A while back I did a roundup of reports. I left one out because I wanted to highlight it in its own post:
Synapse Energy Economics Inc.: Costs and Benefits of Electric Utility Energy Efficiency in Massachusetts [PDF]
Massachusetts recently passed the Green Communities Act, which significantly ramps up the state’s utility efficiency programs, mandating that "electric and natural gas resource needs shall first be met through all available energy efficiency and demand reduction resources that are cost effective or less expensive than supply." This puts the state at the head of the pack in terms of these kinds of programs.
So which "energy efficiency and demand reduction resources" are cost effective? That’s what the report from Synapse, one of the most respected consulting firms in the field, investigates.
The report is worth reading in full, but this paragraph is absolutely vital:
Synapse recently undertook an extensive review of numerous utility and third party EE
programs from across the United States in order to explore the empirical relationship
between the cost of saved energy (CSE) per kWh saved and program scale in terms of
first year energy savings as a percentage of annual energy sales. In the analysis, we
found that the CSE tends to decrease as energy savings increase relative to annual
energy sales. This finding is contrary to the idea of an energy efficiency supply curve
that is often constructed to estimate economic potential of energy efficiency measures.
These supply curves generally indicate that the CSE increases as energy savings
increase, much like a generation supply curve would. [my emphasis]
In English: Energy efficiency gets cheaper the more you spend on it.
It sounds counterintuitive. For most commodities (notably fossil fuels) you get to the easy stuff first—the "low-hanging fruit." As you go after the harder-to-get stuff, you end up spending more per unit. Thus the cost curve rises.
But energy efficiency is different. As you ramp up your efforts to pursue efficiency, you get economies of scale—your cost per unit of energy saves falls as you spend more.
This fact is overlooked by most energy analysts, resulting in, as Synapse puts it, "a bias against demand-side resources in long-term energy modeling." You can say that again.
What explains energy efficiency’s inverted cost curve?
Possible reasons for the decreasing cost trends include: (1) economies of scale are at
work (e.g., allocating marketing and administration costs over more savings, achieving
lower unit costs for program inputs); (2) more economies of scope are at work at larger
scale of energy savings relative to annual sales (e.g., exploiting synergies among
different measures such as reducing the cost of site visits per measure by implementing
multiple efficiency measures at one time); (3) administrators become more organized in
designing and developing effective EE programs (including appropriate level of
incentives to promote customer participation); or (4) administrators have more credibility
or more resources available for quality program design and development.
The kinds of utility energy efficiency programs found in Massachusetts are arguably among the very few measures that can achieve the scale of emission reductions we need in the short amount of time we have. Nothing else—carbon pricing, renewable energy, carbon sequestration—is big enough and fast enough. So it’s vital that legislators and energy planners understand the unique advantages of efficiency.
If they want the cheapest possible power, they’ll spend on efficiency, and spend big.
Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets
Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price
Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:10 am
29 Dec 2008
In that sense, devoting research and labor to increasing efficiency is the greenest job of all. Also, any investment would most likely go to employees directly as payment for services, as opposed to funding Detroit or Wall Street where the capital would become...upwardly mobile.
Side Note: Passively Heated Homes
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.ht ...
But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.
An honest man is always in trouble. --Henry Fool
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Billhook Posted 3:46 am
29 Dec 2008
may be new to economists,
but various forms of resource management have long been aware of this dynamic.
For instance the cider-maker knows full well that the orchard's low hanging fruit is but chickenfeed,
when compared with the volume to be gathered by investing in a good long ladder.
Yet the idea that only energy efficiency can provide the requisite rate of change of GHG output
is just unsupported assertion.
Furthermore, it ignores the long established dynamic of Jevon's Paradox (C19),
whereby gains in energy efficiency are instrumental in raising the number of machines sold, thus raising the actual volume of fuel burned and blithely swamping any intended emissions savings.
Moreover it ignores the very serious potential of various other options,
were they to be given the scale of implementation proposed above for EE.
For instance, giving a sufficient price for coppice reforestation to yield both charcoal for "Terra Preta" and liquid fuels for essential usage
would not only help to halt & reverse the deforestation that is around 1/5th of the GHG output problem,
it could also provide self-funding CCS for between one & two gigatonnes/yr of airborne carbon.
Most notably, carbon drawn from the atmosphere cuts the problematic concentration therein:
by contrast, neither the bi-product liquid fuels nor the much-vaunted energy efficiency options
will cut global demand for fossil fuels once that demand takes off again;
fuel left on the market will be bought and burnt by the next bidder.
Only a global treaty defining each nation's declining entitlements to emit GHGs is going to achieve that reduction.
I'm sorry that Terra Preta/Biochar has just been given a one-liner airing here on Grist, which of course was inherently out of context and thus a gift to objectors.
Given that we cannot sensibly rank the relevance of options such as EE without a broader appreciation, perhaps it is time that a leading academic proponent of the Biochar option was asked to contribute a concise account of the option's strengths, weaknesses & uncertainties ?
Regards,
Billhook
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:54 am
29 Dec 2008
Energy savings produce other savings as side effects. But some of those savings occur only if energy savings are big enough. For example,in the passive homes linked by (of all people) our village idiot, the huge savings in energy use eliminate the need for a furnace. That is a huge additional savings, a capital savings. Note that saving half the energy would produce half the capital savings. A furnace of half average capacity costs more than half of what an average furnace does. Eliminating 100% of the need for a furnace is a step function.
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Earl Killian Posted 7:10 am
29 Dec 2008
I am concerned with the above paragraph of the post. Electricity efficiency is perhaps the most important thing we can do, but contrary to the implication above, it too is not "big enough". Nothing is big enough by itself. We need to pursue dozens of things, in parallel, to have a chance of solving this problem. We've got to stop thinking in terms of point solutions.
To illustrate this, consider passing a massive electricity efficiency program in 2009 that makes 2010 lower than 2009, and 2011 lower than 2010, and so on. Suppose further (unrealistically) that 100% of the reductions are applied to coal power plants, our dirtiest. Suppose we do nothing else about our other GHG emissions during those years? Unfortunately population growth eats up the gains from efficiency. A detailed spreadsheet model of this confirms this. In a scenario where we get from 12,258 kWh per capita in 2005 to 10,065 in 2015, 8,622 in 2020, and 7,444 in 2025, total GHG emissions drop by only 1.8%, 5.3%, and 7.7% respectively from 2006 levels. This is nowhere near enough, and this is a very aggressive efficiency schedule. You don't need the spreadsheet to understand this. Coal power plants are only 27% of our US total GHG emissions. Drive them to zero, and you've only gained 27% reduction, and kWh per capita numbers such as the above doesn't drive coal to zero (in my spreadsheet it is reduced 53% in 2025). If the other 73% of GHG emissions simply grows with population (by 8% in 2015, 12% in 2020, and 17% in 2025), then eat up most of the reductions.
We absolutely have to address other emissions in parallel with electricity efficiency. That includes 16% from gasoline transportation, 6% from diesel transportation, 3% from jet transportation, 11% from natural gas residential/commercial/industrial combustion, 10% from methane emissions, 8% from coal/petroleum used in industry, 5% from N2O, and 2% from Hydrofluorocarbons, Perfluorocarbons, and SF6. We need renewables to replace the coal that efficiency cannot eliminate, and we need renewables to power the conversion of our transportation fleet from fossil fuels to electricity. We need high speed rail to replace air travel where possible, and we need more efficient air travel. Some of these things must be started in 2009 or 2010 because they take time to scale up. One cannot do efficiency first, and renewables second; they must be done in parallel.
To illustrate the scope of the problem, California is developing a plan to reduce 2020 emissions by 174 MMT CO2. There are items on the list that are as small as 0.15 MMT because many small things can add up to big numbers. You need to think this way to succeed. Similarly, you cannot ignore jet fuel consumption just because it is only 3% of emissions; you need to look for reductions even in sub-1% items.
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erich Posted 10:48 am
30 Dec 2008
Oil interest must come to see the overwhelming value of their carbon as the feedstock for the manufacture ( via carbon nanotubes, fullerines, DNA programed nano self assembly, etc.) of virtually all things in the near future.
This convergences of different technologies will end the Combustion age.
Terra Preta starts as a soil nano technology with increased CEC, than a micro tech with our wee- beasties / fungus, and macro with bugs and worms.
Biotic Carbon, the carbon transformed by life, should never be combusted, oxidized and destroyed. It deserves more respect, reverence even, and understanding to use it back to the soil where 2/3 of excess atmospheric carbon originally came from.
We all know we are carbon-centered life, we seldom think about the complex web of recycled bio-carbon which is the true center of life. A cradle to cradle, mutually co-evolved biosphere reaching into every crack and crevice on Earth.
It's hard for most to revere microbes and fungus, but from our toes to our gums (onward), their balanced ecology is our health. The greater earth and soils are just as dependent, at much longer time scales. Our farming for over 10,000 years has been responsible for 2/3rds of our excess greenhouse gases. This soil carbon, converted to carbon dioxide, Methane & Nitrous oxide began a slow stable warming that now accelerates with burning of fossil fuel.
Wise Land management; Organic farming and afforestation can build back our soil carbon,
Biochar allows the soil food web to build much more recalcitrant organic carbon, ( living soil biomass & Glomalins) in addition to the carbon in the biochar.
The recent EU permits granted 3RAgroCarbon http://www.3ragrocarbon.com , after 4 years of testing show Biochar's massive increase in yields of more than 100%
"Doses: 400 kg / ha - 1000 kg / ha at different horticultural cultivars
Plant height Increase 141 % versus control
Picking yield Increase 630 % versus control
Picking fruit Increase 650 % versus control
Total yield Increase 202 % versus control
Total piece of fruit Increase 171 % versus control
Fruit weight Increase 118 % versus control"
Indeed, Dr. James Hansen, NASA's top Atmospheric authority, is now placing it in the center stage of pro-active solutions for the climate crisis.
arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pa...
As Dr. Lehmann at Cornell points out, "Closed-Loop Pyrolysis systems are the only way to make a fuel that is actually carbon negative". and that " a strategy combining biochar with biofuels could ultimately offset 9.5 billion tons of carbon per year-an amount equal to the total current fossil fuel emissions! "
Terra Preta Soils Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration, 10X Lower CH4 & N2O soil emissions, and 3X FertilityToo
This some what orphaned new soil technology speaks to so many different interests and disciplines that it has not been embraced fully by any. I'm sure you will see both the potential of this system and the convergence needed for it's implementation.
The integrated energy strategy offered by Charcoal based Terra Preta Soil technology may
provide the only path to sustain our agricultural and fossil fueled power
structure without climate degradation, other than nuclear power.
Senator / Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar has done the most to nurse this biofuels system in his Biochar provisions in the 07 & 08 farm bill,
http://www.biochar-internatio...
POZNAN, Poland, December 10, 2008 - The International Biochar Initiative (IBI) announces that the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has submitted a proposal to include biochar as a mitigation and adaptation technology to be considered in the post-2012-Copenhagen agenda of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A copy of the proposal is posted on the IBI website at
The International Biochar Initiative (IBI).
Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.
In a recent National Public Radio interview, Michael Pollan talks about how he was approached by a Democratic party staffer about his New York Times article, The"Farmer & an open letter to the next president concerning U.S. agriculture/energy policy. The staffer wanted Pollan to summarize the article into a page or two to get it into the hands of Barack Obama. Pollan declined, saying that if he could have said everything that needed to be said in two pages, he wouldn't have written 8000 words.
Michael Pollan is well briefed about Biochar technology, but did not include it in his "Farmer & Chief" article to President Obama, (Which he did read & cited in a speech) but I'm sure Biochar will be his 8001th word to him.
Erich
540 289 9750
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