Friday Five: August 29, 2014

Our driving mantra in everything we do should be quality of life. If we improve quality of life, we will actually reduce population, decrease stress on resources, and avoid environmental catastrophe. Win/win/win/....
How can we stop the world from having too many babies? Feed more people
"We can make the pie bigger through scientific advances — increasing farm yields and finding more efficient sources of energy. We can reduce the number of forks with family-planning programs, providing access to contraception and giving women more power over their bodies and finances. We can promote better table manners, that is, more equitable sharing, through, well, either more government or less. 'The "better manners" school calls for freer markets or socialism (depending on taste),' Cohen writes."

The plastic bag is actually a marvel of design. It easily carries far more than it's weight, and stores easily. Trouble is, we had a couple other "marvels of design" in the past: asbestos, lead in paint and gasoline...sometimes the elegant solution masks the dangers. I am sure the asbestos industry was not happy when it was banned, but we are the better for it.
Banning the plastic bag shouldn't be this hard
"The opponents of the bill — mainly, bag makers — have said it would be a job killer, even though the legislation includes $2 million to help manufacturers transition to making thicker, reusable plastic bags ... A third of Californians, including shoppers in the city of Los Angeles, live in communities that have eliminated single-use plastic bags, and there has been little blowback to the bans."

It's really simple folks: do nothing, and if we were right - we are doomed...do something, and if we were wrong we get cleaner air, more reliable energy, and better quality of life. It's not that hard.
U.N. draft report lists unchecked emissions' risks
"The new report found that it was still technically possible to limit global warming to an internationally agreed upper bound of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level. But continued political delays for another decade or two will make that unachievable without severe economic disruption, the report said."

Should I be scared when a bank agrees with me? Maybe they've been reading my blog.
UBS analysts: 'Large-scale power stations could be on path to extinction'
"UBS contends that centralized fossil-fuel generation will become “extinct” -- and that it will happen a lot sooner than most people realize.
The bank predicts that a significant number of large-scale centralized plants could be gone within a decade. 'Not all of them will have disappeared by 2025, but we would be bold enough to say that most of those plants retiring in the future will not be replaced.'"

You read right....MINNESOTA!
Power surge in Minnesota's solar industry
"The year-old solar array in Slayton, Minn., the size of eight football fields, could soon lose its mantle as Minnesota’s largest. Its output is 2 megawatts, or 2 million watts. Now, projects five times that size are planned. One project proposed by Geronimo Energy in Chisago County is rated at 50 megawatts, enough to power about 6,000 homes and an output equivalent to a small natural gas power plant. Minneapolis-based Xcel is considering several 'utility-scale' projects whose size offers economies of scale. 'The prices appear to be competitive,' said Dave Sparby, Xcel’s chief executive for the Minnesota region."

Happy Friday!

David Brewster/Star Tribune

What if everything you thought you knew were not exactly true?

"Conventional wisdom" in the utility-scale renewable energy world says that we can never reach a high penetration of renewable sources of electricity generation because of the intermittency of wind and solar. Also, based upon assumptions of traditional transportation analysts, we will be limited in the number of electric cars that we can plug into the grid because of the significant increase in infrastructure that will have to be added because these vehicles will all tend to plug in at precisely the time we experience the peak electricity demand (after work on summer evenings). Because of this, we have had to temper our goals of increased use of non-damaging energy sources; if the grid cannot handle them, and we need to invest in much more battery storage and upgrades to transformers and transmission lines, it will be a long time before we reach even modest goals.

Thankfully, I have stumbled back into podcast listening, and have reconnected with the work of Steven Lacey who now hosts the Energy Gang podcast at GreenTech Media. I originally found Steven's work when he hosted the This Week in Renewable Energy podcast, and I find the work that he does provides the best balance of what's ahead and what's possible. In just the few weeks I have been listening, I have come across information that takes down the assumptions about interconnecting electric vehicles and renewable sources to the grid...and it's all for the better.

Electric vehicles and the 1950s version of the average American's day

Thanks to some research by Pecan Street Research Institute out of Austin, we know that EV charging habits would not be quite so deleterious to our grid infrastructure as originally thought. Even ignoring for a moment the opportunity available in using energy efficiency to create capacity for new load, the habits used to predict the dire circumstance no longer exist on a grand scale. The load spike assumption relies on a model that predicts people work 9 to 5, and drive home to immediately plug in the car that they have driven to work. Over the past forty years, we have moved to a much less reliable model of employment. Some people work from home, many use alternative transportation, and still others will follow price signals and plug in when it costs less. All of these factors and other contributed to the result that EV charging nowhere near approached the models predicted; that means good news for widespread EV adoption. This will contribute to opportunity related to the next misconception.

A high penetration of renewables may have equal or lower intermittency to conventional fuels...even without storage

Economic estimate of the cost to integrate renewables have almost always added the "gotcha" cost of adding energy storage in order to deal with intermittency. Work at the Rocky Mountain Institute, as well as real-world data from Germany, has shown that when taking into account the variability of loads - and when those loads appear - that the higher the penetration of renewables, the more the grid acts like the current grid. Non-renewable thermal plants already have expected downtime rates of 10-15%, and their failure is much less predictable than solar or wind plants. The existing grid management strategies to deal with that intermittency can carry over to the renewable intermittency without a loss in reliability. Add into that the opportunity presented by the storage capacity of say, 100,000,000 electric vehicle batteries, and we have - at worst - the same reliability with significantly lower environmental impact.

In order to achieve widespread adoption of both of these sets of technologies, we will need to make significant improvements to our grid. It will need to become smarter, more reliable, and better and communicating with the end user. All of that improvement needs to happen anyway as our grid in many eras exceeds the average age of the population. These targeted improvements are necessary regardless of the energy source, so renewables and EV offer no additional requirements. Also, if we move toward more distributed renewables and deeper dives into energy efficiency, we will need to spend less and less on the upgrading of the utility-scale power lines. If planned out, this means we could actually achieve this transition to renewables for much less than expected. Amory Lovins points out during his visit with the Energy Gang that with no new technology adoption and no new policy, a transition to an almost entirely renewable electricity generating grid would SAVE us $5 trillion over the next 35 years.

I know we can do it faster...and that was before I found out how wrong some of my assumptions were.

Flashes: August 27, 2014

Not the cute and cuddly garbage patches I remember from my childhood.

Pacific garbage patch

Atlantic garbage patch

Indian garbage patch

Some days I wish I would not want to know things like this.

Enjoy the journey

Must failure be the only learning experience?

“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
― Otto von Bismarck

A relatively short story appeared in the LA Times this week following the magnitude 6.0 earthquake that rocked Northern California this past weekend. It has two items of note in it: First, that several property owners in Napa still had not completed retrofit work to improve the resiliency of their buildings in the event of an earthquake (missing a 2009 deadline), and second, that it took the city government until 2006 to pass an ordinance about this. What remains uninteresting, because it is so expected, is that the government did not have the resources to enforce the requirement, and that property owners ignored it.

As a civilization, and maybe even a species, it takes acts of great catastrophe to move us to action, even in the face of the most common sense issues. In Chicago, we needed young people to die before the City would establish and enforce structural standards for attached porches. It took an otherwise relatively easy-to-contain fire in a high-rise building that did not have sprinklers to finally push the City and State to end the grandfathering of buildings and force all high-rise building owners to install sprinklers. The city of West, Texas experienced tragedy and death when a poorly-regulated fertilizer factory exploded...with the double impact that zoning officials had allowed a school, a nursing home, and a 50-unit apartment building to sit adjacent to the factory.

We do incredibly stupid things.

Even though we know smoking is horrible for our health, almost four decades after getting confirmation from health professionals, and three decades after finding out those who sold them to us knew it. It often takes a heart attack before a person considers the necessary life-altering changes to remain healthy (and even then, it does not always work). Even when we completely understand the risks, and know something can harm or kill us, we still do not always make the right choice...heaven help us when we either do not have the facts or ignore them.

We have seen macro and micro-scale incidents over the last decade that should bring us to put an as-immediate-as-possible end to the use of fossil fuels. From the Deepwater Horizons oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the increasing frequency of heavy-oil-laden railcar crashes to the withdrawal of water for bottling from drought-plagued areas to the increasingly costly weather events linked to the changing climate...do we really need more or greater catastrophe to convince us that we need a complete change in our relationship with energy? Especially when we have the knowledge, capacity, and even the economic ability to make these changes happen, there really is no excuse.

Except of course, that we are human.

A perverse incentive? The economics of repair or replace.

UPDATE 4:05 p.m. 8/25/2014: In a Tweet publicizing this article, I included Whirlpool in hopes of drawing their attention to the opportunity in the "service economy" as opposed to the "extractive economy" - something with which I am sure they are aware, but it always helps to prod. I should have expected what I received, which was an excellent customer service response looking to help with my issue. It prompted me to note that the issues I am having are not with the quality of this specific product, the customer service of Whirlpool, or even the desire of Whirlpool to deliver a high quality product to customers so that they will get good, repeat business. Whirlpool, like other manufacturers, has to do what they can to survive in the current economic climate. I wish I knew the immediate answer to how they can make the shift...if I did, I would certainly be selling it to them and their competitors. I just want to make clear that the following is a call to question the value of our economy, not at all questioning the value of this manufacturer or their product.


We have reached a bit of a crossroads with our washing machine. It is about 6 years old...well within what I would consider to be a "normal" life, and it needs what Whirlpool considers to be a major repair. The control board that turns all the myriad user entries into the customized washer cycles, well, it has crapped out on us (to use the technical term). Not as catastrophic, the drain pump has developed a leak. The factory-authorized repair service will replace both for the tidy sum of $850.  The interesting thing is...

A new comparable washer would cost about $800 from a Whirlpool authorized dealer.

This puts me in a quandary as a person who wants to make the most environmentally conscious decision. The labor aside (approximately $200 of the $850), there is no way that two parts of a device that retails at $1,000 or less cost anywhere near $650 to make. This means that Whirlpool has one of two reasons to do this:

1.  They make the bulk of their money on new product sales and make it financially unbearable to make the decision to repair, or
2.  They want their name associated only with high-quality products. Since this model does not provide the best service, they want to get it back, repurpose the parts, and get a new model in the hands of an existing customer.

I would love to believe that the latter were the answer, but given that the service technician who came out did not push that on us, nor did they make an offer that would dissuade me from considering another brand, I am guessing that the manufacturer only makes money when they can sell a new product from extracted resources...not by providing a service.

That is at the heart of what is wrong with the current economy.

We have so many ways to extract materials, turn them into something of value and then put them to use over long periods of time....but instead, we find the fastest way to put them in the ground and sell another bulk of materials to perform the same service. This "extractive economy" as we know it exists on the shaky foundation that a planet of 7 to 9 billion people, all demanding a high quality of life with the capital we currently use to provide it, will have enough resources to deliver all these goods. We know that for a large portion of our economy, this cannot happen.

The smarter move would be for manufacturers to move from the extractive economy to the service economy. Whirlpool would sell me the service of clothes cleaning - including water and any necessary detergents - for a monthly price (in this case, for something that should last 10 years that they would prefer to sell to me today at $800...let's say $144 per year or $12 per month). In this great internet of things, they could use communication technology to see the washer performance over time, and would see the need for repair to keep it performing as they have contracted to do. Additionally, if they maximized profit based upon how little it cost to maintain, they would likely build a more lasting product in the first place. If the device did need replacement, they would do it within the same fee. When given the responsibility to determine whether to repair or replace to deliver the same service, they would definitely use the method that used the fewest resources and least amount of labor. They would also have full responsibility for the used equipment, and would maximize the reuse of materials and minimize those materials that get wasted.

This "cradle-to-cradle" concept of manufacturing comes from the work of William McDonough, Michael Braungar, and others. It already works in the software market where we have seen the shift from the purchasing of a pack of CDs with pre-loaded software to web-based platforms where we purchase the service the software provides for a regular fee. AT&T recently moved to this format for cell phones where one can upgrade at any time as long as they keep making monthly payments. 

In the ideal market, these manufacturers would enter into the agreements with local energy and water utilities, who would collect the total fees for the services of all appliances from the customers, including the cost of consumables such as energy and water. This would give the customer one place to pay, and would add the further incentive to the utility to minimize the energy use for the level of service provided. In this case, utilities would still get revenue to help maintain infrastructure, and they could make the appliance repair marketplace more efficient by sharing resources across brands and services.

However we tackle this, we need to move away from these incentives to extract as quickly as possible...and I would love it if you could make this happen by Wednesday before I have to make my decision.

Friday Five: August 22, 2014

There are times when corporations do attempt to do the "right thing" even if that means adding costs. Note, that the only thing that drives this is consumer demand. When facing a threat of extinction, a company will do what it has to in order to survive. That process, however, takes decades, and not every issue has that long.
Nestle imposes animal welfare standards for suppliers
"'We know that our consumers care about the welfare of farm animals and we, as a company, are committed to ensuring the highest possible levels of farm animal welfare across our global supply chain,' said Benjamin Ware, manager of responsible sourcing for Nestle.
The commitment by the world's largest food and beverage company could potentially ripple across the industry and force smaller firms to adhere to the same practices, animal advocates said."

More often, companies will do whatever is most expedient to achieve or increase profitability (note: that is not a disparaging remark, for in our society and economy, that is precisely all we currently as of business, and all they are good at doing), regardless of the environmental impact. Only when the purchasing power of those affected reaches a critical mass will the companies act...or when something large enough to affect its business acts (hint: that's government).
Frackers are sending sludge to the Mitten State
"Now, the radioactive sludge that was being turned away by Pennsylvania was on its way to Michigan, home to 84 percent of the country’s aboveground freshwater supply. LuAnne Kozma began to do some digging. She had begun studying up on and organizing against Michigan’s nascent fracking boom two years ago, after hearing ominous stories from family in New Jersey. This was a new wrinkle."

Too often, governments require a catastrophe in order to see the need for action. Even then, as this case exemplifies, many favor taxpayer-funded solutions for the mistakes of the shareholders and managers. Letting companies off the hook for their mismanagement - and frankly, their negligent endangerment of people - is something we would never allow in treating an individual person who jeopardized the life of another. We should not tolerate it of companies.
NC lawmakers pass coal ash legislation; adjourn after very long short session
"Rep. Paul Luebke argued that state leaders needed to say, loud and clear, that Duke and its shareholders – not its customers – should at least pay to clean the highest-risk sites by removing the ash to a lined landfill, by using it in certain construction projects or by installing a liner beneath the ash.
“If they’re high risk now, it means for a long time they were risky to the public. For a long time the public was hurt by contamination in groundwater,” the Durham Democrat said on the chamber floor.
In response, Rep. Mike Hager, Republican majority whip, pointed out that the N.C. Utilities Commission would handle any request for a rate increase, with opportunity for the public to have its say."

One of the more broken features of the current utility model (especially in states where utilities still own electricity generating or energy producing assets) is that these monopolies have been allowed to assume that any cost associated with a current asset can be passed onto their rate payers (citizens who have no choice but to pay them or do without power). Kudos to OPU for demanding that the utility consider all alternative investments to the status quo...both to protect rate payers and public health.
Oregon Public Utilities Commission increases scrutiny on Pacific Power's coal plants
"In 2012, the Oregon PUC disallowed $17 million dollars that PacifiCorp was seeking from its customers for expensive retrofits on its aging coal plants without first fully vetting the alternatives. During the deliberations on their 2013 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) they were warned by the commission that they were headed for a 'trainwreck of a rate case' if they continued to invest heavily in out-of-state coal plants without first presenting their plans to the PUC for proper analysis. In July of this year, the PUC refused to acknowledge Pacific Power’s expenditures at two units at the Jim Bridger coal plant in Wyoming and one unit at the Hunter plant in Utah, a strong signal that the company will have a difficult time recouping those expenses, protecting Oregon customers from higher rates."

The great thing about analyzing the German governments three-year plan for energy transition, and debating some of its many shortcomings is...THEY HAVE A PLAN!!!!
There's a reason that countries like Germany and China will fly past the US economically if we do not act soon...they recognize the impact that energy has on their economy, and Germany specifically is doing something about it. I would LOVE to be debating the shortcomings of US energy policy....but we do not have one, so I cannot.
German government’s three-year Energiewende plan
"Germany could easily do more, as could the EU. Brussels repeatedly calls for greater cross-border power trading, but where is the call for EU transport policy? I can’t take a night train, say, from Frankfurt to Rome or Madrid. Trains continue to be stuck in national systems, and no one is complaining. Instead, Switzerland is the driver behind overnight trains with its City Night Line, but it has been reducing the number of connections in recent years, not increasing them.
So yes, the chart above does have a wide scope. But it is not exhaustive. There is still a lot of room for improvement."

Happy Friday!

Going back to schools that teach

Today is back to school day in our house, and among all the normal activities...finishing summer reading, making sure uniforms fit, figuring out which lunch table to sit at...it's a good time to consider the importance of school buildings to our community, and ways that we can make them even more important.

In many communities, schools already hum from early in the morning until late in the evening. Students go to class, of course, but community groups use facilities for meetings, local youth groups maximize the use of athletic and fine arts facilities when the school does not need them, and in extreme circumstances, schools provide shelter to those displaced from their homes. Schools provide an excellent foundation for sustainable communities, and we have many ways to make them even more so.

• Preserve schools located in community centers. For the past couple of decades, many communities have pushed their schools to the edge of their community because of a combination of the low cost for the land and the larger footprint that modern schools take up. This removes the ability for students to walk or bike to school, as well as losing the embodied energy of the existing school buildings.
• Use the buying power of the school to encourage the purchasing of local, healthy food options. This supports local food systems that provide community resilience, and directly benefits the health and learning opportunities of the students.
• Leverage the long-term position of the school to enter into long-term agreements for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Utility-scale renewable energy provides environmental benefits, but local, community-based systems provide the added benefit of a self-sufficiency that helps in emergency situations. As an added benefit, schools tend to be out of session during the times of highest system performance, meaning that they can export the additional energy to local homes.
• Manage materials in such a way as to minimize how much we dispose of in landfill. Schools use many consumable materials, and have a large, often passionate workforce to help collect and manage materials.
• Create a generation of sustainability natives. Just as children born over the last 20 years are digital natives that have never known a world without computers, students today will never live in a world without the impacts of climate change. These students can then bring what they learn into the community to make life better for all.

One in five people spend some part of their day in a school. The lessons we learn there permeate to all aspects of our life. In order to make these school buildings as useful to our communities as possible, we all need to advocate and support efforts to reduce or eliminate their negative impact on the environment and make them even more self-sufficient.

The (dangerous) fracking Ponzii scheme

Product manufacturers know all to well one of the primary rules of the marketplace: incumbents cede market share only when something costs less or has a greater "cool factor". That is why the new competitor to my favorite brand of juice drink cost $0.30 less, or why when Apple asked me to spend $400 on something that comes free with my cell contract, it has to do all this "extra stuff". Over the long haul, these new entrants to the marketplace have to raise prices or cut back on product in order to remain competitive, but their investors will tolerate losing money for a couple of years if the long-term viability of the product will lead to profits and return on investment down the road.

Such is the state we now find ourselves in the market for natural gas in the United States. For the better part of the past decade, we have enjoyed historically low prices for natural gas fueled by a huge expansion of supply from hydraulic fracturing (fracking), notably in Northeast, the Southern Plains, and the West. Under normal circumstances, companies would limit how much they distribute of these resources to ensure long-term production and viability. However, when this technology started to produce, the market had three competitors that could scuttle any long-term adoption:

Cheap electricity from coal and nuclear.

Renewable energy technologies.

Energy efficiency. 

In order to compete, and win, natural gas had to drop prices in order to create a challenging market for coal/nuclear, stave off investment in renewables, if possible, and keep demand as high as possible. And that they did: From 2006 to 2012, the price of natural gas dropped by 75%, with a number of ramifications.

US electricity generation by source (EIA)

The timing of this drop could not have been better in the electricity marketplace where natural gas trailed coal and struggled to top nuclear. Coal plants that had avoided the necessary investments needed to comply with decades' old regulations were reaching the point where they had to upgrade. A large portion of the nuclear fleet was entering the timeframe where they needed to re-permit, and therefore make investments into the facilities. In order to justify these investments, the industry needed certainty about the level of energy prices they would receive. A glut of natural gas in the marketplace changed the economics, and coupled with a new ability for the EPA to regulate carbon emissions and a tragedy in Japan at Fukishima, coal and nuclear plants have started closing. Meanwhile, natural gas plants continue to come online. As a result, the share of electricity generated in the US from coal has dropped from 50% to about 35% over the past 15 years, while natural gas has doubled its position from 15% to 30%. Nuclear, after holding steady for the better part of the last two decades has started to decline.

Meanwhile, the US energy consumption per capita - which sits at twice that of nearly all of the developed world - that saw a significant downtick when the Great Recession hit in 2008, has now started to rebound. Instead of taking advantage of ridiculously low rates of borrowing to establish a solid foundation of low energy use on which we could rebuild our economy, we as a nation chose to cut back on investment and instead, put our stock in a hope that for the next two decades, prices for energy would remain low. Science and economics tell us that we are in for a rude awakening.

The fracking industry has sold the US that we have a large amount of extractable resource sitting under the US, that we can sustain this production for decades to come, and that natural gas does not harm the environment anywhere near as much as coal. All of these claims are starting to unravel. A recent EIA report drastically dropped the projected resources available in the Monterey shale deposit by 96%. Although directly related to the oil from fracking and not natural gas, this calls into question the estimates of economically attainable resources in other shale deposits. Along those lines, for the better part of the last five years, the industry itself has questioned the long-term economic viability of fracking. Fracking wells drop off production significantly in just two years, necessitating that industry build more and more wells to justify pipeline development and meet production goals. Meanwhile, the mantle of environmental benign-ness that the fracking industry touted against a small number of detractors ten years ago has crumbled as more and more research suggests that the environmental benefits lag while more and more issues result from the whole process of extracting fossil fuels from rock formations.

In order for the industry to continue its current rate of market penetration, it must continue the myth of environmental benefit, invest in more and more wells to get that boon of production from the first year, and build more infrastructure around natural gas so that high enough demand exists when prices will inevitably go up. That is the scheme on which investors have been sold in order to make it work: Keep investing in new wells now, even though they will not produce, because we can keep America hooked on gas. 

The problem is, it's a lose-lose for the country.

If prices do not go up, then investors will lose money and back out in droves, drastically cutting supply and increasing the cost to the average American. If natural gas gains market dominance, then prices will do up to compete with larger profits to be gained from exports, and increase the cost to the average American.

The window is closing. Our last great hope is to reduce our dependence on all forms of energy, but especially fossil fuels, and increase the penetration of renewable energy into our electricity market. If we do that, we drop demand drastically, and introduce energy sources with much lower operating costs into the marketplace. These create downward pressure on prices, and provide us a measure of resiliency against future prices shocks.

If we do not make the necessary changes...well, we all know what happens to the people left standing when the pyramid scheme collapses.