ngoddard’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Pay now or pay much more later

  During the recent run up in oil price, commentators were surprised that at the same time, more or less, everything else went up too (e.g., food).  What a coincidence!  Eventually they figured out it perhaps had to do with oil being used for production of just about everything, services included.

  The longer we wait, the higher the oil prices are going.  Since it takes oil to build all that new non-oil infrastructure like the replacement of the vehicle fleet with non-oil vehicles, the longer we wait the more expensive it is going to get to transition.  Which means, essentially, that living standards are going to go down one way or another to pay for it.  Pay now, or pay much more later.

  Unless, perhaps, we get moving right away, or, perhaps, there is some technical breakthrough that gets us more oil-equivalent on a global scale within years.  Neither very likely!On Short-term dip in oil prices will not offset long-term increases posted 1 year, 2 months ago 17 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Rebound

  What is your solution to the rebound problem produced by energy efficiency?  The money Dow/DOE saved will have gone to some other economic activity which will have consumed energy.  Energy efficiency on its own has the paradoxical effect of increasing energy use because it is effectively reducing the cost of energy.

  Would you combine it with raising energy prices through some other means?  A fundamental part of the puzzle is politically effective ways to make energy - particularly carbon-based energy - more expensive than it is now, relative to other inputs.On Energy efficiency is the core climate solution, part 2 posted 1 year, 3 months ago 11 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Ground vs. Air heat pumps

  Amazngdrx: it's a shame you haven't managed to download and read the book (or the relevant bits).  He says quite a bit about geo and air source heat pumps (see below).  BTW, I found I could not open his pdf on a Mac, but opens fine in Ubuntu and Windows.

  Here's some of what he says about heat pumps (missing out all the physics) (bold emphasis is mine):

  
     Assume that we have a neighbourhood with quite a high population density - say 6200 people per km2 (160 m2 per person), the density of a typical English suburb. Can everyone use ground-source heat pumps, without using the summer replenishment trick? A calculation on p.?? gives a tentative answer of no: if we were aiming for everyone in the neighbourhood to be able to pull from the ground a heat flow of about 48 kWh/d (my estimate of our typical winter heat demand), we'd end up freezing the ground in the winter.

     Avoiding unreasonable cooling of the ground requires that the sucking rate be less than 12 kWh/d. So when we switch to heat pumps, we should plan to include substantial summer heat-dumping in the design, to refill the ground with heat for use in the Winter. This summer heat-dumping could use heat from air-conditioning, or heat from roof-mounted solar water-heating panels.

     Alternatively, we should expect to need to use some air-source heat pumps too, and then we'll be able to get all the heat we want - as long as we have the electricity to pump it. In the UK, air temperatures don't go very far below freezing, so concerns about poor winter-time coefficient of performance of air-source pumps, which might apply in North America and Scandanavia, probably do not apply in Britain.

     Nay-sayers object that the coefficient of performance of air-source heat pumps is lousy - just 2 or 3. But their information is out of date. If we are careful to buy top-of-the-line heat pumps, we can do much better.  The Japanese government has legislated a decade-long efficiency drive that has greatly improved the performance of air-conditioners; thanks to this drive, there are now air-source heat pumps with a coefficient of performance of 4.9; these heat pumps can make hot water http://www.ecosystem-japan.com/

  Do you still think he's got it wrong on heat pumps?On A Cambridge physicist's cooling summer treat posted 1 year, 4 months ago 27 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Does your solution add up?

  I think a lot of you are missing the main point of this book.  I've had the benefit of discussing it with the author.

  The main point he's making is, IMHO: does your solution add up?  Saying we will need every trick is not really an answer.  We don't have the time or energy or money to pursue every trick.  We have to make some choices.  Whatever choices we make, they better add up to a plan that works in physical terms (i.e., delivers the energy required for the lifestyle expected).

  If you think he's got some numbers wrong, I think he'd like to hear from you.  He is very keen that numbers be correct.  Similarly for a technology he's missing.

  It may be the case that social movements get going with small steps.  Fine, so long as those small steps aren't put forward as a sustainable energy system.  He doesn't talk about how to get to the sustainable energy system (much), but what such a thing could look like.  A good example is the feed-in tariffs that Germany and other EU countries use to promote growth in micro-renewables.  They work great at kickstarting the industry.  But they are completely unsustainable economically (would consume way too much budget) if micro-renewables were to actually achieve major penetration.  So, a stop gap, a stepping stone, but not part of a target sustainable system.
  On A Cambridge physicist's cooling summer treat posted 1 year, 4 months ago 27 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  So how will your company sell emissions credits?

  If I read correctly, your company is planning to sell emissions credits.  Where do these come from?  If it is from installing new infrastructure to ensure wasted energy gets used somewhere productive, then aren't these credits precisely for additional reductions?  What if the energy originated from non-fossil sources?  If you get these, shouldn't I get them for turning down the thermostat in my home?  And if we are going down that path, just put a tax on the fossil fuels and it will have the same effect, no?  The tax effectively increases the return your company makes by installing the new infrastructure, and we don't have to be arguing over which reductions to count. On Does additionality matter? posted 1 year, 7 months ago 29 Responses