to be reliance on foreign oil rather than climate change, and his solutions have to do with more domestic conventional and unconventional oil and gas development. This was not received well by any delegate I spoke to, one saying he thought Hofmeister had come to the wrong conference. There was however a more encouraging presentation from Bill Spence, Vice President of Shell International Renewables. Overall, the conference was very interesting and very optimistic about our ability to deal with climate change. Much more to follow.

Today the action moves on to the Houston’s Presidential Summit on America’s Energy Future (http://www.houstonspresidentialsummit.com/) organized by the greater Houston Partnership. All presidential hopefuls were invited, but apparently only Senator Clinton has so far accepted. (And as I listen to the radio this morning it seems she is in Ohio so it is not clear she will show up.) I am unable to attend anyway, but I am not sure I would want to; they advise arriving 2 hours early because of security. This will also be a much bigger event than yesterday's rather intimate one.

Misuse of Congestion Pricing

2008-02-27T05:21:00.003-06:00

Motorists in Central London have incurred a congestion charge for some time, paying £8 per day to drive within the central area. The scheme is generally regarded as a great success, with cities around the world looking to emulate it and the UK considering a nationwide congestion charge scheme to replace the current road fund license.

London’s controversial mayor. Ken Livingstone, now plans to increase the charge for high-emission vehicles (those emitting more than 225 grams per kilometer of CO2) to £25 per day.

The Financial Times last Wednesday reported that Porsche is planning a legal challenge to the plan. It also reports that owners of high-emission vehicles who live within the congestion zone will no longer get the 90% discount which means they currently pay only 80 pence per day. This is however a little misleading, because the discount applies only if one pays quarterly. Non-residents by contrast have to pay daily if they drive within the zone. So, without the discount the residents will be in the same situation as non-residents and will pay only if they use their cars.

So whose side am I on? Having only two levels of charge separated by a factor of 3 seems too blunt an instrument. And an additional £17 seems excessive, given that an appropriate carbon tax would probably add only something like 25 pence to a gallon of gas. It is hard to use 68 gallons of gas per day in central London, even in a 911! But my main objection is that the original purpose was to tax congestion rather than greenhouse gas emissions, which are not a problem local to central London. I think Ken should stick to the original purpose, and let the UK or indeed the EU worry about emissions.

Better Late then Never?

2008-02-26T05:50:00.003-06:00

It is reported by the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7263225.stm) and others that the US is ready to accept binding international obligations on reducing greenhouse gas (HGH) emissions if other nations do the same. I am not sure this is a change of position, since the main objection to Kyoto was the different treatments of the so-called BRIC (Brazil, India, and China) countries.

The statement was made Monday by Daniel Price, President Bush's deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, at a press conference in Paris. “An effective framework requires the participation of all major economies, developed and developing alike,” said Mr Price. “Europe and the US could turn out the lights today, and come 2030 or 2050 we would not have addressed the problem of climate change.”

The US comments stem largely from a process initiated by President Bush last year, rather than in support of the ongoing UN process. The latter is based upon the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which last met in Bali last year, and the Kyoto protocol and its replacement due in 2012. I imagine the US is going his own route to save face after refusing to ratify Kyoto, so I think this will change with the new administration, whoever wins. In the eleven months Bush has remaining, it is unlikely that much will come from this apparent change in direction. But at least it might get the dialog with Europe and others on a more constructive basis.

Behavioral Economics

2008-02-25T06:08:00.007-06:00

Dan Areily’s new book “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” seems to be getting a lot of press lately, having been reviewed in newspapers and Dan having been interviewed on NPR. It is the subject of a review, written by Elizabeth Kolbert, in this week’s New Yorker. Ms. Kolbert is the author of “Field Notes from a Catastrophe,” an anecdotal book about climate change (which I recommend by the way), but she does not link the two issues in the review.

Dan Areily’s book is a popular one on the subject of Behavioral Economics, which studies what people actually do when faced with economic choices rather than what Adam Smith thought they should do. It turns out that we are not very rational, and that calls into question the validity of a lot of classical economics. The invisible hand might be blind also, and maybe a bit tipsy. I got to thinking what this might mean for carbon pricing. (I should perhaps add here that I have yet to read the book, so this thinking might be premature.)

As discussed last week, a “sensible” price for carbon emissions is probably in the $10 to $50 range per metric ton, which translates into 10 to 50 cents on a gallon of gas or 1 to 5 cents per kilowatt hour on the electricity bill. This extra cost is meant to provide: the power company with an incentive to develop alternative energy sources; industry to find less energy-intensive ways of making products, and indeed entirely new products which use less energy; and consumers to demand and buy products which use less energy and to otherwise alter their life styles to use less energy. Furthermore, if classical economics holds sway and we all behave rationally, it is meant to cut emissions in a way that does least damage to our standard of living. But will it work?

We can probably rely upon industry to do its bit. At least we should hope that well-run corporations make their decisions on a rational basis. Fortunately their rationale includes their desire to look good, so if anything they are probably going to put more emphasis on going green than would be warranted by a strict calculation of the cost. Right now there is no cost, but companies are already beginning to behave as if a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system were in place. This is partly because a lot of their decisions have long-term consequences, but also because of the public relations benefits.

As an example of this, I read somewhere that over half the coal fired power stations that were planned in 2000 have since been cancelled. Carbon Moratorium Now (www.cmn.org) reports that 59 such stations were cancelled in 2007 alone, while here in Texas (where we have more wind power generation on line than any other state), 8 of the 11 coal-fired stations planned by TXU were recently cancelled as a condition of its prospective new owners.

But what about us consumers? Here are a couple of statistics:

74% of Americans believe high gasoline prices are a "serious" or "somewhat serious" problem. (Source: Quinnipiac University Poll. June 5-11,
2007), and

81% of Americans believe gasoline prices are "unreasonable." (Source: CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. May 4-6,
2007.)

Yet:

64% of Americans would be willing to pay higher gasoline/fuels taxes to support development of alternative energy sources. (Source: CBS News/New York Times Poll. Apr. 20-24, 2007.)

It is hard to think that we will change our habits because of a 10 cent increase in the price of gas, especially as this is dwarfed by recent increases due to normal demand and supply issues. But we are changing our habits. Prius outsold Explorer last year, and I saw my first Smart ForTwo in Houston last week. I was gratified to see two hybrids in the paddock of a vintage car race meeting at the weekend, showing that even us petrol-heads are concerned. (This was a casual observation; I was not looking for hybrids, let alone counting them. I just happened to notice the inconspicuous badges on these Hondas.)

I doubt that it is the possibility of another 10 or even 50 cents on a gallon of gas that is motivating people though. For now, I think the irrational motivations – by which I mean motivation not based on pure self interest – is working in favor of conservation rather than against it. Let’s keep it that way!

But if consumers don’t do our bit, industry will take up the slack in a cap-and-trade system. The solution will be a little less than optimal, measured in strictly economic terms, but one could argue that if we are happy with our choices then by definition they were the best.

A Few Home Electricity Saving Ideas

2008-02-23T00:30:00.001-06:00

Saturdays I like to talk about things each of us can do individually to reduce our GHG emissions. Last week I told you to move house, but if you have not done that, here are a couple of little things I have done. All my electricity is supposed to be green, from Green Mountain Energy, so these things are not directly saving GHG. But the less renewable energy I use the more capacity there is for others. And I save money.

The first gadget does not in itself save energy. It is the Cent-a-meter, and it monitors your electricity usage. It is very easy to install, with a couple of loops around the wires entering your electricity meter. A small transmitter transmits the usage to a battery-powered monitor in the house. This allows you to see how many kilowatts are being consumed on an almost real-time basis. Mine is currently (no pun intended) showing that I am using 1.28 kW. You can switch things on and off to see the effects, and change your habits accordingly, and maybe pinpoint an old appliance which needs replacing. I found I was spending about $50 per month powering electronic equipment on charge or on standby. I will be trying a smart power strip soon.

I was also concerned about the charger for a new cordless phone I had just bought, because I could see no easy way to avoid having it on all the time. (I could maybe use a smart power strip controlled by a table lamp, but I am not sure how many hours per day the phone needs to be charging.) Cent-a-meter told me it used 0.02 kW, so at 16 cents a kWh cost about $2.30 a month. This is less than 1% of my bill so I decided not to worry about it, at least until I have addressed bigger issues.

Cent-a-meter is an Australian product but marketed in the US. It can also show power consumption as cost per hour or tons of GHG per year, instead of kW. It updates either every 12 seconds or every minute in battery-saving mode. I used the 12-second mode only while experimenting with different appliances etc. See http://www.centameter.com.au/ or http://www.centameter.us/ for more details. There are other products which fulfill the same need but which I have not tried. For example, PowerCost monitor seems to do the same as Cent-a-meter, while Kill-a-Watt allows individual electrical appliances to be monitored. (The Kill-a-Watt would probably get a more reliable reading for the phone, because you cannot rely on everything else in the house staying constant.)

The second gadget is for pool owners, and I credit it with a good deal of the savings I have made (see below). It is called a TightWatt, and it replaces the old-fashioned mechanical time control on the pool pump. As we all know, the pump does not need to run so much in the winter as the summer, but how many people go out and move those little peg things on the dial every month?

This does it automatically, so that the pump comes on for less than an hour in depth of winter and gradually increases to about 8 hours. (These are just my settings, in Houston. It is all programmable.) We are in our winter now, and the pump comes on only briefly. The pool is sparkling clear, and I also save on chlorine. See http://www.tightwatt.com/. I bought only the single-speed single-pump version, by the way. I have a pool sweep on an old-fashioned timer set to run only for less than an hour, synchronized with main pump in mid-winter.

Pools are very inefficient, and there are other things one can do. The main problem is that they try to force far too much water through far too narrow pipes. One solution is to use larger-bore pipes, and this is being done more now on new pools, but this is not really economical to retrofit. Somewhat easier to retrofit is a half-speed pump. These need to be run for twice as long, but there is still a saving since viscous losses go up more than linearly with speed. I heard about these just weeks after replacing my pump with a conventional one, so I have not made the switch yet.

My electricity bills are running about 25% down on what they were a couple of years ago, even though I have retired during that time and now spend every day at home instead of going to the office. The savings are greater in the winter, so I put a lot of that down to the TightWatt. I have also replaced almost all the bulbs in the house with CFLs. I am still very pro-CFL in spite of safety concerns aired in a previous posting.

My sole experience with an LED was bad though. From BBE, it was meant to be equivalent of a 60W bulb. It is in a closet and I often put it on when I get up before dawn. However, once there is any other light – from the dawn or a light in the room – it is impossible to know whether it was on, with the result that it often got left on all day. Which defeats the purpose and the $30 LED is consigned to the trash. (Well, actually it is in a closet; I am a hoarder!)

US Leadership in Clean Technology?

2008-02-22T03:00:00.004-06:00

When one thinks about the leaders in efforts to combat climate change, the US does not immediately come to mind. More likely Europe, Japan, or even Costa Rica. But that could be a misleading impression, based solely upon our federal government and in particular its failure to ratify Kyoto. This will of course change soon; all the remaining presidential candidates – even Huckabee, who does not believe in evolution -- are supportive of efforts to combat climate change.

Perhaps more to the point, business is on board, partly in anticipation of GHG emissions carrying a price tag soon. The Financial Times last month published an article about how the amount of US venture capital going into GHG abatement technology was threatening Europe’s lead. According to Cleantech, a US research group, European investment in clean technology companies was only a third of the $3.7bn invested by US investors.

As reported by Reuters and AP, last week saw a UN summit where institutional investors pledged to invest $10bn over the next two years in technologies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The plan "reflects the many investment opportunities that exist today to put a dent in global warming pollution, build profits and benefit the global economy," said Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental leaders, and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk. Lubber called it the largest meeting of financial leaders ever to focus on climate change and said it would illustrate how the marketplace is starting to transform.

The gathering of 480 investors and other Wall Street types, representing $20 trillion in capital, was organized by groups supporting UN efforts such as the UN Foundation, Ceres and the UN Fund for International Partnerships. For the full Reuters/AP story see http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/303882

Gasoline from CO2?

2008-02-21T12:46:00.000-06:00

Never ceases to amaze me, but whenever I blog something I read something new within hours which changes my view. Yesterday I said to look for hydrogen and electric for final solution on powering cars. Then, over lunch, I finally got around to reading Tuesday’s papers, and the NYT Science Times section reports a proposal out of Los Alamos national lab to produce synthetic gasoline from the CO2 in the atmosphere. Of course this addresses the fuel problem rather elegantly, but it does not address the energy problem. The energy to do this still needs to come from somewhere, probably a power station. In this it is no different from electric or hydrogen cars. The big advantage however is that no change is required to our cars or to the gas stations we rely upon. Seems like a win-win to me.

Diesels vs. Hybrids

2008-02-20T04:27:00.002-06:00

The original Toyota Prius came on sale in 2000, when the Ford Explorer was the bestselling vehicle in the US and sales were at their peak. Last year, Prius sales soared nearly 70% to outsell Explorer. This says something about changing attitudes, but are hybrids all they are cracked up to be? Enthusiasm for hybrids seems overblown to me. After all, the energy still comes from gasoline, so the only saving is due to regenerative braking and switching off instead of idling.

Consequently, highway mileage tends to be lower than city mileage, so the benefit you get from a hybrid will depend a lot on your driving mix. Last year, the 2007 Prius topped the EPA’s old fuel efficiency ranking with 60 mpg in the city and 51 mpg on the highway. This year, the EPA has changed the test cycles, so that for most cars both mileage estimates go down 2 or 3 mpg. The change is more detrimental to hybrids, however, and the Prius is now rated at only 48 mpg city, 45 mpg highway.

According to ConsumerAffairs.Com, many Prius owners disputed the 2007 mileage numbers, reporting average fuel economy of 43 mpg. (See http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/10/epa_prius.html.) If you own a hybrid, I would like to hear comments about how well they perform in real life, as opposed to the EPA test cycle.

I expect to see growing interest in diesels as a more practical and reliable alternative to hybrids, typically giving about 30% better mileage than equivalent gasoline engines. Also, the engines tend to last longer.

A few manufacturers have introduced diesels recently in the US, notably Mercedes with the E-class Bluetec. Rated at 23 mpg city 33 mpg highway (using the new test), it is very economical for a mid-size luxury car. The Jeep Liberty is also available as a diesel, as are three Volkswagen models. BMW and Audi will follow, as will Honda (including its Acura brand). Subaru has a new diesel version of the Legacy in Europe and that might get to the US next year. Audi might even let us have their 80 mpg A2 TDI, also available in Europe.

The 2008 Volkswagen Jetta TDI is currently probably the nearest US-available diesel to compare with the Prius. It does cost a bit more (it lists at about $25,000 against $22,000) but you are probably more likely to get a deal. EPA numbers are 36 mpg city, 41 mpg highway on the new test. And by all accounts you will have a lot more fun.

But Americans do not seem to like diesels. A recent Kelley Blue Book Marketing Research study found that only six percent of shoppers think diesel is most likely to succeed in becoming a mainstream vehicle power-train type, compared with 40 percent for hybrids, 20 percent for hydrogen fuel cell and 17 percent citing flexible-fuel systems. (Flex fuel vehicles offer the dubious advantage of allowing one to switch to subsidized corn-derived ethanol, which we now know results in more emissions than gasoline as well as enriching corporate farmers and taking corn out of the mouths of poor Mexicans.)

Apparently the main reason for the dislike is that diesels are perceived as noisy and smelly, but this is way out of date. In Europe, diesel already is a “mainstream power-train type”, outselling gasoline powered cars in most markets. If you rent a car in Europe you are likely to get a diesel and you probably won’t even notice the difference. The main difference – apart from filling up from the right pump – is prodigious low-end torque and a corresponding lack of any need or ability to use high rpm. (Enthusiasts may miss this, but most Americans choose an automatic anyway; these drivers are unlikely to care.) Pre-heating when necessary is automatic and quick.

I think the Kelley Book survey is correct in that diesel is not the final answer, but then neither in my opinion is hybrid. I think the future will be either pure electric or hydrogen. The latter may be powered by fuel cell or internal combustion engine as BMW are experimenting with. And of course the electricity or hydrogen has to be produced from a clean source. (Kelly did not even ask about pure electrics, by the way.)

In the shorter term, because of the lack of infrastructure for hydrogen or pure electric, look to diesel and plug-in hybrids.

The Right to Emit GHG

2008-02-19T05:36:00.003-06:00

There are a number of ethical questions surrounding climate change, not least those to do with the fact that many of the people expected to be most affected contribute little or nothing to greenhouse gas emissions because they live in poor countries or are not even born yet. But this post concerns a particular question posed by a comment to my February 6th post, namely: does wealth entitle one to create more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? (Actually the comment said CO2, but I am generalizing to GHG.) This got me thinking, which is always dangerous and in this case is probably going to be contentious.

I don’t like left/right political labels much, but on economic issues I think of myself as left-leaning. For example, I think the government has a role in redistributing wealth, as well as in regulating business, for example in preventing fraud, ensuring health safety, protecting the environment, and so on. On the other hand, I am certainly not in favor of a command economy. Marx’s maxim “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” has not worked very well. I am therefore basing my analysis on the assumption that we are working within a properly regulated market economy, and I am a little surprised to come up with the answer “Yes, wealth does entitle one to create more GHG emissions.” But first, we need to examine that word “entitle.” My dictionary defines the verb “entitle” as “to give a right or claim to,” so someone who is entitled to something has (been given) a right to it.

There are various sorts of rights. Certain political rights for example are guaranteed by the US Constitution together with its amendments. These rights are not so much granted as proclaimed. One example is the right to free speech. The protection of these rights is in the form of a prohibition of any law which would infringe those rights. It does not guarantee that a particular individual can exercise the right, or regulate the extent to which he can exercise it. For example, someone in a coma has the right to free speech but cannot exercise it. I have the right to free speech but cannot exercise it as extensively as Mitt Romney. (This may well be unfair, and may well be a misinterpretation of the first amendment, but that is the current interpretation.)

The rights that are given, as implied by an entitlement, tend to be the rights to certain kinds of wellbeing, typically goods and services. One might think everyone is entitled to free health care or clean drinking water, for example. Attitudes vary around the world: most western countries regard free health care as a right. The US does not, but it does regard free education as a right. China is meant to be a communist country but provides neither health care nor education free. Which brings me to the contrast between these kinds of rights and the rights guaranteed by the constitution.

A more controversial example of the latter would be the second amendment right to bear arms. This has been interpreted as meaning that every citizen has the right to own a gun, but not even the NRA thinks it means the government should provide them free. Likewise, merely proclaiming the right to free health care would not in itself make it happen; it would just mean free health care could not be made illegal. The point is that the right to a particular good or service has to be granted by someone, and so implies an obligation or duty on that person to provide it. If the government thinks everyone should have clean drinking water, they have the duty to legislate so as to somehow provide it.

I contend that emitting GHG (other than by breathing!) is such a right. Indeed, the way we create these emissions is by consuming goods and services and hence energy. That being the case, the question really becomes “should wealth entitle one to create more GHG emissions” rather than does it. Some authority would need to grant rights to emit GHG, and the implication of the question is actually that this authority would have to restrict those rights. (So maybe this is a third kind of right; one which is taken away by some authority.) Possibly this authority is just ones conscience, but maybe it is an international institution like the UN.

Given a certain worldwide budget for GHG emissions, there are various ways in which we could allocate it between individuals. The free-market way is to price the emissions so that it is reflected in the price we pay for everything. This is efficient because it allows individuals to make choices which maximize their total utility, and also creates an incentive to provide new goods and services with fewer emissions. Another way would be some form of rationing. In addition to paying for a product or service, we would have to hand over a coupon representing the carbon footprint of that product. The coupons could be allocated equally to everyone, and would almost represent a parallel currency. The problem with this idea is that it would severely limit the ability of above-averagely well-off people to spend their money (while giving the poor rights they cannot afford to exercise) and the problem with that is that it removes the incentive that is the basis of the market economy I am assuming.

In other words, unless we are prepared to say that wealth does not entitle one to drink more wine, wear a better suit, or whatever – which is tantamount to making wealth meaningless -- it is hard to see how we could say it does not entitle one to emit more GHG. Having said that, the price mechanism I would advocate for GHG emissions would bear more heavily on the wealthy than the poor. The wealthy would bear the brunt of both the reduction in GHG (since the poor don’t have much to reduce) and the cost of mitigation. It goes some way towards equalizing the emissions of rich and poor, without going to the extent of requiring them to be equal.

If we still think this is unfair, because the poor cannot afford to consume more, we should separate the issue of this unfairness from that of GHG emissions. We should subsidize people rather than emissions. That is, we should enact policies which redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, who may well choose to spend it on something they want or need more than GHG-intense goods, which is preferable to encouraging them to emit more GGH.

Climate Change and Wine

2008-02-18T04:18:00.001-06:00

Quality wine depends upon a lot of factors but not least the climate, indeed the best wines depend upon the microclimate on particular hillsides. So it is not surprising that wine growers are concerned about climate change. They held a conference in Barcelona last week, and I will get to that later, before ending with a note on a report about wine’s carbon footprint. But first a couple of anecdotes:

It was reported last year that Louis Roederer and other top champagne houses are considering purchasing land in England because Champagne may become too warm. It is rumored that some Champagne houses have already bought in Kent and Sussex in southern England.
The drought in Australia has been so bad that Australian wine makers do not have enough grapes to satisfy demand. For example, Lindemans is sourcing wine from Chile and South Africa.

And now to the conference in Barcelona, where Al Gore is giving the closing address just about now as I prepare this on Saturday 16th. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the Second International Congress on Wine and Climate Change has attracted more than 350 experts from 36 countries. (But apparently for some reason not many from Spain and none at all from Rioja; Catalonian/Basque rivalry maybe?)

The conference began on Friday when Bernard Seguin, head of climate studies at France's INRA agricultural research institute, told delegates that the consequences of global warming are already being felt, adding “Harvests are already coming 10 days earlier than before in almost all wine-growing regions."

"Wine and wine-producing will change in a way that will depend on how we confront global warming,” said Seguin. "If the temperature rises two or three degrees (centigrade), we could manage to see Bordeaux remain as Bordeaux, Rioja as Rioja, Burgundy as Burgundy. But if it goes up five or six degrees, we must face up to huge problems, and the changes will be hard."

Comments from two other attendees quoted by APF:

"The types of wines will change in almost all regions," said Vicente Sotes, a professor at the Polytechnic University.
"The French will have problems," especially in the Bordeaux region, said Pancho Campos, the president of the Wine Academy of Spain, who organized the Barcelona conference. “German producers on the banks of the Rhine will be the least at risk,” he said.
The French "Grand Crus" could be further threatened by the "New World" wines of Australia, California, Chile, Argentina, South Africa and New Zealand, who would have the best climatic conditions. "The countries in the southern hemisphere are next to a greater mass of water, and it is sea currents which maintain the temperature at its level," said Campos.

This is all very speculative in my opinion, because we do not really know how the global rise in temperature will affect individual climates around the world. All we can say for sure is that the wine map of the world will change. Some areas may get better, some worse, while others may adapt their techniques and the varieties they grow. We may see Cabernet and Merlot growing in Burgundy instead of Pinot, though of course this would require changing French wine law.

On a related topic, wine lovers also worry about their carbon footprint. A recent report, “Red, White and “Green”: The Cost of Carbon In the Global Wine Trade” by Tyler Colman and Pablo Paster, studies this. A lot of the carbon footprint is due to transport, so the main findings include:

Better to drink out of cardboard rather than glass.
If you must have glass, a larger bottle is better because the ratio of glass to wine is less.
In the US, if you live to the West of a line that runs down the middle of Ohio and then curves around to split Texas in two, so that Houston (where I live) and the rest of the gulf coast are to the east of it, it is better to drink California wines while to the east it is better to drink French.

Frankly, as a wine lover I find it hard to imagine many people selecting their wines on the basis of these rules, but I am very grateful to be on the French side of the line! And thank god Dr. Vino does not suggest drinking Texan wines.

CFL Dangers

2008-02-17T04:29:00.006-06:00

[I posted this originally in the early hours of Sunday morning, and it was not until lunchtime that I found that coincidentally the New York Times had run an editorial on the subject. See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17sun3.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=newfangled+light+bulb&st=nyt&oref=slogin.

In looking for the above link, I also found that they had run a story on the subject yesterday, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E3DC143EF93AA25755C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1.]

A while back I posted about my personal experiences with compact florescent lamps, as a result of which a reader emailed me to warn me of their dangers. All fluorescents contain Mercury, the most toxic non-radioactive metal known to man. It is a neurotoxin and especially dangerous for young children. There is no effective way to clean up after an indoor breakage. Furthermore, there is no effective recycling program. Apparently California may require big bold labels stating CFLs are toxic.

See http://www.newswithviews.com/Peterson/rosalind1.htm -- which also raises concerns about ultraviolet light, lead, and fire hazard -- for more.

Carbon Footprint of Suburban vs. City Life

2008-02-16T03:48:00.003-06:00

Last Saturday I discussed one very easy thing we could do individually to reduce our carbon footprint, namely to eat less meat. Here is something a bit more disruptive: move to the city. That may sound drastic, but it could also be a smart economic choice.

The 3 top things about real estate are said to be 'location, location, and location,' yet Americans buy houses in the middle of nowhere. Often the price of the structure (a depreciating asset) is actually greater than that of the land. (As Gertrude Stein said, “There’s no there there.” though in truth I have to admit she was referring to the city of Oakland.) This makes no sense as an investment, and in my view has a lot to do with the mortgage crisis. Increasingly Americans pay for larger and larger suburban homes with little intrinsic value and commute dozens of miles to work, but I think this trend is set to reverse. The attraction of the suburbs will decrease – and hence the folly of buying there will become more obvious -- as the cost of energy goes up and as retiring baby-boomers seek homes with less yard to look after and closer to amenities and public transport.

Of course it won’t help much for you to move if someone else takes your place, but if it leads to lower house prices it might at least slow down new development. My advice however is to get out while the going’s good.

City-dwelling is much more energy-efficient that suburban or rural dwelling for many reasons: homes are smaller; apartments insulate each other from heat and cold; transport of goods to stores is more efficient; amenities like schools, hospitals, and stores are closer to home. In some cities a car is unnecessary, most errands being possible by public transport or even on foot. (From my London apartment I can visit bars and restaurants and buy anything from a bottle of milk to a business suit within five minutes walk, while for longer trips the tube station is about 100 yards away.)

There was an article in last Sunday’s New York Times about people struggling to be green in the suburbs. Buying things like wind turbines. Why not just move to the city? The article points out that the average size of an American home almost doubled between 1970 and 2005, while the average commute went up from 8.9 miles in 1983 to 12.1 in 2001. The article also says the average American's carbon footprint is over 3 times that of a resident of New York City. But you don’t have to live in a million dollar Manhattan efficiency to improve your carbon footprint. The NYT article quotes a study done in Atlanta, which found that even moving from a neighborhood with 2 to 4 dwellings per acre to one with 6 to 8 saved about 10%, just because people need to drive less to get to stores etc. Finally, the same study showed that residential energy use for a single family detached home was about 70% more than for a multifamily unit.

Still like your sprawling ranch, or maybe can’t get out because of negative equity? In coming weeks I will talk about what you can do to make wherever you live more efficient, starting next Saturday with a couple of gadgets that have helped me reduce my electricity consumption by 25% over the past year or so. Plus an update on my sole LED lamp, which is now consigned to the scrap heap.

New Report Sees Profit in Combating Climate Change

2008-02-15T05:02:00.003-06:00

Once again, late breaking news trounces what I had prepared for today. According to the Financial Times yesterday, McKinsey was set to release a report about the cost of addressing climate change, and the man conclusion is that about half of the required reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could actually be achieved at a profit. I have not been able to find this report yet on the web, but it seems to be a follow-up to the report they issued last November, prior to the Bali conference. (See http://mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/greenhousegas.asp for a summary and the ability to download the full report, an executive summary, video or slideshow presentation.)

The good news is that McKinsey believes that about half the reductions in greenhouse gas GHG required to meet the IPCC goal of stabilizing GHG atmospheric concentration at 550 ppm not only can be achieved by energy savings using existing technology, but that it can be done at a profit (with an average return of 17%). That would suggest to me that the other half would probably be achievable and profitable with the imposition of a relatively low carbon tax or the equivalent, especially when measures other than energy efficiency are included.

The bad news is that we are apparently not doing it. That is to say, we are not acting in our own economic interest. Adam Smith’s invisible hand is not working. I wonder why? One explanation is that this conclusion must be quite sensitive to the price of fossil fuels, and these have only recently reached the dizzying heights they are today. Other reasons, especially among individuals and small companies, probably include ignorance, apathy, and an inability to make the necessary capital investment. I have also found personally that companies often look for unrealistic rates of return, often expecting a payback period of 2 years. I do not understand why this is; where can they invest and get a 50% return? (For insights into how big business regards climate change issues, see another McKinsey report “How Companies Think about Climate Change,” which indicates that climate change issues are considered mostly with regard to the effect on a company's brands and reputation. This and other McKinsey reports on climate change can be found at http://mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/.)

In the new report, McKinsey looked at all energy-saving technologies which would provide a return of 10% or more and found that adopting all of them would cost about $170 billion a year worldwide (0.4% of global GDP and not much more than the US spends annually on the Iraq war) but would provide an average return of 17% on this investment. It identifies heavy industry in China as the sector with the most to gain, with the second being residential housing in the US, where homes are large, poorly insulated and equipped with a range of appliances that are often themselves inefficient or poorly used, such as air-conditioning systems left on unnecessarily. (US homes happens to be the subject of the posting prepared for tomorrow, Saturday being my day for what individuals can do.)

Overall, out of the $170 billion, $83 billion would be spent on industrial applications, $40 billion would be spent on residential, $25 billion on transportation, and $22 billion on commercial. $38 billion of this would be spent in China and $28 billion in the US.

More on Carbon Price, CERA Week Houston

2008-02-14T03:25:00.006-06:00

I posted twice about pricing carbon dioxide emission recently. Here are two new developments.

In what could be a U.S. first, California’s Bay Area Air Quality Management District is proposing to charge an annual fee to businesses based on emissions, the Mercury News reports. All 10,000 “stationary sources” of air pollution that the air district regulates would be subject to the fee, 4.2 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide, including businesses and government agencies.. The Shell oil refinery in Martinez would pay the largest fee, $186,475 a year for its 4.4 million annual metric tons of emissions. The air district’s board could take a final vote by May.

The fee seems ridiculously small. By contrast, FT reported yesterday that in evalulating investment decision US companies were planning on future legislation imposing a charge of betweeen $13 and $40 a metric ton. That's more like it, and within the $10 to $50 range suggested in my post of February 8. The report also noted that this congress had introduced 125 pieces of legislation addressing climate change.

Meanwhile, at the Cambridge Energy Reasearch Associate's conference here in Houston this week, Jim Mulva (CEO of ConocoPhillips) in a keynote address warned that the US risks the loss of geopolitical influence and "incalculable damage" to its efforts to fight terrorism and encourage trade due to its opposition to worldwide action on climate change. I would have said that had already happened.

Breaking News -- Car which runs on Compressed Air!

2008-02-13T09:54:00.004-06:00

Sorry this is the second post of the day, but it is car day and I just saw this on BBC site. A five-seater, glass fibre bodied car driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks built into the chassis.

The tanks can be filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes, or it can be plugged into the grid and an on-board compressor will do it in four hours.

Full story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7241909.stm

Electric Cars in US and Israel

2008-02-13T05:23:00.007-06:00

Last Wednesday (which is my regular car day) I talked about the Tesla Roadster, a tiny $98,000 electric two-seater sports car offering considerable performance which certainly is not for everyone. This week I was hoping to talk about more mainstream cars which are in the works, but frankly my research left me quite depressed. (Though there is interesting news from Israel at the end of this post.) Right now I think diesels offer the best environmental solution, and hope to compare these with hybrids next Wednesday.

First, the good news. While Tesla decided to start with a niche car, they do plan additional offerings. To quote the company’s web site, “Our next model will leverage the Tesla Roadster‘s technology, resulting in a less expensive sports sedan that we can sell at higher volume.” (In other words my money will be subsidizing these cars, but no matter!)

By contrast, the two major US car companies have shown only concept cars. General Motors showed the Concept Chevrolet Volt at the recent Detroit Auto Show. GM is calling it an electric car but in fact the car’s “E-Flex” drive system makes it a plug-in hybrid. (Plug-in hybrids are hybrids which you plug in to the electricity supply, typically overnight, so that a typical commute can be achieved without using the gasoline engine. Aftermarket conversions are available for the Prius and other hybrids.) But rather than drive the wheels directly as in current hybrids, the Volt’s internal combustion engine is used just to charge the battery. Which means no extra power boost is available for acceleration, and therefore -- all else being equal -- one needs a more powerful electric motor. This seems a backward step to me, though I suppose running the engine at a constant efficient speed might be an advantage.

Currently the Volt is just a concept car, but GM claims it will build a production car just as soon as the battery technology is available, which they say will be in 2010. I find this hard to swallow, as they are expecting a range of only 40 miles on the batteries which I would have thought was readily available now. I have also not heard anything about performance. There is a lot of hype here, but basically GM is not planning anything that aftermarket amateurs aren’t doing right now.

Ford is a little more adventurous with what they call "HySeries Drive." This is another plug-in hybrid drivetrain but with a hydrogen fuel cell to charge the battery instead of a gasoline engine. Ford claim only 25 miles on the initial full charge, plus 200 miles from the fuel cell. In the absence of hydrogen stations, this would seem to be a problem. The vehicle, a modified Ford Edge, is also pathetically slow, with a top speed of only 85 mph.

It is hard to see the point of combining a fuel cell with grid-charged batteries. Neither electricity nor hydrogen is an energy source; rather they are ways of storing energy in a moving vehicle. Either batteries are the best way to do this, or hydrogen is. They can’t both be. Batteries may be necessary for short-term storage of the energy recovered from braking, but these could be very small and certainly not big enough to warrant charging from the grid. Alternatively, a capacitor or flywheel could be used instead (see my February 5th post) though of course you need a battery to run electrical equipment anyway.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that both Ford and GM are playing to the gallery, though maybe they are making serious strides towards solving the problem behind the scenes.

Range is clearly a problem at the moment for electric cars. 40 miles may be OK for a typical commute, but every now and again everyone needs to make a longer trip. I would see these cars being practical only for multi-car households where one car would have to be a more conventional one like a diesel or hybrid. (See next Wednesday’s post.)

However, the main obstacle to universal adoption of electric cars is not so much the range but the time it takes to recharge them, typically about 5 hours. Again, this is OK if you can do it overnight prior to your daily commute, but not so convenient if you are on a trip. (I guess it could make for a more relaxed attitude to touring; do 40 miles, find a hotel, and see the sights while you fill up.) This is why the following recent announcement from Israel is so interesting.

Renault-Nissan, the government of Israel, and an electric charging station start-up called Project Better Place have announced a plan to make electric cars part of ordinary life in Israel in the next decade. Project Better Place will build stations where attendants will swap out depleted batteries and put in fully charged ones, saving the several hours typically required to charge a lithium-ion battery pack. Renault-Nissan plans to start shipping electric cars to the country in three years or so and I assume these will be especially designed to make battery replacement quick and easy. The cars will run on batteries being developed under a deal between Renault-Nissan and NEC, but they claim only about 45 mile range in the city and 72 on the highway. Even with fast battery changes, this would seem to be limiting, but the concept of changing the batteries rather than charging them does seem brilliant.

For full announcement see http://www.projectbetterplace.com/.

Ban Ki-Moon & Mayor Bloomberg Call for Action

2008-02-12T05:56:00.000-06:00

"If 2007 was the year when climate change rose to the top of the global agenda, 2008 is the time we must take concerted action," according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as reported by Associated Press. Ban was speaking yesterday at the beginning of a two-day U.N. General Assembly debate to generate support for a new treaty by 2009 to fight global warming.

Michael Bloomberg, the keynote speaker and New York's climate-activist mayor, called on the United States to set "real and binding" targets to reduce the greenhouse gases blamed for warming the planet, in contrast to the current U.S. strategy that largely relies on voluntary approaches and spending for research and technology. "I believe that the American people are prepared for our responsibility to lead by example," he said.

For full story see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23112240/

Sail Power

2008-02-12T05:42:00.000-06:00

I recently read about the maiden voyage of a new freighter, the MS Beluga SkySails, departing out of Bremerhaven for Venezuela. I did a bit of Googling and found another story, dated last year, about the maiden voyage of the same ship set for December 2007, this time carrying windmills from Denmark to Houston. Does anyone know whether that voyage happened?

Not that it really matters. The story is that the Beluga features a large computer-controlled kite to augment the ships diesel engines to save up to 20% of the fuel it would otherwise use. The system is made by Skysails of Hamburg (http://www.skysails.info/index.php?L=1), and the kite is mounted in such a way that it’s tether can rotate around the bow of the ship to provide wind power when traveling in any direction other than direction against the wind.

Carbon Neutral Costa Rica

2008-02-11T05:50:00.000-06:00

Two short posts today.

NPR reported today that Costa Rica’s aim to become the first carbon neutral country might be at risk due to the effects of climate change itself. The country produces nearly 80% of its electricity from Hydroelectric plants (and another 18% from wind and geothermal sources) and even a tiny shift in rainfall patterns could leave the country without enough water to meet its growing demand for electricity. Of course, nobody knows exactly what the specific local effects of climate change will be, but scientists think it is likely to have a significant effect on rainfall.

According to Reuters, the aim of cutting Costa Rica’s net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2021 was announced by President Oscar Arias in June 2007. (2021 is Costa Rica's 200th birthday.) Costa Rican officials had previously announced plans to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions by 2027.

Officials say the country will clean up its fossil fuel-fired power plants, promote hybrid vehicles, cut emissions from transport, farming and industry, and increase tree planting to balance its emissions. Government programs to promote reforestation have already put trees on 51 percent of the country, a 10 percent increase over the last decade.

Full NPR story can be found at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18832252
Reuters story can be found at http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07289157.htm

Warm Winter in England

2008-02-11T05:15:00.001-06:00

A short post today about recent mild winters in England. Far be it from me to relate this directly to climate change, but some people seem more swayed by anecdotal 'evidence' than the science.

On January 2nd, UPI announced that the mild winter was causing daffodils to bloom months earlier than usual. They also cited concern at Kew Botanical Gardens (just outside London) over changes in behavior observed since the 1980s in more than 75% of plant species whose biological patterns depend on temperature.

Now, well actually last week, Reuters reports similar concern over tortoises coming out of hibernation too early. Owners are advised to put them in the refrigerator, making sure you open it once a day to get some air in. See http://uk.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUKL0682389820080206 for full story.

Beef about Climate Change

2008-02-09T04:53:00.001-06:00

Here is something we can all do; eat less meat. Here is why.

Anthropogenic global warming skeptics are fond of pointing out that a lot of greenhouse gas emissions come from animals (in the form of methane) and suggest that this “natural” effect is not anthropogenic. But a lot of the animals involved are livestock for human consumption. An interesting article in the New York Times on January 27th points out that Americans alone eat nearly 10 billion animals a year. Worldwide we ate about 284 million tons in 2007, up about 300% from 1961, and this is expected to increase double by 2050.

My vegan sister has often told me how inefficient it is to eat meat, but I had not realized the extent of the problem. The NYT article has some interesting statistics:
· 6 ounces of beef produces 16 times the greenhouse gases as a vegetarian meal with the same number of calories.
· If each of us in the US were to cut our meat consumption by just 20% it would be equivalent to everyone switching from a Camry to a Prius.
· Producing 2.2 pounds of beef uses as much energy as burning a 100 watt bulb for nearly 20 days. (Not sure why they chose 2.2 pounds; maybe converted from a kilo. We eat about 4 pounds of meat, poultry, and fish each week.)

Then there is the problem of deforestation in places like Brazil to make room for cattle. 30% of the earth’s ice-free land is involved in livestock production.

For the full NYT article see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=meat+guzzler&st=nyt&oref=slogin.

Eating less meat need not be a hardship. Indeed it will make us healthier. I like my meat but it does not need to be the biggest thing on my plate. I’d rather have it in meals like stew or curry or in a meat sauce with pasta, where a pound of meat probably is good for about 6 meals. On the rare occasion that I have a steak I have the smallest filet (without bacon wrap) which is usually 6 ounces and more than enough. I reckon I eat about 60% of the national average; two Camry-to-Prius swaps, which makes me feel a bit better about my RX/7.

Unintended Consequences

2008-02-08T06:22:00.000-06:00

I don’t normally want to do more than one post per day, but this breaking news is also a perfect example of why we need accurate price signals.

It has long been known that corn-based ethanol is a very inefficient way of producing fuel, and that by raising the price of corn (and other foods which could be grown on the same ground) contributes to starvation in developing countries. (See for example http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/032207EB.shtml.) The motivation for corn ethanol was always political, to reward the farm lobby.

But yesterday there was news of two new studies published online in Science magazine which take all this into account and concludes that the overall effect of corn ethanol production is actually counterproductive, i.e. it adds about twice as much GHG to the atmosphere than using gasoline. The food taken out of the supply system for ethanol production needs to get replaced, and the way it gets replaced is largely by deforestation.

Pricing Carbon -- Part Two

2008-02-08T06:12:00.000-06:00

Last week I discussed the various ways carbon might be priced. This week I discuss what prices might emerge from these different pricing mechanisms and how this affects you and me through the prices we pay for gasoline and electricity.

Before we get into that, we need to talk about units. GHG emissions are normally measured in CO2 equivalents, but some people quote the price per tonne (a.k.a. metric ton) of carbon and some per tonne of carbon dioxide. 1 tonne of CO2 contains about 0.27 tonnes of carbon. Also, estimates may be in different currencies, so I have converted all to US$ per tonne of CO2. (“US$/tCO2”) I have used approximate exchange rates: 2 US$ to the pound sterling, 1.5 US$ to the euro, and 1.25 NZ$ to the US$.

The best-known cap-and-trade system is the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) which started in 2005 on a trial basis and became fully operational at the beginning of 2008 when the Kyoto commitment period started. It covers industries like power generation, iron and steel, glass and cement which between them accounted for about 40% of the CO2 emissions of the EU’s 25 member states at the time. The EU is required by the Kyoto Protocol to cut its emissions by 8% from 1990 levels by 2012.

The idea was that permits would be issued to match the target amount of emissions, and these permits were to be given away rather than auctioned. Since the target was less than the previous level of emissions, affected industries would have to reduce their own emissions or buy permits from other companies who were better able to reduce theirs. A third option was to buy CERs, or Certified Emission Reductions, from third world countries. These CERs fund projects which reduce emissions in those countries and which would not be economic without the sale of CERs.

That was the theory anyway. Unfortunately, each member country got to decide how many permits to give away, and it soon became clear that too many had been issued. The result was that the price, which was expected to be over 40 euros per tonne, at one point plummeted to only 8 euros. This was expected to be corrected when the scheme became fully operational on January 1st 2008, but it has been somewhat derailed by the global credit crunch which has reduced expectations of energy demand. The price of carbon on the ETS is currently about 20 euros and for CERs about 15 euros.

Another approach is a carbon tax, but there are few if any examples. (The city of Boulder, Colorado does have a small carbon tax and there may be other examples. Clearly this needs to be done on a National – or better still, international – basis.) http://www.carbontax.org/ is a good resource for the carbon tax debate in the US. As for what the rate should be, this could be based upon an estimate of what is needed to achieve a certain emission target, or by estimating the actual cost of the damage. In the first case, we might expect the price to be commensurate with the market price in a cap-and-trade system. A 1997 report on a possible carbon tax in New Zealand considered tax rates starting in 2005 between about US$12/tCO2 and US$31/tCO2 (depending upon the target amounting of abatement) and gradually increasing to US$17/tCO2 to US$44/tCO2.

Estimates of the actual cost of climate change are not surprisingly all over the lot. A 2004 meta-study by Richard Tol analyzed 103 estimates from 28 published studies, yielding estimates from slightly negative (because some people benefit from climate change) to US$450/tCO2. The median value was US$4/tCO2 and Tol concludes that the cost – and therefore any tax -- is unlikely to exceed US$13.5tCO2. (All these values converted from US$/tC.)

The Stern Review, commissioned by the UK government and issued in 2006, is perhaps the most comprehensive attempt to estimate the cost of unabated climate change. It came up with a higher value, largely because of the use of a lower social discount rate and equity weighting as discussed last week. It estimated the cost of doing nothing to be about US$85/tCO2, while the cost of reducing emissions was only about US$25/tCO2. (For the key findings, see http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,,1935208,00.html.) In 2007, The UK government’s environmental agency, DEFRA, adopted a social cost of US$50/tCO2 to be used in all cost-benefit analyses of public projects.

So, what does all this mean? It looks like a carbon tax would likely be in the range of US$10/tCO2 to US$50/tCO2.

A gallon of gasoline generates about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. A tonne is about 2200 pounds, so that is less than one hundredth of a tonne. The tax would therefore amount to only about 10 to 50 cents per gallon. With gasoline at $3, that would be an increase of between 3% and 17%.

For electricity generated from coal, the tax would amount to between 1 and 5 cents per kWh. For natural gas it can be as little as half that, though this depends more on the upstream cost of producing the gas. I currently pay about 16 cents per kWh, so that would be about 6% to 30% on my electricity bill. Note that the proportional effect on the electricity bill is much greater than on gasoline. In absolute terms, the difference could be even greater.

Last year my wife and I spent $3000 on electricity (down 25% on two years ago due to CFLs and other measures I will blog about at a later date) and maybe $2500 on gasoline for two cars. So, the total cost of a carbon tax (or the equivalent) for these two items would be somewhere in the range of $250 to $1300 per year. My feeling about this is that it is that it needs to be nearer the top of this range to have a serious impact on behavior.

There will also be costs for manufacturing, transport, etc. for pretty much everything we buy, which of course is the whole idea. We need these price signals to guide our purchase decisions. For example, given that I do relatively few miles, right now I actually do not know whether it would improve my carbon footprint if I were to buy a new and more efficient replacement for my 16-year-old RX/7. (Tomorrow I will post about how the amount of meat we eat affects our carbon footprint more than the cars we drive; again, we need the cost of this represented in the price of the meat.)

Banks Adopt “The Carbon Principles”

2008-02-07T04:11:00.000-06:00

Reuters reported the other day that Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley have adopted “The Carbon Principles,” climate change guidelines for advisors and lenders to power companies in the U.S. The banks say the move is in anticipation of the government capping GHG emissions in the coming years and that the biggest motivation for it was financial. The new standards are the result of nine months of negotiations among the banks, environmental groups, and large utilities.

The principles were developed in consultation with power companies American Electric Power, CMS Energy, DTE Energy, NRG Energy, PSEG, Sempra and Southern Company. Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council were also involved. The standards do not preclude bank financing for building traditional coal-burning power plants, but they do set up a more rigorous evaluation process.

The banks are open to financing coal plants that capture their GHG emissions and shoot them underground, but they say they will encourage renewable energy before coal and will help utilities push for government policies that make renewable energy and efficiency more practical.

“A rational set of carbon principles to help guide energy investment strategy is vital to our nation’s energy and economic future,” said Michael G. Morris, Chairman, president and CEO of American Electric Power, “Recognizing that energy efficiency, renewables, cleaner fossil technologies and other diverse solutions all have significant roles in addressing climate challenges while maintaining economic and energy security establishes a framework for making the best decisions regarding our nation’s energy future.”

Here are the principles as written by the banks:

Energy efficiency: An effective way to limit CO2 emissions is to not produce them. The signatory financial institutions will encourage clients to invest in cost-effective demand reduction, taking into consideration the value of avoided CO2 emissions. We will also encourage regulatory and legislative changes that increase efficiency in electricity consumption including the removal of barriers to investment in cost-effective demand reduction. The institutions will consider demand reduction caused by increased energy efficiency (or other means) as part of the Enhanced Diligence Process and assess its impact on proposed financings of certain new fossil fuel generation.

Renewable and low carbon distributed energy technologies: Renewable energy and low carbon distributed energy technologies hold considerable promise for meeting the electricity needs of the US while also leveraging American technology and creating jobs. We will encourage clients to invest in cost-effective renewables and distributed technologies, taking into consideration the value of avoided CO2 emissions. We will also encourage legislative and regulatory changes that remove barriers to, and promote such investments (including related investments in infrastructure and equipment needed to support the connection of renewable sources to the system). We will consider production increases from renewable and low carbon generation as part of the Enhanced Diligence process and assess their impact on proposed financings of certain new fossil fuel generation.

Conventional and advanced generation: In addition to cost effective energy efficiency, renewables and low carbon distributed generation, investments in conventional or advanced generating facilities will be needed to supply reliable electric power to the US market. This may include power from natural gas, coal and nuclear technologies. Due to evolving climate policy, investing in CO2-emitting fossil fuel generation entails uncertain financial, regulatory and certain environmental liability risks. It is the purpose of the Enhanced Diligence process to assess and reflect these risks in the financing considerations for certain fossil fuel generation. We will encourage regulatory and legislative changes that facilitate carbon capture and storage (CCS) to further reduce CO2 emissions from the electric sector.

Victory for the Planet

2008-02-06T01:40:00.000-06:00

I have just posted today's installment of what I plan to make a regular Wednesday car post, but I need to say something about the Super Tuesday result. We can now be sure that the next president will be serious about climate change. I always thought that McCain was the only Republican with a shot at winning the general election. If he does so, his conservative credentials may actually make it easier for him to deliver than it would be for a Democrat, rather like Nixon going to China. Maybe John Adams will write an opera about it one day!

Two Clean Supercars?

2008-02-06T01:34:00.000-06:00

Wednesday is going to be car day on the blog, and it’s time for a confession. I am a car guy, which does not sit well with concern for climate change but that’s the way it is. About 6 times a year I get into a vintage MGB race car and race other enthusiasts around a road course, burning up maybe 15 gallons of high octane fuel. What’s more, my daily driver is a Mazda RX7 which I bought new 16 years ago and which gets about 17mpg.

My excuse is that I do very few miles, and if I sold it the new owner would probably do more. Also, at least I have not incurred the emissions associated with the manufacture of a new car in those 16 years. I never expect to sell the RX7, or the 1969 Jaguar XKE with which it shares a garage, but I am on the waiting list for a new Tesla electric car to be delivered in 2009.

I was going to save this until a later blog, but last week was a milestone for Tesla when they “delivered” their first production car, to their own Chairman. This may not sound much, but it demonstrates that Tesla has met all regulatory requirements for the importation and sale of the Tesla Roadster as a fully certified production car. (The Tesla is built by Lotus in England on a modified Elise platform.) Tesla also issued a press release to say that series production would start March 17th. See http://www.teslamotors.com/media/press_room.php?id=803.

The Tesla may not strictly be a super car, being rather light on top speed, but both its price ($98,000) and its acceleration (0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds) put it at least close. Autoweek ran a road test last week, and generally liked it. One small complaint was the lack of toe-in, done to reduce rolling resistance, which made it wander over uneven payment. Another slight disappointment was the range. The company claims 267 under ideal conditions, while the EPA says 221. In hard driving, and starting with the gauge showing a 95% charge, Autoweek got only 93 miles before the gauge showed 7% and the car automatically switched to “get you home” mode. This latter restricts power and moved the gauge up to 21%. (Not quite sure of the logic of this; if the batteries are 7% charged, that is surely true however much power one is drawing. It might be better to show estimated miles remaining in current driving style.) Like all electric cars, it really needs better battery technology but this is coming. I just hope it can be retrofitted.

Tesla have sold all their 2008 production, and I shall be waiting to see the reaction from early owners. If it does not pan out I might be in the market for the diesel version of the Audi R8, due for release in 2009. While the gasoline version is available now, the Audi R8 V-12 TDI is currently just a concept. The show car’s 6 liter turbocharged V12 produces 500 bhp and no less than 738 lb-ft of torque, enough to propel it to 62mph in 4.2 seconds and on to a 186mph top speed. This is definitely supercar territory, yet Audi claims 23 mpg. (This may not seem exactly green, but compare for example the Lamborghini Gallardo, built on the same platform as the R8, at 11 city, 17 highway.)

The production Audi R8 TDI is expected to use the 4.2 liter V8 diesel from the Q7 SUV (where produces 561 lb-ft, available from 1800 rpm) and to return about 27mpg. (The gasoline R8 is EPA rated at 13 city, 20 highway.) Getting my mileage up from 17 to 27 will save over 2 gallons per 100 miles, the same as if I replaced a 24 mpg mid-size car with a 50 mpg hybrid. (See my post on January 31st.)And I still promise not to do too many miles; I will after all need to try to preserve its resale value.

Yes, I know these cars are expensive but if one of these cars lasts me 16 years like the Mazda has it will probably be my last. I hope to post on more mundane electric car news next Wednesday.

Nanotechnology and Climate Change

2008-02-05T04:14:00.000-06:00

If Dustin Hoffman’s film the Graduate was set today, the one word Mr. McGuire says to Ben would be “nanotechnology” rather than “plastics.” Nanotechnology has potential applications in fields as varied as cancer treatment and new materials for aircraft manufacture, as well as a number of interesting possibilities for combating climate change. This is a quick review of some of these possibilities, following a nanotechnology conference I attended a week or so ago. I will try to come back to some of them in more detail in later postings.

Nanotechnology is the science of very small particles, from 1 to 10 nanometers, a nanometer being an American billionth (10 to the power -9) of a meter. These have interesting properties because this is small enough for quantum mechanical effects to emerge and also because the ratio of surface area to volume gets greater as the size of the particles gets smaller. Both these aspects of nanotechnology present exciting possibilities in the fight against climate change.

The first four applications below relate to two major problems with renewable energy: since renewable sources of electricity like wind and sun tend not to be constantly available, we need an efficient way to store the electricity; and since they may also not be available in the place where they are needed, we also need to be able to transmit the electricity efficiently.

The high surface area to volume ratio raises the possibility of creating “ultracapacitors” to replace chemical batteries. A capacitor is just a couple of charged conductors separated by an insulator (or “dielectric”). Connecting the two plates completes a circuit, discharging the plates and releasing the stored energy. The amount of energy which can be stored depends upon the surface area, the distance between the plates, and the type of dielectric. Conventional capacitors are used in electronic circuitry for example, but cannot hold a significant amount of energy like a battery of a similar size can. This all changes at the nano level because of the high surface area to volume ratio. Work at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) has demonstrated the use of vertically aligned single-wall carbon nanotubes.

[Nanotechnology seems to be closer than I thought! After I had prepared this post, I came across an article in this week's Economist about a prototype hybrid which uses ultracapacitors for regenerative braking. The car was exhibited at the Detroit Auto Show by AFS Trinity and is based upon a Sauturn Vue. I then found it on the web. See for example http://business2-cnet.com.com/8300-10784_3-7-0.html?categoryId=2047.]

Nanotechnology also has applications in chemical batteries. For example, Toshiba has a prototype lithium-iron battery where the surface area of the lithium is dramatically increased and the battery can be safely charged in minutes. This may have application for electric cars, making it feasible to recharge at a roadside station like we currently fill up with gas. (Though a lower tech solution is just to switch out the battery as Israel is planning. I hope to post on electric car news on the next two Wednesdays.) Also, Stanford University announced a new process that may allow lithium-ion batteries, using silicon instead of carbon as the anode, to store 10 times as much energy as current batteries.

Instead of storing energy in the form of electricity or chemically in a battery, there is the possibility of storing hydrogen and using this to generate electricity in a fuel cell. Fuel cells rely on catalysts, and the high area to volume ratio of nanomaterials greatly increases the efficiency of fuel cells.

High Temperature Superconductivity (HTSC) offers the possibility of loss-free transmission of electricity over long distances. Current power grids lose about 20% of the energy, so this could be a huge benefit even with the present generation system. Imagine however the possibility of being able to transmit power to Hamburg from a solar power station in the Sahara! Superconductivity was first observed at temperatures close to absolute zero. Later, materials were found which exhibited HTSC, but “high temperature” is relative; we were still talking about -200 degrees centigrade. A cable made of carbon nanotubes exhibits superconductivity at normal temperatures.

HTSC also offers the possibility of better electric motors. Making the windings superconductive would not only eliminate the losses, making them more energy-efficient, but because there is no heat to dissipate the motors can also be made smaller and lighter.

Quantum dots are semiconductor nanostructures which promise much cheaper and more efficient photovoltaic materials. (Current solar panels typically convert only about 15% of the sun’s energy into electricity.)

The extremely high strength of some nanomaterials, including carbon nanotubes, has obvious advantages in reducing the weight, and hence energy efficiency, of cars, planes, etc. One thing which might not be so obvious is that it will enable us to make flywheels which will run at much higher speeds without disintegrating, which means that for any given size they can store more energy. One possible application of this is in regenerative braking. Current hybrids use a generator to convert kinetic energy recovered from braking into electricity which is stored in the battery, but the energy could also be stored kinetically in a flywheel. The Federation International de l’Automobile (FIA) has recently endorsed the use of such a Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) for Formula 1 racing in 2009. I will probably post more on this.

Finally, GE has announced plans to produce a more efficient incandescent light bulb based on photonic band gap technology, which utilizes a nanostructured mix of materials of different refractive index materials to concentrate the radiation into the visible spectrum. Compared to CFLs this technology promises lower prices, familiar shape and size, and no disposal problems.

Clean Aviation?: news from Airbus, Boeing, and DARPA

2008-02-04T05:35:00.000-06:00

Aviation is responsible for only a small percentage of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but it is a fast growing sector and represents a large part of the carbon footprint of frequent travelers like myself. Some also think that the effects may be larger due to the high altitude at which emissions are released. It has also been thought that GHG from aviation is a hard nut to crack because we lack suitable alternative fuels, but three recent stories give hope.

The first story concerns Airbus, which flew an A380 from Bristol to Toulouse with just one of its four engines running on GTL. GTL stands for “gas to liquid” and is a synthetic fuel made from natural gas. The GHG benefit compared with conventional jet fuel (kerosene) is not great, but the flight is meant to be a step towards being able to use second-generation biofuels. Shell and Rolls Royce are working with Airbus, and Qatar Airways could be the first airline to use the fuel on commercial flights.

Meanwhile Virgin Atlantic, working with Boeing and GE, plans to fly from London to Amsterdam using biofuel in all four engines, with a similar flight being planned by Air New Zealand.

But the most interesting news I have seen lately was something I heard at a conference a week or so ago. Apparently the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has asked aerospace companies to bid on a new aerial surveillance project called VULTURE (for Very-high altitude, Ultra-endurance, Loitering Theater Unmanned Reconnaissance Element). A bidders meeting is scheduled for June 7th. The interesting thing is that it needs to be able to carry a 1000-lound payload and to stay up for five years! At first I was disinclined to believe it, so a Googled and found this: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070607_uavs3.html.

It is supposed that VULTURE will have to be solar powered, though that is not a requirement. I have not seen anything on how long the project might take, and of course any application to commercial aircraft would be much further away, but there is plenty of sun up there above the clouds and there is enormous scope for improvement in photovoltaic efficiency.

CFL Experiences

2008-02-02T06:19:00.003-06:00

[I am modifying the first paragraph of this post on 2/17/08 to say "up to 70" rather than "about 70" lumens per watt, to reflect the fact that 70 LPW is at the top end of the range of CFL performance. Also see this report on two tests of CFLs, which also confirms my personal experience of the amount of variation between CFLs, drop-off in brightness ovefr time, and failure rates. www.rightlight6.org/english/proceedings/Session_8/International_Lamp_Testing_Programs/s08-3p030granda.pdf]

Like some political debate, conventional incandescent light bulbs produce more heat than light. In fact, only about 2% of the energy they use is emitted as light, which is why lighting is seen as “low hanging fruit” for energy conservation and why the US and other governments have legislated to phase these bulbs out. (Actually, the legislation does not ban incandescent bulbs explicitly, but mandates a minimum efficiency of about 20 lumens per watt. Current incandescents typically produce less than 15, while compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) easily beat the proposed standard at up to 70 lumens per watt.) There are other alternatives, and in a later posting I hope to discuss the physics behind them, but today I am going to report my own experiences using CFLs and hope to get feedback. (In fact, I plan to concentrate my Saturday postings on the practical aspects of what individuals can do to reduce climate change.)

When I set out to write this, I had envisioned a rant about how bad CFLs were, but when I looked around the house I was surprised how many such bulbs I have and how unobtrusive most of them are. I did not count the bulbs, but I did count 10 different types from 5 brands. So, not all CFLs are created equal. There are however a few general points. Firstly, some people do not like the color of the light. It tends to be slightly bluer, though this “color temperature” varies from bulb to bulb. It is more like natural daylight, and I actually prefer it. Secondly, while they are meant to come on instantly, there is often a noticeable delay and/or a longer warm-up period during which they are relatively dim. Finally, some helicals are larger than conventional bulbs, and don't always fit into table lamps.

Most of the bulbs in the house come from Bright Effects, which I think belongs to Lowes. One is a regular 15W bulb (LBP16AM2) which is fine. Most are large 18W floodlights (LBP18R402) in can fixtures, and have also operated flawlessly so far (getting on for a year). However, I bought four smaller 15W floods (LPB15R30M2) which were mounted in more confining fixtures and which failed within 3 to 6 months. Lowes refused to replace them or refund the money, saying that they do not refund on light bubs. I think they need to rethink this policy for CFLs.

I have heard of other people with similar problems, and the problem may be that the bulbs do not work well when confined in can fixtures. Even CFLs produce quite a bit of heat, and the problem may be that the electronic ballast gets fried.

I also have four GreenLite dimmable floodlights, also mounted in can fixtures. So far none have failed, but one is temperamental. Sometimes it comes on for a second and goes off again and I have to “reboot” – switch off and wait a few seconds, or maybe play with the dimmer switch. I don’t dim them often, but I have found that they flicker when dimmed low. They are also among the worst for taking time to get up to full brightness.

Another interesting bulb is a 3-way bulb from Sylvania -- 12/19/29 watts which is equivalent to about 50/85/130 for an incandescent – and I have no complaints. I also have a dozen 9 watt Sylvania decorative globes in the bathroom which have worked flawlessly, with negligible delay in startup and close to full brightness immediately. I have one 19 watt helical Sylvania, however, which has a definite delay (maybe half a second of so) and also seems dimmer now than it was when I first installed it.

I also have a couple of GE helicals – 10W and 26W – which have been very satisfactory.

Finally, I have a 15W Lightwiz helical which was still in its box. I tried it out yesterday and it seemed to work well, but I have not tested it over time.

(I also have one very expensive LED light, which is very blue and so dim that if there is any other ambient light it is hard to see whether it is on or off without looking directly into it!)

All in all I think it is well worth making the switch to CFL, at least if you live in a hot climate; I live in Houston where we use A/C most of the year so producing less heat gives a double benefit and in my case it has contributed to a 25% drop in my electricity bills. (There is no real advantage at times when you are heating the space anyway, especially if heating with electricity.) The biggest problem seems to be failure of the ballast when confined in a can fixture, but some cans seem to provide more space than others. I should perhaps add the obvious fact that this is all highly unscientific and anecdotal. I welcome comments from others on their experiences with CFLs.

Pricing Carbon – Part One

2008-02-01T09:50:00.001-06:00

[I am modifying this post on February 15th to reflect the fact that the official IPCC target for GHG concetntration is 550 ppm. The original post referred more vaguely to "most experts" proposing a 450 ppm limit.]

Emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs, which include gases other than CO2 but which are normally measured in CO2 equivalent) will be reduced by a combination of technology, conservation, and lifestyle changes, but the incentive for all these efforts must be a price imposed on making those emissions. Only then can these “price signals” feed through the economy and influence the decisions made by consumers. The idea of holding the emitter responsible for the total cost to society is not new; economists call effects caused by a particular actor but incurred by society as a whole “externalities.”

But how to determine the appropriate price? There are two basic ways of looking at it: either we can try to calculate the cost of the damage done by the emissions; or else we can decide that we need to set a firm limit on GHG concentration in the atmosphere and then try to set prices in such a way that this is achieved. I will elaborate on each of these, but note that to have any effect the price charged needs to be more than the cost of reducing emissions, at least in some applications. This cost will vary according to circumstances both within and between industries, and the price mechanism will encourage the reduction of emissions in those places where it can be done most economically, while concentrating the remaining emissions in those industries where it is hardest to change. (For example, it is easier to build clean new power stations and to retrofit old ones.)

The first approach to setting the price, based upon the estimated cost if we do nothing, is the one taken by the Stern Review. There are a number of problems with this approach, including two ethical ones:

Firstly, the adverse effects of climate change seem to bear more heavily on the poorest countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to see worse droughts, while much of Bangladesh and all the Maldives may be under water. Meanwhile Canada expects to benefit from an open Northwest passage, Russia will see better agricultural conditions, and prestigious Champagne houses are already considering planting in England. Counting the cost in dollars using current exchange rates does not adequately reflect the suffering of third world countries. Is the loss of a peasant’s house worth less to him than the loss of a tycoon’s mansion?

Secondly, if we do nothing the adverse effects of climate change will build up for ever. Using normal discount rates to discount the far future effectively disenfranchises our grandchildren. We may prefer to spend $1 now rather than $1.05 next year, but can we extrapolate this time preference to conclude that we have the right to spend a $1 now and deprive our grandchildren of $50 eighty years hence? (1.05 to the power 80 is about 50.)

Methods of social accounting exist to deal with these issues, but they rely on subjective assumptions and therefore put the end result in question.

(Incidentally, some argue that if we go all out for growth, emitting greenhouse gases without restraint, we will be much better placed to mitigate the problem however bad it becomes, but this is an act of faith. In any case, how can the Bangladeshi farmer rely on us actually doing what needs doing when the time comes?)

Setting a firm limit on GHG concentrations seems a better way to go, and the official IPCC goal is to stabilize this at 550 ppm. From this we can set targets for emissions each year and then decide either to issue tradable permits (a “cap and trade” system) for that amount of emissions or else set a “user fee” (a.k.a. a tax, though here it really is a user fee) which we estimate will result in the target amount of emissions. On its face, the cap and trade system seems more reliable, since in theory it guarantees meeting the target. On the other hand, the market for permits can experience wild swings which make it hard for industry to plan. User fees could well work better. Their effects would need to be monitored and the rates adjusted as necessary but these adjustments would be more gradual and predictable than market swings. And they could be revenue neutral if they replaced existing taxes. Suppose industry was taxed solely on its emissions?

Part Two will probably appear late next week and will discuss the range of carbon prices resulting from each of these methods (including the European cap and trade system) and what it means to the consumer. Topics for other postings planned for the next few days include personal experiences with CFLs, and the Tesla electric car.

Gallons per Mile?

2008-01-31T06:55:00.000-06:00

Here’s something quick and easy the government could do. The Europeans measure gas mileage in liters per 100 kilometers, which makes a lot of sense. After all, when we set out on a journey we do not decide how much gas to buy and then determine how far to go; the constant is the journey and the variable is the amount of gas we need.

Changing to gallons per 100 miles – I am not bold enough to suggest we go metric! – could also have a serious impact on our perception of fuel economy and thereby on our carbon footprint. The reason is that our brains don’t process reciprocals well. Consider this table comparing the two measures (I have rounded a little in a couple of cases):

12.5 mpg = 8 gallons per 100 miles
14 = 7 gallons per 100 miles
17 = 6 gallons per 100 miles
20 = 5 gallons per 100 miles
25 = 4 gallons per 100 miles
33 = 3 gallons per 100 miles
50 = 2 gallons per 100 miles

Note that replacing a 12.5 mpg gas guzzler with a less profligate17 mpg vehicle saves twice as much as replacing a 33 mpg compact with a 50 mpg hybrid. Not that I am against high-efficiency vehicles, but I wonder whether the emphasis should be at the other end of the scale. If we could get everyone up to say 25 mpg we would be doing an enormous service. Recent legislation to change CAFE standards to an average of 35 mpg will of course help.

That little word “average” invites caution though; you need to average the reciprocals, which is exactly what CAFE does. So, in a way the EPA already uses gallons per mile for its calculations. They just don’t want to tell you. Why not change the way we display it on the new car sticker?

FutureGen News

2008-01-30T07:38:00.001-06:00

OK, I know I promised a piece on gas mileage, but breaking news takes precedence. Yesterday the DoE told Illinois congressmen that it planned to withdraw its financial support for FutureGen, a public/private partnership created to demonstrate a zero-emissions coal-fired power station.

The technology is called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology. Coal is turned into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, the latter combined with steam to create more hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Power is produced by burning the hydrogen, creating water, while the carbon dioxide is sequestered underground.

The industrial partners have committed $400 million, and another $800 million was meant to have come from the DoE. I assume this $1.2 billion was meant to cover the cost, but now the budget seems to have gone up to $1.8 billion. The DoE seems to suggest that the cost increase may be related to the choice of site, in Mattoon, Illinois. Other prospective sites were in Texas.

Withdrawal of DoE support is a blow to our efforts to produce clean electricity. I am not sure that IGCC is the answer, but at least this project would have validated the technology. Don't expect FutureGen to throw in the towel just yet, however; American Industry tends to be more enthusiastic about clean power than the Federel Government. It is possible that the project might get reincarnated in Texas.

See http://www.futuregenalliance.org/ for more information on FutureGen Industrial Alliance Inc.

Gas mileage tomorrow, barring the outbreak of World War III.

Financial Crisis?

2008-01-29T14:39:00.000-06:00

This might seem a little off-topic, but it is certainly topical in the temporal sense and it gets my new blog off to a controversial start. I promise to get onto more familiar territory tomorrow with a short post on car mileage standards.

With the benefit of hindsight, and in particular with the revelation that Societe Generale were selling 50 million euros worth of securities into a falling market while US markets were closed for Martin Luther King Day, the dramatic Fed action the next morning seems to me like a panic over-reaction. It is not at all clear to me that further action is required this week, but I fear the Feds don't have much choice because that expectation is already factored in. It is not really the Fed’s job to bail out the stock market, though they would probably argue that they need to do so because of the spillover effect on the real economy. All they are doing is putting things off until the next crisis. If investors think the Fed will always bail them out, there is every incentive to bid prices up again.

Nor do I think we need the much-trumpeted and bipartisan agreed stimulus package. I am not an economist, but as I see it the fundamental cause of this is not Societe Generale’s rogue trader, nor their apparent incompetence in first letting it happen and in the way they liquidated the positions, nor the sub-prime mess, nor even the US housing bubble.

The real problem is that Americans consume more than they produce. That being the case, why would we want to encourage them to borrow and spend more? The next crisis may well be a loss of confidence in the dollar, and by then the dollar may well have lost its pre-eminent position as a reserve currency, which will make it much harder to control the consequences.

So, what has this to do with climate change? Well, if we consumed less we would reduce CO2 emissions not just here in the US but also in China and other countries which export to us. We are fond of pointing out that our carbon intensity is going down in the US – that is to say that we emit less CO2 per unit of GDP – but that is because we have moved so much of our manufacturing abroad. We are also fond of pointing to China’s rapidly growing CO2 emissions, but that is because they are making stuff for us! So, all I am asking is: would it be so terrible if we started consuming less, i.e. just consuming what we can afford, and slipped into recession?

I have raised a lot of questions, and maybe hackles. I certainly do not know all the answers. I am not against growth. Indeed growth is necessary to lift billions out of poverty. The question is, where should that growth be? It seems to me that the current situation is unsustainable. There is no reason, morally or economically, why the American worker should live better than his counterpart in China. (It is sometimes claimed that the American worker earns more because he is more productive, but that reverses cause and effect. The American worker is more productive not because of any innate superiority but because more capital is employed to help him, which in turn is because he is more expensive to employ.) There is no way we can prevent wages converging over the globe. Of course, the Chinese standard of living needs to improve, but maybe also the American standard of living needs also to decline. (Note that by “standard of living” I mean per capita GDP, which in my view is very different from “quality of life.” I will come back to that in future postings.)