New Report on Corporate GHG Policy

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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?

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.

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.