Thinking Past Carbon - www.tomrand.net

Moved - see www.tomrand.net

2012-03-21T21:11:00.002-04:00

I've moved - everything's at www.tomrand.net

Enhanced Geothermal: A Low-Cost Hedge on Carbon Sequestration

2011-12-11T12:10:00.000-05:00

Canada has committed to spending $4 billion to demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS). The International Energy Agency estimates there between $26 and $34 billion committed to CCS demonstration projects. That's a big bet on keeping coal plants open.

My pitch to COP17 on EGS, played in Durban on Dec 9, 2011 as part of the Waterloo Global Science Initiative (WGSI) blueprint to a low-carbon future.

We might want to hedge that bet. There is another way to replace coal as baseload power. Enhanced Geothermal (EGS) drills deep to get at a huge resource of heat, which can be converted to electricity. Thousands of times our primary energy needs sit beneath our feet. I have written about EGS here.

EGS is one recommendation that came out of the Equinox Summit: Energy 2030 (held at the Perimeter Institute in June of 2011). There, we articulated three pathways to low-carbon baseload power: renewables plus storage, next-generation nuclear (breeder reactors) and EGS. From this Summit emerged a blueprint to get us there. This blueprint was formally introduced at COP17 in Durban this week.

Above is a short video that was my pitch to COP17 on how to get EGS to market: generate an international consortium of public and private players (finance, energy, engineering, government) to pony up $1 billion to build 10 commercial-scale demonstration projects around the world. This would de-risk the technology at commercial scale, generate a shared set of best practices, and map the resource.

EGS is like nuclear or CCS: it is of such a scale that without a push by the public sector, it will remain in the shadows.

Want to replace a coal plant? CCS is one way. EGS is another. In order to have the EGS card to play in 5 or 10 years, we need to make this investment. It would be prudent to hedge our bets.

Why I'm not voting Green on Oct 6th.

2011-10-03T21:58:00.000-04:00

Have we built an economy that’s running rapidly toward ecological collapse? Yep. Has any major party wholeheartedly embraced the sorts of carbon reductions required to avoid that collapse? Um, nope. Does the economy require a wholesale reconfiguration in order to be able to embrace long-term sustainability? You betcha! Does the Green Party have at its core the sort of restructuring that might work? Yep.

But I’m not voting Green in the Ontario election. Why? Because there is too much at stake in the potential loss of the nascent Green Energy and Economy Act (GEA).

The GEA is the single most progressive, forward-thinking piece of environmental legislation in North America. At this point in history, it just doesn’t get any better. It’s the real deal. If we lose it, Ontario will lose our first, real concrete step toward competing in the emerging low-carbon global economy.

But even worse, if Ontario blinks at this juncture, many American States that are closely watching will back off their budding legislative efforts to build their part of the low-carbon economy. The large financial institutions, which have finally emerged as participating players on the project-finance side (it’s banks that drive all large infrastructure projects, including renewables) will back away. It will take a decade to get the momentum back.

If Ontario loses the GEA, there will be heard all over corporate North America a collective “I told you so!”. The political risk associated with any really progressive climate legislation, whether it’s Green, Blue, Orange or Red in origin, will become the main hurdle to engaging the corporate partners that we need on side to move our infrastructure forward. The little bit of momentum the economically engaged environmental movement has in Canada – the stuff that’s way past the feel-good stage — will subside. Worse, the GEA will become a lesson in what NOT to try.

Greens, your time will come, but this is not it.

For Ontario voters, pick your battles, and use your arrows wisely. It’s hard to compromise, believe me I know. Idealism is always easier, because you can always tell yourself you’re right and the world is wrong. But that’s just not good enough right now.

Results matter. Support the party that built the GEA, as they’re the only ones in a position to protect it. For Greens, the party-building can continue after the Oct. 6 election, and I’ll be there to help.

Smart Climate Models and Dumb Economic Models - Why Lomborg is Wrong

2011-08-09T09:20:00.000-04:00

This is a slightly longer version of an op-ed that appeared in the Globe and Mail. Click here for the original op-ed.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and subject of recent documentary Cool It, advocates a slow and steady response to climate change. While admitting it’s a “bit of a problem”, he argues climate change is not the singularly dangerous threat to our growth, or even existence, as David Suzuki or Al Gore would have it. Spending big money to slow emissions of greenhouse gases is a bad investment. And he’s got the facts and figures to prove it.

But Lomborg is wrong. His claims are based on a flawed economic model that excludes most of the science that tells us catastrophic climate change is a possibility. Having ignored the danger from the outset, it comes as no surprise that Lomborg is not concerned.

Lomborg draws from the classical cost-benefit economic model developed by Yale economist William Nordhaus, the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE). DICE calculates the costs of climate change policy by summing the net costs of implementing a given policy response and the damage caused by the warming associated with that response. It balances these costs with the economic benefits of avoided environmental damage, and uses a standard discount rate to yield a net present value. Out pops the optimum rate of both investment and warming. It treats the climate system like a very simple oven, the temperature controlled by policy and technology.

The net result? Slow and steady is the way to go. The optimum path is to the earth warm exactly 2.6 degrees C by the end of the century. Start with a bit of money for R&D, but save the heavy lifting until we find that magic bullet that makes fossil fuels obsolete. A comforting result.

The flaw in DICE is simple. It excludes most of the complex, non-linear behaviour of the climate system that has climate scientists really worried. Here are just three of those behaviours.

We now know that sudden, catastrophic changes in climate are a real possibility. These low-probability, but highly consequential events include the breakdown of ocean circulation patterns and the melting of ice-caps. The precise timing of these ‘tipping points’ and their effects cannot be treated with certainty. DICE ignores the possibility of these nasty surprises.

The climate system also has a lot of positive feedback, whereby greenhouse gases cause warming which releases more greenhouse gases, and so on. Warming oceans may start to release the carbon they had previously been absorbing. A melting north may belch huge amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. If these triggers go off, we may have to watch helplessly as the climate shifts all by itself into another, very hostile, equilibrium. An aggressive early response is very important if we are to avoid these triggers. What we do later matters much less. In technical terms, the climate is path-dependent. DICE ignores path-dependency.

Variability in extreme weather events, like super-hurricanes, is not well understood. There has not been enough history of warming to generate empirical evidence. But we do understand the underlying theory of these extreme events well enough to have confidence there is significantly increased risk. DICE ignores that risk.

These criticisms of DICE are not controversial. Nordhaus himself acknowledges DICE does not entertain the possibility of low-probability, highly catastrophic events and admits the pace and extent of warming is highly uncertain beyond the next couple of decades. Our knowledge of climate damages is, according to Nordhaus, ‘very meager’.

Yet the DICE model continues to inform debate on policy choice. Lomborg, among others, urges governments not to spend much in the near term on climate change, with the exception of a bit of R&D.

There is another view. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, commissioned by the UK Treasury and released in 2006, includes the possibility of catastrophic climate change and estimates its damage as a loss to global GDP of upwards of twenty percent annually. Put more plainly, that is a collapse of our industrial economy. The costs of early and aggressive cuts in emissions are treated as a kind of insurance policy against this collapse. Paying to reduce the odds of catastrophe is common sense, like insuring our houses against fire.

To emphasize: early and aggressive cuts in carbon matter much more than cuts later this century.

Ignoring uncertainty does not make it go away. We’ve seen this before. Japan recently learned the hard way what happens when you ignore the possibility of low-probability but catastrophic events. The financial crisis hit so hard in 2009 partly because the economic models didn’t include the possibility of house prices dropping everywhere all at once. Japan will recover, and the Fed came to the rescue of the financial system. There will be no such rescue if the climate hits one of these tipping points. Let’s buy the insurance.

Glenn Beck - Commie Stooge?

2011-02-27T10:09:00.000-05:00

- an op-ed for my American friends -

While America dithers on climate change, China is winning the fight for the biggest economic pie of the 21^st century – the clean energy economy. Worse, China is playing the US for a fool. And Fox’s very own Glenn Beck, that most bellicose defender of the free market, is an unwitting stooge.

The US has walked into a trap. To placate the far right, the US has stated it will not commit to hard emissions targets as long as China refuses to do the same. The Chinese know this, and use it to their advantage. By refusing to agree to binding targets, China ensures the US remains politically hamstrung, unable to pass the carbon legislation that would unleash American industrial might.

Beck’s far-right, paranoid, climate-scam rhetoric may make great populist theater, and bring high ratings to Fox. But the net result is to help China keep the US on the sidelines, while they capture the lucrative clean energy market, and all the jobs and investment that goes with it. Beck and Fox are hurting America’s economic recovery.

Make no mistake, China may be recalcitrant in climate negotiations, but the Chinese leadership fully understand the threat of climate change. Like most of the world, they know a global economic transformation to low-carbon energy is now inevitable. The centrally-controlled Chinese economy is pouring more investment and state support into clean energy than any other country. By far. While America bickers, China is quickly and strategically building a clean energy industrial powerhouse.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the low-carbon economy the ‘third-industrial revolution’, following coal and oil. It will be the single largest global market in human history. Tens of trillions of dollars will be deployed to replace our fossil fuel infrastructure. Countries that move early to create the market conditions needed to seed this new industry will be net sellers of clean technology. Countries that don’t will be buyers.

Creating the market conditions to nurture a new industry is nothing new. Silicon Valley grew out of academic and military demand for the microchip. The aerospace industry was long supported by the military. Even the auto sector’s economic dominance stems from the decision to build the US Interstate Highway System. Supporting strategically important industries creates wealth, and can establish lasting global leadership.

Markets are not like trees or tigers, natural kinds operating under laws we seek to discover. The market is more like an iPod, it’s an engineered artifact. We invented currency, banks, credit swaps, public markets, taxes, loans, and all the other assorted and sundry associated with a modern economy. We created the market and can engineer ways to create long-term, sustainable value.

While Beck rages against the climate ‘scam’, China pours low-cost loans into state-owned wind farms, leveraging their demand for turbines to give Chinese manufacturers global advantages in scale. While Beck rails against a perceived communist-driven conspiracy, China establishes a massive lead in low-cost solar production. While Beck ridicules our scientific elite, providing comfort to those who would ignore their warnings, another American solar company closes its local factories and moves to China.

Beck’s ignorance of climate science, and his paranoid populist rhetoric of marxist conspiracies, beggars our democratic free market. A price on carbon is not a left-wing conspiracy to control the world. It is the single best tool in our arsenal to unleash the might of our industry, capital and entrepreneurs against the very real threat of catastrophic climate change.

In sapping our political will to act Beck plays right into China’s hands. By the time China plays nice, and agrees to hard targets, they’ll own the clean energy sector. So when the US finally passes its own legislation, it will meet those targets by buying low-cost Chinese technology. We’ll go from sending oil money to the Mideast, to sending clean energy money to China.

Glenn Beck - Commie Stooge?

2011-02-27T10:08:00.001-05:00

- an op-ed for my American friends -

Peter Kent on the Tar Sands: Tiny emissions but huge enterprise?

2011-01-07T08:04:00.006-05:00

You can't have it both ways.

In one breath new Environment Minister Peter Kent claims the emissions from the Tar Sands are too small to matter (it's 5% of Canada's total ghg emissions). Yet at the same time the claim is that it is far too important an economic sector to regulate (never mind cap development). “Oil-sands production accounts, I think, for 5 per cent of Canada’s total greenhouse-gas emissions. ... ” he said. “When you look at relevant measurements, it is not nearly the product that has been demonized.”

Really? Total economic output of the Tar Sands is indeed enormous in absolute terms. At a $100 per barrel, and 1.2 million barrels a day, that's ... um ... $43 billion dollars a year. That is indeed a lot of money. Adds up to about 3.4 percent of Canada's GDP.

Wait a minute. I thought 5% of a pie is not enough to bother about? You can't have it both ways.

If you want to talk in relative terms, then the ghg numbers are a larger proportion than the contribution to GDP. If the Tar Sands' contribution to GDP is important, then so too are the emissions.

It's easy to flip back and forth between absolute and relative amounts for the purpose of semantic effect. Ghg emissions from the Tar Sands,for example is an astronomical 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. That's 40 billion kilogram! Sounds like a lot. It is.

If the Tar Sands are an important portion of the economy (at 3.4% they are) then they are an even more important portion of our ghg emissions (at 5%). Peter Kent has already started the gobbledegook speak of the Harperites on climate change.

A shot at the skeptics

2011-01-06T11:03:00.006-05:00

This is a piece of mine, first published on The Mark News, calling out climate skepticism as a socially damaging, pseudo-intellectual pursuit. While skeptics - Wente, Murphy, Beck - may paint themselves as brave knights bucking social norms, they are nothing of the sort.

Indeed, the opinions of laypersons - like Beck, Wente and Murphy (who I daresay have never read a peer-reviewed paper in their lives) - are simply not relevant when it comes to climate science. Climate science is not like politics or art, it is a subject matter deferred to expert consensus.

Understanding that expert consensus exists, which simply requires a recognition of what scientific bodies (National Academies of Science, etc) are to be trusted in representing that consensus.

Full piece here: http://www.themarknews.com/articles/3561-the-catastrophe-of-climate-change-skepticism

Skepticism: No Longer Intellectual Virtue

2010-12-12T12:52:00.001-05:00

In the face of another diplomatic disappointment in Cancun’s climate change talks, we approach the end of the hottest year on record. While experts again try to ring alarm bells, our media still gives voice to the pseudo-intellectual pursuit of climate scepticism. Perhaps while Rome burned, some bravely questioned the finer qualities of fire. Perhaps on Easter Island, as the last trees fell, some elders courageously debated the necessity of wood. Today, our own Margaret Wente and Rex Murphy sing in tune with the likes of Glenn Beck, sincerely believing their scepticism to be a form of intellectual virtue. It is not.

Angel Merkel calls the low-carbon economy the 'third industrial revolution'. A new energy Internet supplied by clean energy sources like biomass, wind solar, hydro and geothermal is spread across the continent. There are new storage technologies like compressed air and low-friction flywheels. Large-scale efficiencies make economies more competitive. If Canada gets it right, we’ll sell this stuff to the rest of the world.

The transition to a low-carbon economy brings huge economic opportunity, but it is not optional.

While Wente asks whether humans can control the climate, global average ocean temperatures hit record highs. More ominously, as the oceans have warmed since the 1950s, plankton levels have dropped 40%. As goes plankton, so goes the rest of oceanic life.

Scepticism becomes a vice when hammering a broad consensus of expert opinion warning of existential danger. The policy commitments demanded by climate science need broad public support. Sceptics sap that support without intellectual justification.

We have known since the early 19th century that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, insulating the earth like a blanket. In the 1960’s, the US National Science Advisor warned the build up of carbon dioxide would cause catastrophic overheating. In 1989 Margaret Thatcher declared to the UN General Assembly that climate change was the single greatest threat to our very existence. The Iron Lady, no shill of the environmental movement, was scientifically literate.

The same cannot be said of those who scoff at the accumulated wisdom of our scientific elite. All National Academies of Science in the developed world have endorsed the basic premises of human-caused climate change. The only scientific argument remaining is not about whether it is real or imagined, but whether the results will be catastrophic or merely disastrous.

Yet untrained sceptics assure us the dangers of which the scientists speak may not be real.

To Murphy, public acceptance of expert opinion on climate change amounts to religious indoctrination. Wente asserts that climate cannot be controlled by human behaviour. Beck argues it’s a Communist conspiracy. The purported dangers are at best hypothetical constructions of a few scientists, at worst mere monsters under our bed easily dismissed by a dose of adult scepticism. The sceptics explicitly cast themselves against the orthodoxy of our time, as noble knights standing up to society’s pressure to conform.

This is nonsense. Climate change is not like politics or a painting. The opinions of laypersons, are not relevant. It’s hard science, and the truth of the matter has been settled by those qualified to make the judgment.

But we’re far past the complex theoretical models now. Ask an Australian farmer what climate change means. It’s the longest drought in human memory. To a BC forester, it’s the pine-beetle destroying their timber. Lloyd’s of London, like most insurance companies, faces escalating costs due to extreme weather events. Russia’s scorching summer that temporarily ended grain exports, and the floods in Pakistan, are but appetizers of the main event.

The pseudo-intellectual pursuit of climate scepticism delays Canada’s participation in a new economy, and it makes it harder to have that public and adult conversation we so desperately need. The one about how volatile nature has become, and how angry it will get.

"Anticipatory Democracy"

2010-12-05T22:14:00.002-05:00

The most difficult issue wrt climate change is the hard truth that policy is required in the absence of public demand for it. A question from an audience member at Lehigh University ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAUFxCea_V4

Monbiot strikes again

2010-11-26T13:45:00.002-05:00

Brilliant analysis of the hokey-pokery that dogs the more prominent climate change deniers. As one who grew up in an academic family, in which it was believed that dialogue and evidence leads (eventually) to "truth", I've learned the hard lesson that in the public sphere this particular belief is simply false.

If only erudition were enough to change minds, Monbiot would have finished his job years ago. Thanks again, George.

Morgan Solar Hires Asif Ansari

2010-10-13T11:17:00.001-04:00

News Release from MaRS Discovery District - Big brain gain for Toronto, and huge step forward for Morgan Solar.

Founder and ex-CEO of eSolar Asif Ansari takes the helm of Canadian startup Morgan Solar

TORONTO, Oct. 13 /CNW/ - MaRS Discovery District is pleased to announce that Asif Ansari, former CEO of Los Angeles based eSolar, Inc., has taken the position of Chief Executive Officer at Toronto startup Morgan Solar. Ansari, considered one of the most successful start-up CEOs in the solar energy world, has founded several successful companies and led the development and commercialization of over 20 technical products in the cleantech and aerospace markets. Under Ansari's leadership, eSolar attracted financial backing from Google and emerged as a global leader in solar thermal technologies. Ansari has now relocated to Toronto and will apply his experience and expertise to commercializing Morgan Solar's breakthrough technology, the Sun Simba concentrating solar panel. "Morgan Solar has done something I wasn't sure was possible - they have cracked the code for CPV (concentrated solar PV) optics, substantially lowering its costs to where it can now deliver a value proposition significantly better than PV (photovoltaics)," said Ansari. "Morgan was able to see the problem in a whole new way, starting with inventing a new optical concentrator to replace conventional Fresnel lens architectures. The potential of this technology is massive."

MaRS Discovery District has been working closely with Morgan Solar, helping it evolve into a Canadian cleantech success story. "Ansari coming to Toronto represents the biggest brain gain for Ontario in the cleantech sector I've seen," says Tom Rand, Cleantech Practice Lead Advisor at MaRS. "Ansari has enjoyed a string of successes, including eSolar, and he didn't come to Morgan to fail. The quality of Morgan's management team, with these sorts of additions, demonstrates their ability to go global on a major scale."

Toronto's Morgan Solar, founded by brothers John Paul and Nicolas Morgan in 2007 and poised to become a global leader in solar energy, raised USD $8.2 million in Series A funding in 2009 and has attracted more than $5M in public funding, including the Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation's Innovation Demonstration Fund (MRI-IDF), the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) and Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC). The company has also secured investments from Iberdrola, the world's largest new renewable energy provider, and Nypro Inc., a global leader in injection molding and contract manufacturing. Their product—the Sun Simba—will be entering large-scale production in 2011. Currently, Ansari is working to raise a significant Series-B funding round for the company.

MaRS Discovery District, located in downtown Toronto, offers a comprehensive range of business services to help nurture innovation in key science and technology sectors, including clean technology. "MaRS has been engaged with us for some time and they have contributed an invaluable amount to our success to date," said Nic Morgan, VP of Business Development and co-founder of Morgan Solar. "Closing an investment for a start-up in 2009 was tough and MaRS was instrumental in assisting us with what turned out to be an excellent deal."

About MaRS
MaRS Discovery District (www.marsdd.com) is a large scale, mission driven innovation centre located in Toronto and networked across Ontario, focused on building Canada's next generation of technology companies. MaRS works closely with entrepreneurs to grow and scale their ventures into global market leaders in life sciences and health care, information, communications and entertainment technologies, clean tech, advanced materials and engineering, as well as innovative social purpose businesses.

About Morgan Solar
Morgan Solar Inc. (www.morgansolar.com) was founded in 2007 to develop next generation solar power technologies that will make solar energy significantly less expensive. They have developed a number of solar energy technologies, of which the first to market will be the Sun Simba concentrating solar PV panel. The Sun Simba uses total internal reflection (TIR) to capture, bend, and transport sunlight within an acrylic structure less than 10 mm thick - achieving the solar industry's highest reported optical concentration, in the most compact form to date. The Sun Simba is the first solar panel to leverage the huge potential of high efficiency, multi-junction PV cells by providing the first cost effective concentrating optic.

Morgan Solar is now focused on certifying the Sun Simba and deploying systems at test and demonstration sites in Ontario and in California. The Sun Simba will be available for ground-mounted projects in late 2011.

Out-of-control climate possible within 20 years: oilsands critic

2010-09-16T13:25:00.000-04:00

This article appeared prior to a talk in Red Deer ...

CDMs Don't Work - Fix Them or Lose Them

2010-07-26T16:22:00.002-04:00

CDMs (Clean Development Mechanisms) aren't working; and won't - unless they are buttressed by a strong regulatory environment that independently ensures best practices in energy generation. Designed to increase the flow of money from developed to developing nations, and to minimize the cost of carbon mitigation, CDMs allow firms in developed countries to invest in carbon-reducing projects in developing nations and claim the reductions themselves. Caveats aside (additionality is hard to measure, etc.), the core idea behind CDMs is sound.

But that's all gone wrong. Here's one clear example (culled from this original article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/14/un-carbon-offset-coal-plants):

Operating coal plants in England can use CDMs to offset their emissions, while the money raised is used to build more coal plants in the developing world. So one plant offsets its emissions by funding more emissions somewhere else. Sound crazy? It's really happening - the trick is to use the CDM money to build "super-critical" coal plants (ie modern ones that reduce the total C02 emissions by up to 30%) rather than old-fashioned ones. The additional cost is considered a carbon reduction. Paper-pushing nonsense.

Why on earth one would be ALLOWED to build non-super-critical coal plants in the first place (or coal plants at all, but that's a hard line required by the science and not yet accepted by politicians) is beyond me. But the difference between "best practices" and what energy developers could get away with is seen as reasonable offsets. Absolute nonsense.

If CDM's are to put off the tough regulatory decisions that require best-practices, then they are a sham. Worse, if they are used to help build C02-emitting infrastructure that will last for many decades - rather than carbon-neutral energy projects - their philosophical basis is completely undermined.

Sure, let's use CDMs. But let's ensure they are in addition to a strong, supportive regulatory environment that eliminates the temptation to do what we've done in the past - build on the cheap, let the risk pass to the future.

Even China Shapes its Markets

2010-07-26T09:10:00.004-04:00

Latest news release from China - just as the US decides to abandon trying for a cap and trade bill:

“BEIJING — The country is set to begin domestic carbon trading programs during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) to help it meet its 2020 carbon intensity target. The decision was made at a closed-door meeting chaired by Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission ... Putting a price on carbon is a crucial step for the country to employ the market to reduce its carbon emissions and genuinely shift to a low-carbon economy, industry analysts said.”

So even China - that already uses its command and control economy to outspend every other country on clean technology, at almost $70 billion in 2009 alone - is gearing up to further shape the larger market to accelerate clean energy adoption.

We will regret the decision to be indecisive. Environmentally - and now almost certainly, economically - as we hand a clean head-start to China in the largest industrial market in human history.

Shame.

Why 350 ppm is Obvious.

2010-07-05T20:56:00.003-04:00

One of the most important questions on climate is: what level we need to limit CO2 to avoid tipping points?

We're at 390 ppm (parts per million) now, rising about 2 per year. It was once thought 550 was ok, then 450. James Hansen has argued that 350 ppm is the only really safe target. This is politically unthinkable, technically very difficult - but it's true.

There are complicated explanations as to why 350 ppm of CO2 is the appropriate target, and a simple one. Credit to Jim Hansen for the complicated one. (Well, that's the press release which points to the original paper).

The simple one is this:

Premise 1: We're at 390. (obvious)
Premise 2: Arctic is already melting, and releasing methane. (see here)
Premise 3: The Arctic contains frightening levels of frozen methane. (see here)
Premise 4: That methane will accelerate warming. (obvious)

Argument By Induction: 390 already commits us past the tipping point. (this thing will keep going)

In other words - the level of warming already evident at 390 looks to contain enough momentum to wreck the party. Hence, 350 looks pretty reasonable.

Frightening stuff; one can easily see how this is an existential question (ie, one of survival, not lifestyle) - see the methane post below.

So - invest in technologies that can suck carbon from the air. Faster than trees.

Kicking the Fossil Fuel Habit

2010-05-18T18:40:00.002-04:00

Tom’s funny YouTube Video.

We’ve hit the bottom of the global oil barrel. Rigs far out at sea stick giant straws through more than a mile of sea-water to pierce pockets of oil so small they couldn’t keep the economy running for a day. Accidents aside, it’s impressive expertise – but peak oil and climate change dictate that it’s a losing game. The larger tragedy revealed by the BP spill is that we lack the imagination to re-direct that expertise and capital to safer, cleaner sources of energy.

It’s a myth we need fossil fuels. We just haven’t decided to kick the habit.

Instead of drilling for oil at sea, we could be drilling for heat here on land. Drill a few miles down pretty much anywhere, and you reach hot, dry rock. Enhanced geothermal (EGS) is the art of fracturing that rock, and tapping the heat for energy. It works 24/7. The guys from google are really into EGS.

EGS isn’t just theoretical; in fact, there are operating EGS plants in France and Germany, and lots of drilling has started in Australia.

But EGS is just one of many clean and renewable sources of energy that can reliably power our civilization.

Solar thermal energy plants that rival coal plants in size now produce power long after the sun goes down, by storing some of that heat in a giant thermos. Wind power is reliable when wind farms from across the continent are connected together. That’s because the wind is always blowing somewhere, just not always at the same place. Bio-fuels are tricky since they compete with arable land for food – but we can grow halophytes (plants that love salt-water) in the desert. Tidal power runs like clockwork, and hydro power has already proven itself. An energy internet covering the continent will tie these sources together.

But to give clean energy a fair shake, we need to invest at levels we normally reserve for fossil fuels. We're kidding ourselves if we think we can escape peak oil or move the needle on carbon emissions for anything less than trillions of dollars. Spending that much may sound absurd. But what's the cost of the Iraq war? According to economist Joseph Stiglitz, it's about $3 trillion. The liquidity injected to save North American banks was more than three times that much.

So what do we get for a trillion dollars of clean energy? In my recent book, Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit, I answer that question for 10 clean technologies. The answers may surprise you. A trillion dollars of EGS, for example, could replace all North American coal infrastructure. A trillion invested in halophyte bio-fuel production could replace half global oil supplies. No kidding.

But to spark this massive green investment, we need to intervene in the marketplace. Financial and business managers are conservative; you don’t get fired for doing today what you did yesterday, if you didn’t get fired yesterday! Oil companies do not yet see themselves as energy companies, and we need to force their hand. Cap-and-trade and an escalating price on carbon emissions are clear requirements to shift the economic incentives away from fuel that burns.

But most important is getting low-cost capital to the sector. The cost of clean energy is almost entirely dependent on the cost of capital. The sun, wind and heat of the Earth are free. The technology to harness them is not. There are ways to produce that capital – I’ve written before about government-backed Green Bonds as one suggestion – we just need to decide we want to do so.

It might sound daunting, but we've done this sort of thing before, and it creates wealth over the long term. The U.S. interstate highway system was funded by the federal government in the 1950s. That paved the way for the auto sector to fuel the North American economy for almost half a century. Silicon Valley was founded on military and academic support of the microchip processor. Neither of these bonanzas would have happened without government intervention.

We’ll eventually kick our fossil fuel habit. We have no choice. If peak oil doesn’t dictate the terms and timing, then climate change will force our hand. We may still have time to transition gracefully to a low-carbon economy, but only if we act quickly and decisively.

We can kick our fossil fuel habit. We do not need oil and coal to keep the lights on. We do not need to stick giant straws into the deep sea to pierce the last remaining pockets of oil. We just need energy. And that can be found anywhere.

Tom Rand (B.A.Sc., M.Sc., M.A., Ph.D., P.Eng.) is Cleantech Lead Advisor at MaRS Discovery District; a venture capitalist; co-developer of Planet Traveler, North America’s greenest hotel; and author of Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World.

For more information go to www.kickthefossilfuelhabit.net

The Mark News

2010-05-17T13:37:00.001-04:00

Op-ed in the Mark News.

Op-ed: Would you Pay a Trillion Bucks to Save the Earth?

2010-05-08T09:12:00.003-04:00

Op-ed in Canadian Business Magazine, May 2010.

Tom on BNN

2010-04-21T20:54:00.003-04:00

Defining the challenge of attracting capital to the cleantech sector, and defending cleantech as a realistic successor to fossil fuels.

http://watch.bnn.ca/midday-markets/april-2010/midday-markets-april-21-2010/#clip291957

Huffington Post Book Launch Review!

2010-04-19T08:42:00.005-04:00

Thursday, April 17th saw a packed auditorium at MaRS (estimated attendance = 300) to see the official launch of Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit in Canada. An hour talk followed by Q&A led to some great conversation and feedback. Many thanks to all of those who contacted me, I will follow up asap.

Here's a review that came out in the Huffington Post:

If you haven't bought the book yet; http://www.amazon.com/Kick-Fossil-Fuel-Habit-Technologies/dp/0981295207/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271681076&sr=8-1

Video Trailer!

2010-03-20T15:53:00.001-04:00

My book is out!

2010-03-10T18:50:00.004-05:00

You can order it on Amazon or at Indigo.

Ah, that Samsung deal again ...

2010-02-17T09:44:00.003-05:00

Here's my blog from the MaRS Discovery District site ...

http://www.marsdd.com/blog/2010/02/17/ah-that-samsung-deal/

To emphasize: all nascent industries are subsidized. The Tar Sands get massive subsidies, so does nuclear, so did the silicon chip, etc.

Subsidies are not the point.

The deeper question is: do we want to commit to developing a clean, green manufacturing base? If so - is the Samsung deal a good step in that direction? In my view - yes, it is.

Climate Change "Scoffers"

2010-02-12T07:47:00.002-05:00

Jeffrey Simpson has articulated a thought that has long been ill-formed in my mind about the irresponsible, and fundamentally dishonest, position of what he calls climate change "scoffers". Not full deniers, who are willing to take a position on what we should do about it (nothing, in their case). But those who just "throw darts" at the science, while maintaining they do not deny the basics climate change.

The problem is that, by holding the science to levels of proof not asked of the skeptic, they are effectively advocating we shouldn't take action, but never actually commit to the position. As Simpson puts it:

" ... scoffers on the sidelines of the Canadian debate, the ones who throw little darts at this or that revelation of scientific overstretch while never denying the reality of global warming, [are] thereby adopting the ultimate position of justifying doing nothing without ever actually counselling that position"

Brilliantly put. A scoffer is a coward. A denier is not.

A climate change skeptic willing to be open about their skepticism, in the sense that they take responsibility for a logical connection to a policy commitment in which we do nothing - put their money where their mouth is (so to speak). Those who argue climate change is not real, and connect to the conclusion that we do nothing - or wait to take real action - are being intellectually honest. I think they're dead wrong, and don't understand the science, but they're honest. They put their stake in the ground, and take responsibility for their position - "do nothing" they say, "it's not real."

But those who are happy to throw mud on the science - but never admit that climate change is not real, or that we should not act - are effectively dishonest. Holding the science to a level of certainty normally reserved for mathematical proofs, while not publicly advocating that we actually do nothing, is having your cake and eating it too. When the poop hits the fan, they ensure they hold a safety card that says "I never actually said it wasn't real!"

The 'scoffer' holds a cowardly position. Throwing darts is easy. Grown-ups needs to take responsibility for an actual decision - do we act, or don't we?