Greenhouse gases come in two basic flavors: carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, and emissions from land use—agriculture, forests, peat bogs, and waste management. Fossil fuels are primarily used for energy in three sectors: buildings, industry, and transportation. Transportation is almost entirely oil-based—according to the International Energy Association, about 0.1 percent of transportation energy currently comes from electricity.
Just to make things complicated, people use fossil fuels to make electricity to use in buildings and industry. Well, actually, we use fossil fuels to make electricity—and—we use fossil fuels to make heat to use in buildings and industry. In my previous post, I presented some pretty exciting tables summarizing this global state of affairs (and the accompanying Google workbook). Now, in part 2, a detailed look at building, industry, transportation, and land-use emissions:
Industry: At 28 percent of all GHGs, industry is the single largest source of emissions. However, there is so much variation in manufacturing and construction—and the data is so hard to collect—that an exact allocation is difficult. The relevant part of the IPCC Industry report [p. 460, PDF]:
iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, chemicals, petroleum refining,minerals (cement, lime and glass) and pulp and paper ... (ex-petroleum refining) ... accounted for 72% of industrial final energy use in 2003. With petroleum refining, the total is about 85%.
Now, when one goes through the rest of the report, it appears that in order to arrive at 85 percent, chemicals must account for over 11 percent of all global GHGs. However, the report advises that no one knows how much the chemical industry emits. But this seems to be the best guess at this point in time.
Concrete is the only industry that seems to produce a major amount of CO2 that does not come from fossil fuels. Steel and aluminum constitute about 4 percent of emissions, but this gives some cause for hope: to produce recycled steel—from scrap—uses only about 40 percent of the energy that making steel from iron requires. And scrap is a bigger and bigger part of global steel production. Recycled aluminum uses only 5 percent of the energy of “virgin” aluminum. In other words, recycling can drastically decrease industrial emissions. The table:
| Industry CO2 Emissions | ||
| Source | CO2 eq Mt | % of total |
| Fertilizer (ammonia) | 500 | 1.02 |
| Ethylene | 180 | .37 |
| Chlorine | 78 | .16 |
| Other Chemicals | 4,455 | 9.09 |
| Concrete | 1,650 | 3.37 |
| Petroleum refining | 1,508 | 3.08 |
| Steel | 1,550 | 3.16 |
| Aluminum | 526 | 1.07 |
| Glass, Ceramics | 445 | .91 |
| Paper | 400 | .82 |
| Other | 2,601 | 5.31 |
| Total Industry CO2 | 11,600 | 28.35 |
When we add the methane that is needed to process the fossil fuels used for industry, plus some other gases and losses from fuel-use, we get to 13,893 megatonnes of GHGs.
Buildings: We know the general categories of energy-use in residential and commercial buildings, but the percentages of such usages vary considerably around the world, making it very difficult to determine exact breakdowns. In the following table, “Electricity” is used for appliances, some heating, refrigeration, and cooling; heat of all sorts is used for space heating, cooking, and water-heating:
| Buildings Emissions | ||
| Source | CO2 eq Mt | % of total |
| Electricity CO2 | 7,145 | 14.58 |
| Heat CO2 | 4,071 | 8.31 |
| Cooling nonCO2 | 1,500 | 3.06 |
| Heating nonCO2 | 500 | 1.02 |
| Total Buildings | 11,600 | 28.35 |
In order to bring these emissions down, we’ll not only need to use carbon-free electricity—and to do more heating from such electricity—but we will also have to decrease the need for electricity by making buildings better able to retain heat and cold. It will be necessary to try to use as much solar heating and ground-source heat pumps as possible.
Transportation: Somehow, we’ll have to find a way to convert transportation from virtually complete dependence on oil to almost complete dependence on electricity. The figures right now:
| Transportation Emissions | ||
| Source | CO2 eq Mt | % of total |
| Cars, SUVs, light trucks | 3,039 | 6.2 |
| 2 wheelers | 109 | .22 |
| Heavy & medium trucks | 1,707 | 3.49 |
| Air | 792 | 1.62 |
| Shipping | 649 | 1.32 |
| Buses | 423 | .86 |
| Rail | 102 | .21 |
| Total Transportation | 6,829 | 13.94 |
However, just as decreasing industrial emissions should come from decreasing the need for energy, so too transportation emissions should diminish as a result of changing the structure of our living patterns. The denser we can make our residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, and the more we can mix those various functions in a smart way, the less energy required for transportation will be necessary. Plus more walking and biking will replace energy generation. I think that electrified trains will be the most efficient way to move people and freight.
Agriculture: Agricultural greenhouse-gasses are most notable for what they lack: CO2 emissions. Virtually all of the emissions from agriculture come from methane and nitrous oxide because the IPCC assumes that the carbon lost from agriculture is balanced almost exactly by the carbon sequestered in agricultural lands. But what if agricultural regions weren’t being degraded by modern agricultural techniques? According to the IPCC agricultural report [PDF], by 2030, 6,000 megatons of CO2 emissions are preventable provided the soils of the world are built up instead of worn down.
But sticking to methane and nitrous oxide, here is the breakdown for agriculture:
| Agriculture Emissions | ||
| Source | CO2 eq Mt | % of total |
| Excess Nitrogen from fertilizers | 2,318 | 4.37 |
| Methane from livestock belching and gas, CH4 | 1,952 | 3.98 |
| Biomass burning | 732 | 1.49 |
| Rice production | 671 | 1.37 |
| Livestock manure | 427 | .87 |
| Total Agriculture | 6,100 | 12.45 |
Notice that organic agriculture could pretty easily remove excess nitrogen from fertilizer. But as far as I can tell, there’s no good way to remove methane emissions from livestock belching (and some gas passing), and if livestock were let loose from those horrible factory farms, it would actually make it harder to collect the manure. So does this mean that a lifestyle change would be necessary? Could we eat much less meat? Or, eat mostly fish? The latter would mean that to solve the problem of too much livestock, we’ll have to protect the oceans. By saving the ocean’s fisheries we could indirectly prevent the worst impacts of climate change.
Forests: The worst effects of livestock and agriculture may actually be their effects on the world’s forests. According to the IPCC, the amount of emissions from forests is the most difficult to estimate. We also don’t know how much can be attributed to livestock, agricultural clearing, or logging for timber. Here is a table of the loss in forests, by area of the world:
| Forest carbon loss | ||
| Source | CO2 carbon stock, 2000-2005 | % of total forests |
| South America | -12,833 | 51.47 |
| Asia | -11,000 | 44.12 |
| Africa | -5,134 | 20.59 |
| Rest of World | 4,035 | -16.18 |
| Global total of forest loss | -24,392 | 100 |
Finally, it turns out that waste management contributes almost 3 percent of GHGs—mostly methane from garbage landfills. Again, recycling could eliminate the need for most landfills.
Even without global warming, our energy, transportation, agriculture, and forestry systems are unsustainable. Fossil fuels will eventually become too expensive to use, our agricultural systems destroy the soil, water, and other ecological systems on which they are dependent, and the planet cannot survive without its forests. With the threat of global warming, the need for a revolution of our civilization has never been more necessary.
Do diesel-based farmers dream of electric tractors?
Comments
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stopgreenpath Posted 4:38 am
15 Jan 2009
The Mojave, to remind you, in under SIEGE from Big Energy profiteers who are planning on dynamiting, bulldozing, herbiciding, dehydrating and slaughtering millions of it's precious acres for Industrial Solar and Industrial Wind, even though the urban load centers are more than capable of producing 90% of the power they need, just from PV on brownfields right in these urban centers.
This is one of a thousand reasons we need to STOP INDUSTRIAL SOLAR AND WIND FROM DESTROYING OUR DESERTS and start rethinking this bull** we have been fed about centralized, remote power generation and lengthy transmission. Eco-crimes on a massive scale are about to be committed and WE are the only ones who can stop them. Giving greenwash cover to Big Solar and Big Wind and the politicians who support them is the same as destroying the planet directly. time to stand up for what is right, and stop these projects.
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:00 am
15 Jan 2009
One of the points that came out of looking into this data is how diverse the carbon sources are. Fossil fuels account for up to 58% of GHGs, depending on how you allocate emissions, but that still leaves 42% to "land use" kinds of things, which basically means ecosystems -- agricultural ecosystems, forest ecosystems, desert ecosystems, etc. So while a focus on fossil fuels is critical, so is a focus on ecosystems.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:04 am
15 Jan 2009
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Darrell Posted 7:21 am
15 Jan 2009
Los Angeles has also announced a 1,300 Mw in-basin rooftop plus desert solar program. The good news is (1) they are actively moving forward on renewables, with a 35% RPS goal by 2020 and (2) are working with environmentalists on sensitive issues like transmission siting.
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Gar Lipow Posted 8:15 am
15 Jan 2009
A) there are real studies suggesting that deserts may be carbon sinks - a combinations of Soil PH and microrganism
B) The studies are controversial. Not settled science
C) I will note that even if true, an acre of desert "carbon sink" does not absorb as much CO2 as an acre of renewable generation displaces.
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spaceshaper Posted 10:13 am
15 Jan 2009
You can get plenty of further links with a quick google on 'mojave carbon sink'. Would seem to be a quantifiable effect, so Gar's last point would be testable.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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Gar Lipow Posted 5:58 pm
15 Jan 2009
http://www.ecostudies.org/press/Schlesinger_Science_13_Ju ...
100 grams of carbon sequestered (if correct) per Meter per year. Still controversial
OK: Nevada one about 134 million kWh per year on 400 acres. (Only 300 covered with solar panels, but who knows what traffic does to other 100.)
So 82+ kWh per square meter per year.
OK, an average combined cycle turbine requires 430 grams of carbon to generate a kWh. However say we switch to a leading edge technology combining a combine cycle NG fuel cell that generates electricty from fuel cell waste heat, so that you end up at 200 grams of carbon per kWh. That 82 kWh still displaces 16,400 grams per year, 16.4 times the 100 gram per meter sequestration claimed. That is with technology better than anything commercially available. A typical combined cycle turbine would generate about 430 grams per kWh. A best of breed combined cycle turbine would probably be at around 280 grams per kWh. And a coal plant would generate 800 to 1050 grams per kWh.
Does not mean we want to carpet the whole desert with mirrors. But makes clear that solar still displaces carbon, even if desert sequestration is true.
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stopgreenpath Posted 5:22 am
16 Jan 2009
Just one example - the Sunrise Powerlink EIS found that it would take 12 years of full 100% capacity of 100% renewable power, just to BREAK EVEN on emissions from the LINE ALONE, much less the lost carbon sinks and the lost ecosystems (water, etc.) from the power plants. and that line's only 100 miles long, and will only last 40 years.
By hedging and selecting certain stats, and pretending all giant power plants always work at optimum capacity (untrue), ANYTHING can present as "Green" or "Renewable" for soundbyte purposes, but with 5 seconds of common sense, you see that destroying functioning ecosystems, which absorb carbon and provide the millions of other global benefits that intact ecosystems provide (most of which we don't even understand - see recent story on the importance of fish poop in maintaining proper ocean pH - did you already know that, and were you actively trying to keep fish poop levels in balance? of course not, but that is still the truth!), is an incomprehensible "solution" when we have MASSIVE amounts of built environment (on destroyed ecosystem), which is where the power is needed.
I'm sorry, but even if (and it's a big IF) remote power plants are, in practice (not in PR materials about potential), very slightly more efficient, even after transmission losses, that is not a good enough reason to destroy intact ecosystems. We do not even understand 10% of what we are destroying, so why not do the obviously harmless thing, and cover our brownfields - already destroyed, already in urban centers - with PV and get 90% of our power there, if the thought of ratepayers owning their own generation is so unacceptable?
And Darrell, yes, we have all read the press releases, but the truth is that DWP doesn't need to destroy ecosystems and build massive new transmission since SCE has offered plenty of capacity on their existing transmission. It was never about geothermal coming to LA, it was about a generation and transmission monopoly that the megalomaniacs at DWP are insisting on, in order to continue holding ratepayers hostage. If DWP cared about solar, they would have spent that 5 billion dollars their "solar program" will cost on AB 811 loans and feed in tariffs, instead of monopolistic infrastructure.
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:16 am
16 Jan 2009
The only way I can see PV covering most electricity is 1) if the Feds build a whole bunch of pure silicon manufacturing plants -- which I think is a good idea, and 2) the Feds build lots of battery plants, some kind, to put in buildings to store the electricity from the PV. Those aren't necessarily bad ideas, it's just that they need to be shown to be effective (a possible #3 is to put geothermal heat pumps under every building (again with Fed money), and to help the effort retrofit every building, in order to decrease the need for the electricity in the first place. And number 4 might be to put everyone in apartment buildings, but maybe I digress).
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stopgreenpath Posted 9:06 am
16 Jan 2009
you read the EIS, Jon - which was prepared by the CPUC, who are not exactly enviro-nuts, and it was classified a non-mitigatable factor, even with huge "Carbon Offset" purchases. Sorry, but it is what it is. Wishing it was "overblown" just to advocate a position you are attached to won't change the facts.
And let's be clear, I am also proposing to generate clean, emissions free energy - in the built environment, where it is needed, so how can you beat that? You can't. And why would you want to? Can't we START with 50% of our energy and work from there? Do you really think REMOTE solar is going to be able to generate at different times than LOCAL solar? it's exactly the same. Wind is a total wild card, so storage is obviously needed before it can become viable, which then puts point of use wind back into the mix.
Like i said in Gar's other post, we are obviously doing renewable energy in phases, and the money follows the policy. As soon as policy shifts to point of use solutions like demand reduction, generation and storage, the money - and the science, will follow. The only reason we don't have amazing batteries already is because Big Energy has tried to stunt their development. They routinely buy up promising technologies and shelve them, they buy off legislators, and they use their monopolies to control access to the grid.
You want cradle to grave analysis? then include the massive ecosystem destruction, the water waste, the hugely polluting construction process, the backup power required, the gas burned by many CSP plants (which means gaslines, too), the additional powerlines and roads, and I'm sorry, you will really have a hard time convincing us that remote Industrial generation is cleaner or cheaper than point of use PV. we'll tackle the second 50% later, when tech catches up with policy...
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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Jon Rynn Posted 10:30 am
16 Jan 2009
Now, you can actually retort using my handy-dandy tables: even getting the electricity carbon-free would only solve part of the problem. And ecosystem destruction (if you want to lump agriculture and forests into ecosystem destruction) are actually more destructive than the electrical sector. The problem is, they all have to be solved.
As I said above, we have to show that local energy will solve the problem. it looks clear that if you do a national grid, with wind throughout, that you can get baseload and you don't need storage, at least for a large part of the electrical system.
As for emissions, covering all roofs with PV would also create plenty of emissions. It's going to be necessary to emit lots of lots of GHGs in order to build a carbonfree economy -- because right now we don't have one (sharon astyk often argues that we don't have the fossil fuels available to replace the fossil fuel economy with a renewable one).
In fact, really the only morally justifiable emission of ghgs is to build a nonghg economy (disclaimer, since we're all stuck inthis ghg emitting world, we should not feel guilty ).
so i'm not sure that the emissions argument really works. the best argument is really that doing it locally would be better. the problem with that, to be honest, is that I personally don't have the resources to show that. Maybe it's not that hard. If you have any ideas, I'd be happy to hear them -- i like to drown in data.
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Gar Lipow Posted 10:47 am
16 Jan 2009
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Gar Lipow Posted 12:20 pm
16 Jan 2009
The solution to that particular problem may not be to stop the line, but to reduce SF6 leakage. For example NY has instituted a program to reduce SF6 leakage by 80%.
http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/public/000000000001000063.pdf ...
Reduce SF6 leakage by 80% in the Sunrise line you pay back SF6 costs in 2.4 years, not 12. Add an additional 1.5 years to payback all other emissions for building the line, and you still end up with less than a 4 year emissions payback. I'm not saying the sunrise line is necessarily a good idea. It is a comparatively short transmission line, and you may indeed be able to build local wind for the same cost. At any rate, if Sunrise does not want to withdraw their proposal, they need to resubmit with a plan for reducing SF6 leakage by 80% or better.
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stopgreenpath Posted 2:40 pm
16 Jan 2009
and yes, PV will have some modest resource requirements for manufacture, but again, i wasn't even counting manufacturing in your Big Solar or Big Wind models, which will also have resource requirements. I am talking purely about a comparison between point of use PV (virtually no construction, no ecosystem harm, no new transmission) and remote Big Solar or Big Wind (massive construction and emissions, new roads and powerlines, widespread ecosystem destruction). when it is framed like that, which i believe is the truth, and we are faced with that choice, which we currently are, then the remote project is not appealing at all.
Jon, why are you only choosing lose/lose options for your choices? why isn't the challenge: how can we drastically reduce emissions without killing functioning ecosystems? then, you see the US government's EERE stats for a thin film PV project (super cheap!) located solely on urban brownfields (super toxic and dead!), requiring no new transmission (super efficient!) and no harm to any ecosystem (super renewable!) and generating 90% of US power needs (super effective!), and you have to smile, and say "well, there you have it, folks." no catastrophic pre-emptive ecosystem demolition required.
i am just blown away at how difficult it is to convince a bunch of environmentalists not to pre-emptively slaughter millions of acres of intact, functioning ecosystem as the First Line of Defense against a difficult-to-measure threat like Global Warming. Especially when it is soooo obvious that this is all about Big Energy profiteering! my instincts say the exact opposite, that we need to carefully hoard and steward and PROTECT our fragile habitats, especially now that we need them so much, and only use the previously built environment (which is also where demand is) to generate new, clean, emission free power. which, not coincidentally, is also the exact recipe for democratizing the grid. which is the exact recipe for widespread drops in consumption. which reduces demand and emissions even more.
seriously, what am i missing here? i apologize that i am so emotional about this, but we are hitting a crisis point, and you two are definitely not alone in this "millions of acres will have to be sacrificed" mentality. how the heck did this come to be an acceptable position for people who claim to care about the planet, when we have other, currently feasible, affordable solutions that DO NO HARM?
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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Gar Lipow Posted 3:41 pm
16 Jan 2009
I think again we have a difference in how fast you think we need to move. If you think a 50% reduciton in emissions in 20 years is enough, then we can do it locally. If you think that the climate chaos effects coming faster means we need to reduce by 80% to 95% in those same 20 years, then you won't want to move that slowly and wait for breakthroughs. Again though, my proposal for long distance transmission along railroad lines answers many of your objections - not digging up virgin land or cutting down trees. Access via rail means no new roadways. And the SF6 emissions (and I find it interesting you did not seem to realize that this, not the road construction is the main source of HVDC emissions) can be reduced by careful leak monitoring. Also with transmission along rail rights of ways, compactness is not as important which means that switches, bridges and circuit breakers can be made SF6 free. So we can lower HVDC transmission emissions to a fraction of what renewable energy saves.
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Colin Wright Posted 3:53 pm
16 Jan 2009
Novacem's cement, which has a patent pending on it, uses magnesium silicates which emit no CO2 when heated. Its production process also runs at much lower temperatures - around 650C. This leads to total CO2 emissions of up to 0.5 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement produced. But the Novacem cement formula absorb far more CO2 as it hardens - about 1.1 tonnes. So the overall carbon footprint is negative - ie the cement removes 0.6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne used
And Jon asks, Could we switch from meat to fish? Maybe farmed fish. But aren't the oceans are already overfished? ("The FAO said that of 600 wild capture species monitored, 52% are fully exploited and 25% are over-exploited (17%), depleted (7%), or recovering from depletion (1%) while only 3% listed as under-exploited.")
Thanks, Jon, for the great work here. Are you going to link to your spreadsheet from your grist profile so we can find it easier in future?
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:04 pm
16 Jan 2009
Also electrical industries, makers of refrigerants also produce emissions not from fossil fuels. SF6, HFC23, N2O2, also byproducts from making teflon I think. Cement is the largest, but the F5 gases are important too.
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:05 pm
16 Jan 2009
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:45 am
17 Jan 2009
It also seems, stopgreenpath,that you're objection to wind is coming down to the transmission path. part of the problem there seems to be distrust of utilities, who say that they will do the right thing but then don't, is that so? Because then if someone says that it can be done environmentally sensitively, your response is that historically they haven't, which is valid. But it's still an important point to keep in mind, that it can be done less destructively.
Also, as I've said, there seem to be technologies for putting the wires underground, although you'd stillhave to tear up ground. Which leads to the next question: do we know how much land will be torn up by transmission? particularly if most of it is next to rail lines? any data on the mileage of these lines, and how much gets torn up around theem, etc? I'm not saying you have to respond to all of this, but these are the types of questions that have to be answered, it seems to me, particularly when the alternative is coal.
On nonCO2, according to my spreadsheet (industrial tab), 430 megatonnes comes from nonCO2
speaking of which, Colin, yes I finally put it up there!
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:03 am
17 Jan 2009
In terms of area, the question is area for what. If you remember I figured we have enough roof area to provide 35% of demand with a combination of low temp solar thermal and very efficiency solar cells. Parking lots and roads cover much more area than roofs. So 100% of pave area would come close. I don't think there is all that much brownfield. But taking advantage of that is mainly solar PV. Not much of that is suitable for wind. Not much is suitable for baseload concentrating thermals solar.
So even without concerns about when the power is generated, that would be many times as expensive as power that includes wind in the equation. Then there is the concern that around 70% of that energy would be generated in a five hour period on a daily basis. So either you end up throwing most of it away (and that drastically lowers the amount of energy it could provide) or you store it. And even just considering daily issues thatis again much more expensive than with a long distance grid. And then there are seasonal variations. And again power averaged over a long distance including power from sunny climates and power from windy climates has much less seasonal variation than power from within the same few hundred miles. So you have to build much more capacity if you are not sharing power than if it is atomized.
Again, I'm not saying we leave this to the utilities. A national grid should be nationally owned, built at the same time as freight rail is upgraded. And it should be done in a way to minimized emissions from the transmission line. Infrastructure other than the lines themselves can be built with SF6. There are solid state technologies, and oil insulation that work fine without the SF6. (The disadvantage is more bulk, but if you are building along rail rights of way, we can live with that.) Older HVDC was insulated with oiled paper rather than SF6. But you get more line losses, and oil leaks with that, so probably we do need to use GIL (Gas insulated lines). But we can put in infrared cameras all long the lines that spot leaks much faster than conventional leak detection. So it is possible to keep those emissions low over the lifetime of the lines. (And of course there are leak reduction techniques we can use as well.)
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guade00 Posted 4:46 am
17 Jan 2009
Show the documentation for your positions, please, so more of us can analyze the validity of your conclusions. Thanks.
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stopgreenpath Posted 5:11 am
17 Jan 2009
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/myths.html
money quote:
Alternatively, PV systems built in the "brownfields"--the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation's cities--could supply 90% of America's current electricity.
These hypothetical cases emphasize that PV is not "area-impaired" in delivering electricity. The critical point is that PV does not have to compete with baseload power. Its strength is in providing electricity when and where energy is most limited and most expensive. It does not simply replace some fraction of generation. Rather, it displaces the right portion of the load, shaving peak demand during periods when energy is most constrained and expensive.
Which is a nice segueway to Gar's objection. firstly, the sun shines more than 5 hours a day everywhere in the US, all year long. Some days in some places, there may be very heavy cloud cover, and certainly on winter days, when no A/C is needed, so electric loads are a fraction of what they are in summer, the sun shines for only 8 hours instead of 12. Fine, so there are overnight loads, but those are a mere fraction of "peak" load, which can be 100% covered by solar, so the actual demand when the sun isn't shining is Phase 2, a storage solution. MIT insists that within 5 years, they will have a cheap, room temp hydrogen battery that will fuel an average US household during non-PV production hours using one gallon of water. can't we put a moratorium on killing our wilderness until then?
I am baffled that remote Industrial Wind is being treated as a more reliable source of energy than PV, since wind is terribly erratic and turbines are constantly breaking down, at least in the 1000s of them in the low desert in CA. their average output is roughly 15% of capacity and peaks at 19% of capacity, but in an unpredictable way, so how on earth is that a more reliable source than PV in the same area with an average of 350+ days of blazing sunshine a year? I am also baffled that i have not been able to make it clear that Industrial Wind is not a benign technology either, and it still externalizes the vast majority of its costs onto ratepayers, taxpayers and the environment.
since we have a viable option, which, I beg to differ, Gar, will NOT require massive new transmission lines, as point of use solutions actually DECONGEST the grid by using most of the electricity right there, why on earth would we chase after this pie in the sky solution, destroy our ecosystems first, and use up all our funding to do it? Wind is completely impossible without matching gas backup, unless a huge storage solution is developed, so you can't begrudge storage to PV, when wind needs it even more.
Big Wind needs to factor in the costs (environmental and financial) of all new roads, backup power, opportunity costs (environmental and financial) and transmission before pricing it, and it starts getting much more expensive than thin film PV at $1/watt, no roads, no transmission, on dead land (no opportunity costs), much less backup power (since it's covering peaker power, many existing peaker plants could be repurposed until storage is perfected). So, no, my objection is not "down to" transmission, since these power plants are incredibly devastating to ecosystems as well, but i am irritated that transmission is treated as a "separate issue" when people want to talk about emissions, land use, ecosystem harm, eminent domain, and pricing for remote solar and wind. transmission corridors, per the BLM, run 2 - 5 miles wide. We are not talking about little wooden poles and skinny wires in rural neighborhoods. We are not talking about digging up asphalt and putting wires underground. We are talking about thousands and thousands of miles of new transmission in Orwellian "National Interest Electricity Corridors" that will do one thing, and one thing only - re-entrench monopolies when they are least wanted or needed. It is terribly naive to imagine that this is being done for the planet or US ratepayers. This is just "drill here, drill now" for the electricity sector, and the mercenaries are all bellying up to the trough. That's business as usual, but what the hell are "environmentalists" doing by greenwashing it?
I am also baffled that SDG & E was unaware of all these easy fixes to their GHG emission poisoning and was unable to remedy that factor if it's as easy as you say, Gar. Perhaps they didn't want to spend several additional millions of dollars on cameras since the line will already cost ratepayers roughly $15 million/mile? More likely, perhaps its because they knew they would be getting cover from "environmentalists" who would brush those massive poisonous emissions aside in their rush to pave over more desert ecosystems to save the rest of the planet? Because history is repeating itself. Utilities are NOT doing things "environmentally sensitively," nor are they required to, nor will they ever. It is the definition of insanity to even imagine that they will ever, ever change, so let's work with reality. CEQA, probably the toughest environmental review process in the nation, showed enormous harm, and approved a preferable alternative, in the form of in-basin generation (which has been repeatedly proven to be feasible and viable and affordable). there must be a serious reason to overrule preferable alternatives, and even though the administrative law judge conducting the hearings (which Sempra repeatedly lied in and got caught) and the one CPUC commissioner familiar with the proceedings, and CEQA all denied approval, they were overruled by the head of CPUC. why? because Sempra is Big Energy, and Big Energy is driving all of this. Not coincidentaly, Sempra was recently fined $350 million FOR MANIPULATING ENERGY SUPPLIES AND PRICING during the 2001 blackouts, just like Enron.
gee, do you think there is any reason to distrust this process and question whether you have been duped into supporting a process that will benefit mercenaries and greatly harm ratepayers, taxpayers, property owners and the planet? I'm afraid i have not seen a single good reason why not to build out point of use PV first, and save killing wilderness for a very, very last resort. not one. my solution will ramp up exponentially faster, just for starters, and if people are paid for their generation, we can plan on a serious consumption drop as well, since FITs have proven to be the most effective conservation policy ever. if you really believe this is urgent, then my solution is the one to pick.
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:36 am
17 Jan 2009
One thing though I gotta say: don't blame "environmentalists", there's no single thing called an environmentalist. I don't consider myself an environmentalist, per se, I consider myself a progresssive, or really, a leftist. I'm very interested in your research and Gar puts a lot of time into answering your arguments. peace out!
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ce1907 Posted 6:49 am
17 Jan 2009
But isn't there some trouble with having the materials to make the pv whatsits?
Also, consider this: figure out some way to buy off the monopoly utilities. Figure out some way for them to make an unfair profit out of pv.
Enviros go wild for the punish the guilty ideas. But you know what, the guilty are pretty powerful. And they control the media through conventional wisdom (and $). So most people don't even think they are guilty.
The answer is to be more devious, I think. Buy them.
It is pennies on the dollar, really. When you consider what is at stake, the real value of progress v. burning up the planet, just pay.
Down the road (and all along the road), the poor will suffer most. That is a given. So try to purchase the best future. That will be the least suffering for the poor.
A jihad is very emotionally satisfying for many enviros, but it is all theater. They rarely get anywhere.
What is needed is a very hard-bitten attitude.
Buy off the utilities. Something in the rates. Whatever. But implement your pv solution. And then hold award ceremonies giving all the credit to utility executives.
They are influenced by ego too. Sometimes more by ego than money.
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Gar Lipow Posted 7:02 am
17 Jan 2009
Look at this (pdf) example from California.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/emerging_renewables/2 ...
Scroll down to Figure 2 on page 8. (Note this is dynamic pages so may differ based on settings in your pdf reader.) You will notice that in So California (which is a very sunny climate during the summer which has longer days than winter Most of the power comes during a seven hour peak period from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. (Look at the area under the curve.)
BTW in a fast moving discussion like this neither Stopgreenpath nor I probably will take the time to document everything. But I do intend to do a long post on the subject in the next month which will be carefully documented. If stopgreenpath wants to do the same on his blog, when I do my post I'll be glad to link his. (If he does not have one there are tons of free blogs available. I recommend wordpress over blogger.)
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stopgreenpath Posted 8:17 am
18 Jan 2009
my proposal is to actually reward people for doing the right thing by the environment, by democracy, by free market principles and by the planet. pay people who generate more clean energy than they consume, right where it is needed, smack dab in the middle of our already-built environment, and leave our ecosystems to function as intended. it's a philosophical/policy position that's not really complicated unless you are emotionally or financially invested in externalizing the costs of industrial behaviors onto ratepayers, taxpayers and the environment and privatizing the profits. unfortunately, that has been our exact model for 150 years. that is no reason to perpetuate it now, though.
from a policy perspective, who do you want to reward? the guy who permanently destroys 10,000 acres of wildlife habitat and forces 3000 families from their homes, and lies about how much power will actually be generated, just to collect private profits (and possibly, but not probably, reduces GHGs a tiny amount over 40 years, after a steep spike in the first decade or so), or the guy who zeroes out his home and business' energy usage, stabilizes the grid and feeds clean power into it for others (and absolutely reduces GHGs while leaving a great carbon sink intact)? is this not a no-brainer for everyone?
So, fine, if utilities want to come to the party, and use our brownfields and lease rooftops, they are more than welcome, as long as WE are allowed a level playing field. if they get to amortize the costs of their infrastructure across the grid, why can't we? if they get guaranteed cheap financing, RECs, grants, subsidies and guaranteed paybacks/profits, why can't we? they should not be allowed to exercise eminent domain or use our open spaces for power generation without a showing of extreme need, right? ideally, the utility needs to be re-conceived as a load-balancing, distribution, storage and billing service industry, not a generation monopoly. it's time.
there is actually a glut of silicon now, so the shortage of the past few years (mainly caused by countries with GOOD policies, like feed in tariffs) has passed. we should see price drops soon, if market forces are allowed to work in balance with good energy policy.
quade, what are you asking that i document? most of my points are verifiable with common sense. it is obvious that destroying ecosystems is far more harmful than preserving them, all other things being equal, isn't it? it is obvious that re-entrenching monopolies - in the exact companies who have proven, time and again, to abuse their positions and manipulate energy supplies and pricing - is worse for consumers than allowing all of us ratepayers to be paid for producing clean power, isn't it? it is obvious that generating power right where it is needed will result in fewer transmission losses and reduced grid congestion, isn't it? it is obvious from the number of new discoveries made every day, that we do not have a firm enough grasp on the global benefits of various species and habitats, that it is insane to destroy them without a super-compelling reason, right?
my point being, this is not a purely engineering question with selective stats - this is an ethical and philosophical question more than anything, and we are at a serious crossroads right now. i want people to question their assumptions that Big Remote Centralized Energy and Long Transmission Lines are a reasonable, forward-looking or democratic solution. I want people to think twice about the propaganda that all wind and solar "resources" are located in specific, faraway places, like mineral seams, and so those are the only places we can generate renewable energy. that is just a flat out lie.
I understand that's how we used to do it, when coal, hydro and nukes were all we had, but now we have a chance to not just change the fuels we use, but the whole way we consume and produce power. don't we owe it to ourselves and the planet to start doing this right, finally?
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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ce1907 Posted 10:22 am
18 Jan 2009
it will be emotionally satisfying for them
and do us a lot of good too
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Bob Wallace Posted 5:53 pm
18 Jan 2009
In light of that statement (which is true, BTW) I thought you might enjoy this....
"Just being in an urban environment, (researchers) have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control."
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/ ...
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Colin Wright Posted 3:44 am
19 Jan 2009
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Bob Wallace Posted 11:47 am
19 Jan 2009
Jon and I have been having a bit of friendly jousting over city boy/country boy.
I agree with Jon that dense living is more energy efficient. And with some careful planning one can have a high quality of life in cities. (That said, I'm now in Bangkok and can say that there are definitely cities that need some work. ;o)
But I don't agree with the more radical city-ites that we have to abandon suburban/rural lifestyles. I live deep in the coastal mountains in Northern California and realize that all of us here could lead very green lives with the addition of electric vehicles.
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:34 pm
19 Jan 2009
Yes. Mind you I don't think current technology can support green SUVS. But if suburban drivers are willing to live with much smaller cars for long distances, and much slower cars with short driving ranges where size is essential, then absolutely. And with today's technology.
We can make fast electric cars with 100 mile ranges at a reasonable price to day, but they are small, a driver and a passenger - commuter vehicles. We can make large electric cars today at a reasonable price, but they have 35 mile ranges and are limited to below 45 mph. (Commercial ones often have lower top speeds, but this is due to regulatory requirements, not technical limits.)
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Colin Wright Posted 4:04 pm
19 Jan 2009
Us urbanites will no doubt always be dependent on the ruralites for (some of) our food! Richard Heinberg has written of the need for something like 50 million new farmers once the oil is totally gone! Of course, Gar has probably the answers for the electrification of farm machinery worked out somewhere!
Anyway, be careful not to criticize the King in Thailand. I was reading that an Australian writer was sentenced to 3 years for an unforgiving paragraph!
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:54 pm
21 Jan 2009
There are two ways to look at "SUVs".
For most greenies SUV is shorthand for large, overly heavy, fuel inefficient vehicle.
But for those like me who have transportation needs that can't be met by an Aptera, SUV means reasonable interior space, decent ground clearance, and four wheel drive.
Interior space means larger, and larger means more weight along with somewhat less aerodynamic form. But that's the price that might have to be paid if 4+ people and groceries or luggage is included.
The SUV of the future might well be made of lightweight composites, have the 'stretched VW bug" look in order to make the volume as aerodynamic as possible.
It may use the "raise your skirts" approach of the old Citroen (?) when clearance is needed
There may be a drive motor in each hub.
But an efficient SUV can be made. And the market will demand that some do.
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Jon Rynn Posted 9:50 am
22 Jan 2009
But if those sociologists bothered to read William Whyte, Jane Jacobs or any of the other innumerable researchers on urbanism that have popped up in the last 50 years, they would have seen an avalanche of data on the beneficent effects of city life.
One of the problems is that there are cities and then there are cities, and it's difficult to distinguish between a "walkable urbanism", to use Chris Leinberger's terminology, and a desolate landscape.
My main two beefs with suburbia are these: 1) Federal and state monies have poured into suburbia, which I'm not objecting to, what I'm objecting to is that the necessary balance of putting resources into both suburbia and the city has been badly skewed, which means suburbia is much more attractive in certain respects simly because it has been well-fed, while cities have been starved
2) when the price of oil goes through the roof and if, counter to hopes, you can't just replace an internal combustion engine with an electric one, the entire society is going to have to be pulled into the effort to save the people in suburbia.
So I stick with my claim that cities are more efficient, transportation energy wise, both personal and freight, they are also more efficient in terms of space heating (larger buildings), and they are better for innovation and doing business and education.
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Gar Lipow Posted 11:33 am
22 Jan 2009
I don't say we can't make Green SUVs with some (maybe) near term tech. But we can make tiny green cars with batteries made with today's tech at todays cost. A green SUV at current battery costs would be $100,000 if it at any range. So for a suburban family that needs a car that can carry four, the answer is tiny electric cars that can carry two up 100 miles for commuting. Large electric cars that can carry four and a bunch of luggage 35 miles at 35 mph. Use the big one for family outings. Use the small one for getting to work. Take some juggling to the get the kid to daycare and from daycare. Since suburbs have a lot of parking make sure there is plenty of parking near daycare. Take the large car to daycare, then drive to the drop-off lot. Leave the large car, and pick up the tiny commuting car. When you come home, drop the tiny commuting car at the lot. Pick up the big short distance car, drive the few miles to the daycare, then home. Use the big slow short range car for shopping.
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:08 pm
22 Jan 2009
(BTW, I hope you don't think the two of us "fight", I consider it something more like friendly jabs.)
Gar - I think you miss the point. There are people who need more space than current BEVs provide. I suppose I could make 5-10 trips to town (100 miles or so, round trip) to bring back the stuff that I normally might bring in a single trip.
And mommy isn't going to leave one toddler at home while she shuttles the other to the parked 'big car', then leave the first toddler in the parked big car while she goes home to retrieve the 'left behind'. And finally leave both at home alone while she fetches the groceries from the transfer lot.
Now before you and Jon recommend the solution of everyone moving to the city, let me again remind you that there is going to be incredible resistance to that solution.
We have trillions and trillions of dollars of personal houses already built in our suburbs and countryside. People are simply not just going to walk away from all that. And city people are not going to put up the money to buy them out and leave the buildings abandoned.
Acceptable solutions, readily adopted solutions,
require minimum pain for those making the change.
(Now I bid the forum goodbye for a few weeks. I'm off to wander Cambodia and Vietnam for a while. And after committing the sin of flying from North America to Asia, I promise to ride the bus and train until it's time to fly home. ;o)
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Gar Lipow Posted 12:45 pm
22 Jan 2009
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:55 pm
22 Jan 2009
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