However, we do not live in an ideal world, and we need to do something productive until we get there.  There are still many problems with CCS, including expense and lack of storage locations large enough.  Despite the fact that renewable technologies are the best choice for new development, it will be a very long time until there will be enough production or the necessary infrastructure changes will be in place to support it.  There are so many hurdles to wide scale renewable adoption, it would be in our best interest to invest in parallel efforts to reduce the impact of current technologies, even if only temporary.

The belief of many is that coal fired power plants will continue to be a widely used energy source until the renewable alternatives are cheaper per kilowatt hour overall.  My personal belief is that it will take decades for renewable energy to be cheaper than coal on its own.  However, subsidy of renewable energy technologies, coupled with legislation requiring coal companies cover the external costs to society of burning coal, then there may be cost parity sooner.  Even if production became cheaper than coal tomorrow, the necessary changes to the grid would take years to implement, not to mention the time it would take to build the generation capacity necessary to meet current demand.

Coal has so many problems, but the sad fact is that we are stuck with it for the foreseeable future.  While CCS is only a transition technology, embracing its development is not the same thing as abandoning the belief that coal is extremely bad.  Some may say that adoption of CCS may lead to the use of coal for longer, but that’s a separate discussion.

UCLA has genetically engineered bacteria to eat CO2 and turn it into isobutanol, taking energy from sun light.  Isobutanol cannot readily be used in gas tanks yet, but the process of turning CO2 directly into a hydrocarbon can be much cheaper and easier than technologies like algae or cellulose into biofuel because there are no expensive intermediate steps.

If this technology can be *cheaply* scaled to high volumes and converted to something conventional engines can use, then I would personally suspect to see it displace a lot of other biofuels.  Hopefully we’ll find out soon.

This editorial on Climate Change runs in 56 Papers Worldwide, but Only 2 in the US – and with Key Edits.

via Reddit.com

“Clean Coal” is still not clean.  Even when everything is scrubbed from the air, the pollutants have to go somewhere.  Pollutants from coal fired power plants usually get put in pools, which eventually leak and get into the waterway.  Repeat after me, “there is no such thing as clean coal.”

The Commerce Department has started releasing smart grid standards, but we’re still waiting for the NIST and FERC to weigh in.  They both see the importance of changes to the grid, and final comments are expected by the end of the year.

In more than one place in the green edition, resorts, restaurants, and other things were referred to as “tree hugging.”  I have the same complaint about TreeHugger.com, which I believe to be the best gree site on the web (if you think something is better, please post it in the comments, I’d like to read it too).  The problem with “tree hugging” and that concept was that it was used as a derrogatory term for so long.  The baby boomer generation, which is has been one of the most wasteful in history (references), interprets a tree hugger as a “dirty hippie.”

By using “tree hugger” in articles targeted to the masses, the authors alienate the readers.  Usage of the phrase immediately dissociates the reader because the message to the reader becomes something <i>they</i> are doing, not something <i>you</i> should be doing.  What makes the problem worse in the case of Continental is their default audience.  Continental’s hubs are in Newark (major New York City entry point), Houston (worst air quality and high energy sector concentration), and Cleveland (midwest rust belt and coal consumers).  While hubs are often just layovers for a lot of consumers, many professionals try to take direct flights, and when the end points are locations with industries and demographics unfriendly to the green movement, any messaging that causes the readers to further dissociate themselves is counterproductive.

What really makes this bad is the fact that baby boomers are currently in power, in both industry and politics.  Advocating green policies and practices to this demographic is difficult enough, and starting off by putting a negative image in the mind of decision makers is a bad idea.

With the target audience for sites like TreeHugger.com, the readers are already convinced of the merits of the green movement.  What we need to do is convince the ones that are actually making the decisions that can change both policy and industry investment.  The image needed to change minds is one of wise investment and the long term payoff.  Green for the sake of green alone will not convince those that have not already drank the kool-aid.

“The bacteria Wall is studying are bio-corrosives and can change the solubility of heavy metals. They can take uranium and convert it to uraninite, a nearly insoluble substance that will sink to the bottom of a lake or stream. Wall is looking into the bacteria’s water cleansing ability and how long the changed material would remain inert.”

If this becomes feasible on a large scale, nuclear waste cleanup may have just gotten easier.  It will be a huge step in reducing some of the drawbacks of nuclear power.  With fewer drawbacks, there should also be fewer objections, and it will become a more viable option for replacing coal as the main source of power in the US.  While this will not eliminate it completely, the bacterial processed described in the article could drastically reduce the radioactivity in an environment that either stores or is affected by nuclear waste.

In a letter issued last week, the Environmental Protection Agency “moved toward revoking the largest mountaintop-removal permit in West Virginia history.” Citing “clear evidence” of likely damage, the EPA has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to “suspend, revoke or modify” the permit it granted in 2007 to Arch Coal to dig a 2,278-acre coal stripmine and fill six valleys and 43,000 linear feet of streams with the toxic debris.

The headline “Solar Efficiency Record Beat” may become common, as each new record is only a small improvement over the last.  The new leader only beat the old by .3%, with 43% of sunlight converted to electricity.  For the uninitiated, solar efficiency matters because it allows for greater power output per given area of a solar panel.  While there is already high enough efficiency to power the world’s energy needs with solar, area still matters.

Original Image Source Unknown (link to where I got it may not be original creator)

Area used for solar panels still matters for a few reasons.  Residential and commercial customers still have finite amounts of space to place panels.  While it would be possible for large intiatives to build solar power installations on a mass scale, progress has been slow because of high up front costs.  Higher efficiency leads to lower up front cost for a few reasons.  The first is that in most cases, higher efficiency means lower cost of materials (not always, but generally).  The second is that labor is a large percentage of installation costs, and the smaller number of panels required to produce the same output means less labor.

In many cases, home or business owners will install panels on all available area, so total labor costs will not be reduced, but cost per kilowatt goes down.  Ultimately, the cost per kilowatt hour produced is what drives adoption of a technology.  As efficiency and manufacturing processes improve, costs go down.  When solar and renewable energy become cheaper per kilowatt hour than coal, expect a huge shift in the market.

]]> http://econuz.com/2009/08/29/video-electric-car-by-they-might-be-giants/feed/ 0 http://econuz.com/2009/08/29/video-electric-car-by-they-might-be-giants/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/econuz/~3/aOiI60EeSl4/ http://econuz.com/2009/08/28/re-post-uk-zoo-explores-vertical-farming/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:40:21 +0000 brett http://econuz.com/?p=288 http://greenbiz.com/blog/2009/08/17/uk-zoo-explores-vertical-farming-new-angle-animal-feed

I’ve said it in a few previous posts, I think vertical farming will become important.  I don’t think that we will run out of land, but vertical farms will allow for better controlled conditions and higher yields per acre, as well as make better use of resources by controlling inputs and outputs.  In addition, vertical farms will allow for crops to be grown closer to population centers, reducing food miles.

Since I’d written about Science Commons in a previous post about the importance of sharing research, I thought it was worthy of a quick follow up.

Apparently the Coal Industry could not find anyone that would be willing to pose for a photo to support the coal cause.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=39944&src=eorss-iotd

The image shows the outline of the Aral sea in 1960 superimposed on the current picture.

“Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth-largest lake. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union began a massive irrigation project in what are now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, diverting water from the rivers that feed the Aral Sea to irrigate farmland. As its water levels dropped, the lake began splitting into smaller pieces: the Northern (Small) Aral Sea and the Southern (Large) Aral Sea. The Southern Aral Sea further split into eastern and western lobes. The Earth Observatory’s World of Change: Evaporation of the Aral Sea feature tracks this process over the past decade.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/my_global_warming_epiphany.html

I’ve given up on trying to explain things myself, and always end up referring them to what I feel is the best comprehensive list of evidence for man made climate change:

http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/

If you’re faced with the challenge of explaining/arguing any of the points, the series of posts on Grist is definitely a big help.

One article with good coverage of some of these issues is in a recent Scientific American Earth 3.0.  The article discusses Malthusian limits, where population growth outpace the growth in agriculture.  Since the Industrial Revolution, where production of all types increased, world population has exploded.  Most people are aware of issues caused by increased energy consumption, like climate change.  Climate change can have various effects on agricultural output, changing weather patterns make areas previously suitable to grow crops completely desolate.  Many people are also aware of fresh water issues, especially if you live somewhere like Australia.  Fewer people are aware that peak phosphorus could limit fertilizer production, severely reducing agricultural output.

There is not a question of if these issues will limit the growth of the population, it is a matter of when they will limit growth.  Whether population control is mandated and enforced or not, environmental factors will limit the population.  If sustainable practices are adopted, and resources are used wisely, maybe we can avoid another Malthusian catastrophe.

A company called EFuel has released two waste to ethanol products meant for home use.  The MicroFuel, meant for use in cars that can run on gas-ethanol mixes, and the GridBuster for electricity generation, both take liquid organic waste and convert it to ethanol.  Unfortunately, the product is limited to liquid waste, like beer, wine, or liquid with waste sugar.  It does work with “cellulosic material” and algae, but may require “additional processing outside of the MicroFueler.”  Translation, you need to process it first.

The products were first launched for industrial customers, like brewers and vineyards with large amounts of liquid waste, high in sugar content.  Homes are not likely to have enough liquid waste to make full use of the products, but it’s a step towards energy independence and clean power generation.

http://www.withouthotair.com/

I have not read it yet, but it appears to be getting decent reviews on Amazon.  I’ll write my own review if I get a chance to read it, but I thought I’d tell everyone about the free book.

American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, US Airways, Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and UPS Airlines have signed deals to use 1.5 Million gallons per year of biodiesel from plant waste.  The deal was with Rentech Inc, for ground service at LA International Airport (LAX).

Motivations for deals like this not only include environmental benefits, but also fuel price increase hedges.  Record losses and bankruptcies in the airline industry have been in part due to high oil prices, and price fluctuation.  In some cases, airlines have lost money because of fuel price hedging, rather than just high prices. If airlines using biofuels can prevent $390MM losses, like Delta Airlines in Q2 09, then going green can also be better for the bottom line.