CO2 endangerment

Articles have been in the news (one in the WSJ today 4/16/09) on the potential carbon and greenhouse gas endangerment finding that EPA will soon finalize. The primary significance for energy companies, and other sectors, is that once EPA characterizes carbon and GHGs as endangering public health, this provides the reasoning for climate change legislation. This paves the way for Obama's and Congress' proposals to move further. This firms the chance and potentially accelerates the schedule of climate change legislation. Without the endangerment finding, there was no scientific backing to support the need for regulation. We exhale carbon dioxide as we breath. Carbon has been around us forever. Why now would carbon suddenly be dangerous. It's through the intermediate effect of climate change that scientists now deem carbon as endangering public health.

Well, we are all waiting for EPA to pen their final signatures, the John Hancock, to the finding. Endangerment done, climate change legislation here we come.

This article in the New York Times again hits on the paradox that a country dependent on coal cannot quickly become green. "21 coal-fired power plants that emit more than 75 million tons of carbon dioxide annually and generate 80 percent of Missouri’s electricity," writes Felicity Barringer (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/us/09coal.html?_r=1&ref=earth). Nebraska, Indiana, and Iowa also depend on coal generation for power. Coal cannot be out of the picture as environmental groups like the Sierra Club or NRDC paint our future of energy to be. My point is not to suggest that our future won't be full of wind, solar, renewables, etc. I am for alternative energy as long as government funding is available. We cannot be anti-coal or anti-fossil fuel without realistically understanding the scope and volume of alternative fuels available. Even the capacity available is not enough. What about the extra transmission needed to funnel that power where it is needed. Do not be anti-coal until you propose a realistic alternative within a reasonable budget that a capital-constrained economy is willing to fund.

National Geographic Statistics

National Geographic has some awesome stats that help me as I try to learn more about the energy and environment industry. I find that it may be easier to store them on a blog and access when I need. Also their March 2009 issue hit the energy scarcity issue at its core: the solution is to start saving energy...starting at home. Debate over a national cap-and-trade program or tax could span endless hours to no avail. Moreover, when enacted, will the initial results be effective or meet the targets? Regardless of who is to blame for the pollution--the power plants, businesses, producers or consumers--Americans cannot deny that they are energy hogs. Point the fingers back at China and India as well but if we stop being a child feeling as if it's unfair that China and India aren't playing the same game of "Save Energy," grow up and realize that we can't continue wasting energy. Is climate change real or anthropogenic? Does the U.S. efforts to curb greenhouse gas emission have any real impact if China and India don't? The fact of the matter is that all you skeptics out there can continue expending your energy like Wall Street hordes its bonuses while the rest apply our time to rethinking our lifestyles. Energy--especially clean energy-- is scarce. Oil has to come from overseas. Coal is plentiful but dirty and hard to clean without viable emission controls. Renewables are the emerging markets but can they keep up with the rate that each person in the U.S. wants to power an IPOD, a new laptop, a car, or keep our heat on the winter, and run our ACs in when it's hot? One way to immediately start dealing with this issue--energy crisis, global warming,etc. (call it the name you want)--is to think wisely about the energy we use and whether we really need to use it. Turn the TV off when you aren't watching it, the light off when you aren't using it, unplug those cell phone chargers when you are not charging anything. Mitigating this issue does not mean converting yourself into a treehugger, giving up your thirst for big cars or TVs etc; rather, it's about thinking wisely about your energy budget. Don't spend the money you don't need to spend. Don't use the energy you don't need to use.

- 1 part per billion (ppb), a standard metric for measuring chemicals in the body, is like dropping a half-teaspoon of red dye into an Olympic swimming pool ("Pollution Within")
- A CFL uses so much less energy than an incandescent bulb, over its lifetime a single one can save electricity equivalent to the quarter-ton pile of coal in the foreground. - (April 2009 "Solutions for a Better World: A lighter footprint")
-For new plants coming online- 5-7 cents/KWh vs $0.22/kwh for solar
- average U.S. household emits 150lbs CO2/day from commonplace tasks
-a kwh of electricity in the U.S. produces 1.5lbs of Co2
- every 100 cf of nat gas emits 12 lbs of Co2
-China is building the equivalent of 2 midsize coal-fired powerplants a week
-a product's true cost includes the environmental impacdts from harvesting the raw materials used to make it, GHG s emitted in creating it, manufacturing process, packaging, transporting,
- a typical aluminum can can contain 40% recycled aluminum

Grease Riders by Greg Melville

Every time I hear the author's name, I think of Herman Melville and "Moby Dick." Well, this book was about an adventure, not so much a sea voyage. Two old college buddies, Greg and Iggy, embark on a road trip from Vermont to California in a car powered on vegetable oil. Much like the historical explorers who were the first to circumvent the globe by airplane or boat, Iggy and Greg want to be the first trans-national travelers by grease car, veggie-powered car, whatever you like to call it. The book is quite amusing. What I enjoyed is how Greg keeps his experience very human. His adventure hits at a critical energy and environmental issue: America needs to get off its fossil-fuel laden a** and take on the challenge of greater renewables. Have more veggie-powered cars and windmills and so forth. Underneath this political message are the facetious chatter between Greg and Iggy. At one point Greg describes how Iggy belches so loud in the car while he tries to carry on a phone conversation. Iggy makes Greg promise not to hide any car problems from him as Iggy is the mechanic guru. Greg sometimes avoided telling iggy about problems in the car because he knew Iggy would spend hours poring over the problem, thus delaying the trip. The reader also learns that Greg's wife, whom he leaves back in Vermont to care for his 2 kids while he takes this journey, hates Wal-Mart and catches that he charges some purchases from Wal-Mart when she reviews the credit card payments. These side aspects to the story which do not directly relate to the political message of the book remind the reader that this experience--driving out West, leaving your family for a long drive with god-knows what problems will arise--is very human and possibly lunatic. I admire Greg for his trip and his book. Along the way, he does use his road trip to touch on key issues. While he visits Minneapolis, he sees wind farms and draws in many awesome stats on how much energy a typical household uses and how many windfarms it would take to power a house for year. Then in South Carolina (or was it Tennassee), he tries to visit Al Gore's mansion to see just how big of an energy hogger it really is. He didn't make it in but describes how he gets in touch with Gore's press officer to find out what steps Gore is taking to reduce energy consumption in his house. I found some of Greg's frustrations resonant with other peoples' and countries'. He realized that he still wanted a big house and great electronics but he realizes--as all Americans should--that our demands going forward need to be tempered with an understanding of the environment--that just wanting things that suck more energy is not sustainable.

Climate Change Legislation

It's hard to keep tabs on Congress' moves regarding climate change legislation. Here's a recap of last week and if anyone has tips on getting updates, let me know. I've been following E&E news (Energy and Environment). Obama spoke in front of the Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs, last week in Washington voicing his continued support for cap-and-trade and 100% auction of allowances. Several articles in the Wall Streen Journal last week--particularly two editorials come to mind-- that spoke bitterly against cap-and-trade calling the program nothing but a tax in disguise. Congress is reviewing proposed bills now and anticipates debating on climate change legislation beginning in the spring. Waxman aims to have a bill through the house by Memorial Day. Reid in the Senate is looking into a combined energy and climate change bill and hopes to have a bill on the Senate floor by the summer or year end. Congress in general has claimed they will pass a cliamte change bill this year before the UN conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in Dec 2009. I have heard environmentla lawyers claim that the U.S. cannot go to the next UN meeting making the same mistake of not signing a Kyoto Protocol. In the next meeting, they will discuss the successor protocol to Kyoto, which expires in 2012. Will the U.S. or China, the 2 largest GHG emitters, finally sign or take a larger step beyond passive commitment? Furthermore, Barbara Boxer, Chair of the Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works, who had added an amendment to the Lieberman-Warner bill and is very aggressive about acting rapidly on climate change policy, has published 6 principles which were basically vague hints of her preference of a bill: "to create short and long-term emission targets," "to reduce emissions to scientifically recommended levels." An E&E article reported that she said she could have a bill ready tomorrow if she wanted, but she's considering letting the House propose one first. USCAP, a group of electric companies, environmental groups, and other companies, published the "Blueprint" which lays out for Congress what they feel are suitable design and emission reduction targets for the country.

More to come...keep watching out for any Congressional developments.

Carbon Footprint lifecycle

In this "green" or eco era, one tends to come across fresh "green" terminology. It may not be fresh. For environmentalists or those in the field, the terms may be familiar. I came across the idea of a carbon footprint life cycle. Living organisms have life cycles, but a carbon footprint? The concept is that a carbon footprint, the amount of greenhouse gases that a person releases into the atmostphere, can capture all possible causes, however minor, of their greenhouse gas emissions. Given that calculating all possible causes of a carbon footprint can be an anal and lengthy process, the more efficient path to take is to calculate your direct emissions, or emissions from owned sources. In the U.S., the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions are power companies. For a powerplant, direct emissions are emissions from sources they own. Powerplants burn fossil fuels which are full of carbon that when burned (or oxidized) spew carbon dioxide into the atmostphere. Indirect emissions would be the emissions that come from sources that the power company does not own. So if a powerplant gets an electricity bill from ConEd, it does not own or produce the electricity but it still used it, so indirectly, it impacted the environment. For a homeowner, I guess direct would be burning gas in a stove to cook food. The majority of emissions for homeowners is indirect. They don't produce electricity but they use it and by using electricity, they indirectly impact the environment.
So the next time I think about aging and growth, perhaps The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I will think about another life cycle, the carbon footprint life cycle.

Google Electric Car RechargeIT program

Is there anything that Google's innovative technological brains have not touched? This past summer, they launched a company initiative called RechargeIT to promote the use of electric vehicles. Their initiative has benefits fort both their employees and the public. For their employees, Google has a stock of electric vehicles in the characteristic Google primary red, green, blue colors that employees can borrow for short trips around their campus. For the general public, Google has installed a digital card into these cars to gather data, which they will make public, measuring the miles per gallon, distance, CO2 emissions, battery life, and other data that currently is not widely- accessible. This would push them to the forefront of bringing "real data" on electric cars to the laymen, making it accessible for free and without subscription to a database. Dan Reicher, Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google.org hosts several panel discussions on electric vehicles.