Friday Five: September 26, 2014

As over half a million people made their voices heard last Sunday, it is disheartening to know that it likely will have a minimal impact on the politics...and it desperately needs to have a significant impact on the politics. 
Why the (awesome) climate march won't change American politics
"The march slogan was, “to change everything, we need everyone,” which is telling, because it won’t change everything, because it didn’t include everyone. Specifically, it won’t change American politics because it didn’t include conservatives."

The politics are so difficult, not only for the demographic reasons noted above, but also because of how much those in control of the market stand to lose...enough to make it worth it to them to threaten the lives of everyone on the planet.
The new Abolitionism
"The last time in American history that some powerful set of interests relinquished its claim on $10 trillion of wealth was in 1865—and then only after four years and more than 600,000 lives lost in the bloodiest, most horrific war we’ve ever fought."

Even those who distribute the energy have much to lose, and without a political solution, they will continue to fight the expansion of renewable energy at a time when we desperately need their support.
Berkeley Lab report quantifies the financial impacts of customer-sited photovoltaics on electric utilities
"A core purpose of the study was to evaluate measures that could be pursued by utilities and regulators to reduce the financial impacts of distributed PV. The report considered a large number of such measures, including changes to utility rate design and ratemaking processes, mechanisms that allow utilities to recoup revenues lost due to distributed PV or to earn profits on distributed PV, and a variety of other strategies."

Because no matter what conventional industry may say, the substitution of one fossil fuel for another fossil fuel does not improve our chances of survival.
Natural gas is not a good climate solution, even without methane leakage
"The only case in which more abundant natural gas would take a bite out of emissions, according to our modeling, was with a renewable energy mandate. We looked at a case in which utilities were required to get a certain percentage of their electricity from renewables, rising year after year to reach 50 percent by 2050. In that case, the competition between natural gas and renewables would be minimized — so natural gas would compete primarily with coal, making cumulative emissions about 13 percent lower."

You know what does improve our chances of survival? Every one of these people...not only through their teaching, but also through their doing.
Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators (PIAEE) winners
"The Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators recognizes outstanding kindergarten through grade 12 teachers who employ innovative approaches to environmental education and use the environment as a context for learning for their students. Up to two teachers from each of EPA's 10 regions, from different states, will be selected to receive this award. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers this award to nationally honor, support and encourage educators who incorporate environmental education in their classrooms & teaching methods."

Happy Friday!

Adrees Latif/REUTERS

#TBT: Corporations are not people, but they might be drug lords

I live in Chicago, and we have come under national scrutiny for the high homicide rates that have continued in some of the areas of our city. Having lived here all my life, I know the city is much safer than it has ever been, but I also see that some areas continue to struggle with gang violence related largely to the trafficking of illegal drugs. In the same vein, we hear of the troubles in the Mexican border towns where drug cartels move their products. In both these cases, and other similar situations, we have people trying to live their daily lives under the specter of risk posed by the presences of businesses operating outside the law.

And then I read Tim Dickinson's brilliantly written but troubling account of the history behind Koch Industries and how they grew their wealth and turned it into a powerful platform from which to create more wealth and protect their interests. From everything within the article, it became abundantly clear that the only difference between the actions of the various businesses related to Koch Industries and the actions of the street gangs and cartels of the drug business....

Is that gang members go to jail or get killed when they kill people...the Kochs just get richer.

[NTSB] Photo of explosion that killed two teens in Texas in
 1996. The explosion was the result of a poorly maintained
pipeline

Reading the details of the piece - much of it garnered from the Koch's own words, details of court cases against them, whistle-blower reports, and as much information about a private company as can be garnered from FOIA requests to governments with which they deal - it becomes abundantly clear that the Kochs consider human life to have a finite value that gets figured into the equation of how to run their business. Unlike, say a person, who would lose their freedom, property, and any hope of continuing on in a normal existence, if the business practices of the Koch's cause someone to die (which they have) or shorten the lives of another (which they have) or cause irreparable harm to a community (which they have) it is simply a part of doing business. A person's life is only worth what they are likely to get in a lawsuit against the company. The value of a community is only worth what they might have to pay in fines for clean up. This kind of capital-centered capitalism follows the same thinking of the Capone operation and today's gangs.

Yet, we as a society celebrate people like the Kochs and (rightly) seek to imprison the drug gangs. We place this value on business "excellence" but only to the point where someone might end up holding a gun to our face. If our truck gets blown up because a pipeline leaked, that's an accident, even if the "accident" came from the deliberate negligence of a business leader. Because the decision that lead to the death was a business one, that somehow makes it ok in our book.

It is not ok.

We need to have much less tolerance than we do for people's lives being subject to their value on a balance sheet. At the turn of the 20th century, it was conservatives who understood that unbridled capitalism will devalue human life, the environment that supports that life, and the social structures that join us as people...all the things that give us high quality of life. It is no coincidence that once we understood that and put safeguards in place, we enjoyed the greatest growth in lifespan, quality of life, and social equity yet experienced in human civilization.

And then we blew it.

Today, and really since the 1970s, we have allowed morally bankrupt capitalists to tell us what society values. We have allowed them to control more of our economic capital, given them the keys to own our political system, and placed our lives in their hands by the choices we have made. We have - on the whole - accepted the line that business is always good and regulation always bad. Our political system has decided that money is speech, and those with more money get to say more, and that by virtue of their attainment of wealth, they have earned that privilege. We have been wrong, and we need to stop treating people like the Kochs as valued men of high achievement, and call them what they really are...

Criminals.

The outrage against violence in my city should be equal to the outrage we cast on men like the Kochs. Anyone who trades human life for their own gain should end up in prison and not on the cover of business magazines. Until we start holding the people within corporations to the standards we ask of people in general, we will never reach the just, equitable, and peaceful society that our Constitution holds as our nation's aspiration.

Those who operate both legally and morally in our country's economy should - and often do, at least as far as I see - have disdain for the actions of people like the Kochs. Regulation, when properly applied as it is most of the time, provides a transparent description of the marketplace that we the people regard as equitable and of value to us as a country. Requiring those who pipe flammable products across the country to maintain their infrastructure at the highest level of safety is not an onerous and superfluous requirement...it recognizes that selling something while killing people is wrong. Requiring that those who speculate in a commodities market have the capital on hand to back their gamble is not totalitarian domination, it is common sense that every casino in the country follows. Asking our business leaders to comport themselves with the same moral approach that we ask of every single member of our society is not an anti-business philosophy...

It is a pro-people philosophy.

We need our capitalism to be more person-centered and less profit-centered. The modern manner of executing capitalism has not found a manner for the system to value people, so we turn to regulation. With the market completely manipulatable by business, the consumer can usually only demand change in drastic circumstances...and even then only if an independent media draws attention to the matter, and government calls those responsible to the carpet, and almost always only after many people  have been killed. It is up to us whether or not this is acceptable. If you do not find it acceptable, then make noise...with what you purchase, with how you vote, with where you spend your time...in every conceivable way, make some noise.

Kudos to Tim Dickinson and Rolling Stone for putting the truth in print. I only wish I could shake the feeling that a large portion of our population will not read the piece and see it for how it gives a glimpse into the consequences of unbridled, morally corrupt capitalism, but will celebrate the Kochs for what they have done.

Many steps and many voices

Yesterday's People's Climate March in New York City succeeded in at least part of what it set out to do. Early estimates have the turnout at 310,000 people (and it could climb to 400,000 after final analysis) in NYC alone...not counting the dozens of sympathy marches taking place everywhere from England and Australia to Oklahoma City. Those who challenged the event to relevancy had their challenge met and exceeded. At least some of those who might have some say in the outcome...Bill de Blasio, Ban Ki-moon...attended, giving even more hope to those that attended.

AP/Jason DeCrow

Only time will tell if it made even the slightest bit of a difference.

In 1963, approximately 250,000 marched on Washington to demand  peaceful and political solution to the civil rights atrocities that institutionalized people of color as second class citizens in this country...the land of freedom and equality. Half a century later, despite achieving short-term political solutions, the dreams given voice that day still have yet to fully materialize. The voices of those opposed to ceding any economic or political power still have control, albeit much more subversively than they did fifty years ago.

In time, however, those voices will - quite literally - die out. It's hollow solace for those who still have to work twice as hard to achieve half as much, but their children will live to see an equal country.

On the issue of fossil fuels, the pollution it causes, and the impact on human life, we do not have that kind of time, and we face a similar, less subtle foe. A search of the hashtag #climatemarch yesterday in the hours that followed the event found both hopeful messages of those who attended or wished they did as well as a healthy mix of trolls* providing counter point to the issue of climate protection. Although we can casually brush off that kind of rhetoric as uncivilized, uneducated, or even irrelevant, one crucial point remains.

The opposition to acting on climate is real, well-funded, and poignant.

Among the schoolyard name calling and pictures of Nicholas Cage, one can find some valid criticism of the climate movement that we need to address if not directly, then at least obliquely. First and foremost, we need to get better at focusing on the issue at hand and not the hyperbolic predictions. Talking about the dangers of sea-level rise, then having to admit they will happen over a hundred years into the future blunts the argument. People believe in the innovative spirit, and trust that that spirit will solve a problem that long into the future. Our aims must focus on much more immediate threats.

Second, tying onto that thought, we need to exercise caution about how far we reach. The science surrounding drought and extreme storms has only just begun to investigate the role that greenhouse gas emissions play. To blame climate change for the California drought, Sandy, and the polar vortex makes for great headlines, but it smacks of the same pseudo-science that fills the counter arguments. Also, it sets up deniers to make similar claims when the US experiences one of the coldest winters on record. We have so many issues with immediate impact: The dangers of mining, the damage to countrysides and water resources, air pollution...we do not need to grasp opportunistically for every straw that comes our way.

Third, we need to get away from arguments that cost more. I personally know that morality tells us to prioritize the lives of people near fossil fuel extraction fields or thermal plants, or those who live in endangered island nations. But I also know that imposing morality on another creates confrontation not solutions. This gets especially true when every argument for solutions ends up recommending solutions that cost more than current options. We need to put our human ingenuity to work and create solutions that cost less. Economic analyses are starting to make the argument that a clean energy future will save us money...blunting any argument for including fossil fuels in any new energy plant. We need to focus on that future, and the dwindling availability of fossil fuels in a world with expanding population and increased development. (In fifty years - a time horizon that people can connect with since most of us expect to live that long, we could be almost out of fossil fuels. The reserves that industry themselves admit to being available, coupled with the current rate of increase in exploitable reserves, still does not match the rate of consumption we will experience over the next half-century.) That means increased prices and decreased quality of life unless we respond. That's a story that people can connect to as we have experienced several such shocks in the past decades.

Lastly, and yesterday's march rightly starts this discussion, we need to focus on the clean energy fight as one of innovation and equality. Amidst the recent public discussions of marriage equality, several conservative pundits noted that they heard a compelling argument on behalf of those seeking the right to marry, and no counter argument to the idea of free choice. We need to have the same focus in the fight on climate. Emissions of any sort provide an opportunity to make sure that prices for sources of energy include all costs associated with each source. If we frame the argument in terms of our communal desire for freedom and a fair market, clean energy wins each time. The more we focus on common themes, the larger a tent we create and the greater our chance of success.

In many ways, the climate march was the art of the possible. The economics favor systems that use less energy, and at every juncture over the past decade, when faced with a challenge to reduce energy use while preserving quality of life, we have succeeded (eg. cutting refrigerator energy use by more than half, increasing fuel efficiency in cars, improving the energy efficiency of buildings). We no longer need to act like a fringe movement nipping at the heels of industry. The growing industries are on our side, and all we need to do is remain consistent and the economics will continue to favor the cause of pollution reduction. If we keep clouding the issue with ideas that do not resonate, and even worse give fuel to opposition, we threaten all the hard work. The next steps forward need to be ones of community...solutions that work for all.

That even includes the trolls.


*trolling is an internet term for those who seek to create discord by playing devil's advocate and saying whatever they can to get a rise out of people.

Friday Five: September 19, 2014

This next week will be a telling one for the movement to stem the effects of climate change. Ahead of an international meeting in New York next week, environmental organizers have gone all in by collaborating with previously un-tapped partners to try and pull off the larges climate march in history. If they succeed, it could be a watershed moment for the movement, if they fail, it could spell the end. Or, it could just be another Sunday in NYC.
How to define success for the People's Climate March
"Organizers of the march have set themselves a high bar—two high bars, actually. First, they’ve proclaimed that this will be the biggest climate change demonstration yet. That means organizers have to turn out no fewer than 100,000 people—the estimated size of the Copenhagen march—or be judged a failure; a lower turnout would send the signal that the movement is waning rather than growing. Further, organizers have declared that the People’s Climate March will be “historic,” meaning it will be looked back on as a key moment in the climate struggle. This definition in turn requires that the March lead to more and better things down the road—that it be not merely one day of protest."

The numbers have been coming in, and it looks like somewhere between saving us 10% and costing us 5% is the range of net impact of addressing climate change on the economy. If you believe that eliminating fossil fuel emissions will do absolutely nothing, then it's a 5% add. If you believe that clean energy will eliminate most energy bills, improve human health, and increase property values, then it saves 10%. My best guess is probably not a 10% savings, but a measurable one.
Fixing climate change may add no costs, report says
"While the commission found that the requisite steps may make economic sense, that does not mean they will be politically easy, the report says. For instance, the group will recommend that countries eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels, which cost about $600 billion a year but are vigorously defended by vested interests.
It will urge nations to take a fresh look at the potential of renewable energy, whose costs are plummeting, and also recommend the adoption of initiatives to halt destruction of forests, use land more efficiently and limit wasteful urban sprawl, among many other steps."

As a bit of forewarning, the article does not deliver on the headline (which is rarely the author's fault), but it does raise particularly interesting issues relative to the conversation around almost every environmental issue...or for that matter, every economic issue. It paints an image of people on all sides who claim factual impartiality, but only from their decidedly isolated point of view.
How to talk about climate change so people will listen
"In the best of times, this problem—given its apocalyptic stakes, bewildering scale, and vast potential cost—would be difficult to resolve. But we are not in the best of times. We are in a time of legislative paralysis. In an important step, the Obama administration announced in June its decision to cut power-plant emissions 30 percent by 2030. Otherwise, this country has seen strikingly little political action on climate change, despite three decades of increasingly high-pitched chatter by scientists, activists, economists, pundits, and legislators."

Meanwhile, on a particularly practical front, consumer and environmental advocates in Illinois have teamed up to call for transparency on carbon emissions. Instead of pounding the table for widespread action, they ask just to know what is happening at each of Illinois' electric utilities.
CUB, EDF push for comprehensive smart grid metric on carbon emissions
"The greenhouse gas petition, filed by CUB and EDF Wednesday, is related to major power-grid upgrades, collectively called the "smart grid," that were approved by the Illinois General Assembly in 2011 and are now being launched by Commonwealth Edison and Ameren Illinois. The improvements, including new digital electric meters, have the potential to make Illinois' electricity system cleaner and less costly."

And while we stage protests, denigrate scientists, and do so from the comfort of our 99.999% reliably electrified homes, people in non-electrified parts of the world are showing us the truth about solar economics...solar is cheaper.
There's a place in the world that is fighting poverty with solar panels.
"He laughed. It’s much simpler than that, he said. 'I just wanted electricity.'"

Happy Friday!

Tim McDonnell/Climate Desk

What do we do when there are no villains?

I was lucky enough last night to see a new play written by a friend of mine (which I highly recommend you check out). One of the thoughts that stuck with me is how differently we respond to situations when we perceive someone as a villain. This has a particularly poignant application to the discourse over improving our quality of life in a sustainable future.

When discussing our use of resources and the resulting impact on the environment, the most common theme from those advocating a sustainable energy future centers around the evil corporations...especially those directly involved in fossil fuel extraction. Admittedly, the Koch brothers in particular make it easy to cast them as the devil, but in casting the net in such a fashion, we automatically give individuals - people - in these organizations no role in solutions or in the future.

On the other hand, business leaders create a picture in their mind about the environmental advocate as an uncompromising rabble rouser intent only on creating a communist state in which corporate leaders are put into the stocks for public humiliation. There are some who merit this designation, such as the former coworker who would stalk people in the bathroom and shame them for overusing water, but 99% of the environmental community loves a high quality of life and a freedom to pursue ones passions...they just want it with less damage to life.

The thought argument then goes, what happens if we stop treating the other as a villain? How would the opportunity change if we had some sort of "truth and reconciliation" associated with our interaction with the environment?

We have already seen how some of that might play out. As the cost of renewable energy has dropped significantly, we see both business and regulatory agencies choosing new renewables over expanding fossil fuels. Although initially a failed effort, we saw an attempt from BP a decade ago to move "beyond petroleum". With the vast financial resources at their disposal, today's fossil fuel giants have the best capacity to move the needle toward renewables faster than we can accomplish without them.

For environmentalists, seeing how these large, evil corporations also employ tens of thousands of people who need the security of that paycheck to have any sort of quality of life, we should look for opportunities to engage with those businesses instead of ostracizing them. We have seen large energy companies and utilities work successfully with organizations like NRDC and in Chicago, ELPC. We have also seen people realize that we share in the blame for the existence and strength of these industries, and try to rectify that through divesting in those companies that will not change. It is all too easy to place all the blame on another, but when we too have to change, we often find a better way to solve the problem.

Removing villainy from the equation would not solve the problem overnight, but it will do so faster than digging in for a long fight. While I advocate for working together, I do not advocate compromising on facts. Remaining beholden to fossil fuels will cost us more than a renewably-powered future, it will harm more lives, and it will jeopardize our existence. We have to come to terms on that truth part of the equation as well as agreeing to work together.

If we can, together, accept the truth and agree to work together, history has shown there is nothing we cannot accomplish.

Friday Five: July 4, 2014

For decades, we have been told that burning fuels was safe (proven wrong), that transporting fuels is safe (proven wrong), that mining was safe (proven wrong), and most recently, that fracking was totally safe...every year we get more and more evidence that it is not.
Study shows how drilling wastewater causes quakes
"Combined, those wells daily pour more than 5 million gallons of water a mile or two underground into rock formations, the study found. That buildup of fluid creates more pressure that 'has to go somewhere,' said study lead author Cornell University seismologist Katie Keranen.
Researchers originally figured the water diffused through underground rocks slowly. But instead, it is moving faster and farther and triggers quake fault lines that already were likely ready to move, she said."

We do know that mining, transporting, processing, and burning carbon causes significant cost to our health and our economy.  It is about time that we force industry to accurately project those costs when developing or renewing projects.
One judge’s smackdown of a Colorado coal mine could help fight carbon projects everywhere
"This kind of bold decision will ultimately get appealed, appealed again, and maybe overruled. It establishes a precedent, but whether it’s the kind of precedent other judges will believe in remains to be seen. For now, the big winner in this – other than the conservation groups that first filed the suit and the people who like to hike, graze, and shoot things in the Sunset Wilderness Area — is the legal concept of a social cost of carbon protocol itself. It’s already getting a lot more attention than something with that long and boring of a name can reasonably expect to get — and that’s a good sign."

Kudos to the Unitarians for taking steps to divest from fossil fuels, but retaining enough interest to be active shareholders.  Even better, their divestment will be better for their financial interests.
At Unitarian Universalist assembly, a vote to divest from fossil fuels
"About 2.9 percent of the UUA’s $175-million endowment is invested in Carbon Tracker 200 companies, according to information Walden forwarded from the UUA treasurer.
The fossil fuels divestment vote stems from a resolution brought by the group, Unitarian Universalists for Fossil Fuel Divestment and Sustainable Reinvestment, Walden said. The UUA 'has a long history of shareholder activism on a variety of issues, including environmental justice.'"

It is positively crazy that we treat seeds as a patentable product from which a small group of people can gain great wealth while the farmers who put all the work into the actual food production languish in poverty.  Even more striking is that these companies that patent often times do much less work than that for which they get credit.
Linux for Lettuce
"Most classical plant breeders will tell you that their work is inherently collaborative—the more people involved, the better. Baggett had used versions of another broccoli called Waltham, released by the University of Massachusetts in the 1950s, as part of the foundation for his original exserted-head lines. Hoping to advance its evolution by letting others work on it, he and Myers shared their germplasm (an industry term for seed) with breeders throughout the United States. One recipient was the broccoli division of Royal Sluis, a Dutch company that had a research farm in Salinas, California. Through the channels of corporate consolidation, that germplasm ended up with the world’s largest vegetable-seed company, Seminis, which in 2005 was bought by the world’s largest seed company, Monsanto. In 2011, Seminis was granted US Patent 8,030,549—“Broccoli adapted for ease of harvest”—whose basic identifying characteristic was an exserted head. More than a third of the original plant material behind the invention was germplasm that Baggett had shared in 1983."

In order to make great strides against the "wicked problems" that we face, we need every available brain on hand to innovate, communicate, and activate solutions.  For the entire scientific revolution and Enlightenment, we have pushed half of our population away from such endeavors, and it has been to our detriment.  It is time we changed that.
This great ad reveals all the ways we hold girls back
"This all comports with the research that shows that girls and women shy away from riskier endeavors—including majors where getting B's and C's are more likely to happen—than boys and men do. It's not just, or even mainly, about looks. It's about these other pressures on women that leave them little room to screw up. Especially since science, as a field, is about experimenting with things and learning to pick yourself up again and start over if your hypothesis fails. So kudos to Verizon and Makers for getting it right, and hopefully this will encourage further efforts to tackle the real reasons girls find their natural curiosity so frequently stifled while growing up."

Happy Friday (and Fourth)!

Carbon rules are coming...and they will be easy to meet

Today, the President Obama and the EPA – bolstered by recent court rulings - will announce rules for carbon dioxide emissions targets.  Reports vary from 20% reduction by 2020 to a 30% reduction by 2030.  Regardless of the actual target chosen, we should all remember one thing…

We will beat that target easily.

Politics, we should all remember, has as its foundation the “art of the possible”.  Most everyone in industry, except for those whose commodities will have less value because of reduced demand for carbon-based fuels, recognizes that energy efficiency and renewable energy have a better economic trajectory than fossil fuels or even nuclear.  In setting this goal, the current administration simply identifies where industry easily thinks they can get.  Just as they did with the automobile efficiency standards, they have put in place a benchmark that we will meet far before the target date.

Lest pure political analysis prove unpersuasive, consider the economic argument.  For years, analysts claimed that we needed to tax fossil fuels in order to capture externalities and make renewable energy more competitive.  What we got instead was an energy market that remained depressed by a combination of stagnant demand and temporarily increased supply.  That should have spelled a death knell for renewable energy.  Instead, we have seen wind and solar have their most successful years economically in a time when low energy prices should push them out of the market.  Recent long-term contracts and court rulings in the Midwest have bolstered this fact that even as of today, renewable energy-based electricity generation betters coal and nuclear, and competes with natural gas.

On the technology front, current building codes currently restrict energy use in new buildings to levels about half of what they were a decade ago.  Over the next ten years, we will see this decline even further, and that will carry over into the existing building marketplace.  We will see even more efficient use of energy in buildings (a sector that uses about 1/3 of the energy in the economy), and continued reduction in vehicle emissions.  Industrial use (the final 1/3) already has stagnated as industry continues to find excellent investments in efficient ways to update equipment and processes to use less energy.  Our economic growth no longer relies on increased energy use, and in fact, we may see the opposite hold true for decades to come.

On an even more important front, most politicians recognize that energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies create more jobs per dollar than the fossil fuel industry.  Few groups take the “sky is falling” approach to carbon regulation, but the some continue to flap their wings and claim that regulating carbon will cause economic collapse.  Thankfully, most recognize that pollution limits actually create jobs by shifting capital (human and financial) from extractive industry to productive ones.  Spending money on new wind turbines, smart-grid technology, weatherization of homes, or pollution capture technology…these all put people to work and shift expenses from one sector to another, but it does not threaten the economy as a whole.

One need look no further than the acid rain policies of the 80s and 90s to see a parallel.  Back then we sought to reduce sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants because these reacted with the atmosphere to produce rain that damaged crops, buildings, and communities.  Industry predicted it would create a $1,500 per ton drag on the economy.  What happened instead was that it cost only $250 per ton, and the savings from increased property value, reduced medical expenses, and job creation more than paid for the investment.

For years, we have had to choose between the more economically stable sector and the higher-priced, but better-for-us sector.  Especially in tough economic times, asking anyone to make that choice is tough.  Now, we have reached a tipping point where we do not have to sacrifice anyone’s quality of life in order to cost-effectively provide the energy that supports our lives.  Challenges lie ahead, but we should take solace in the fact that the Obama administration is taking this step today.  If there’s one thing we know about politicians….

They rarely stick their necks out unless they’re certain of the outcome.

How to solve the problem of fossil fuels in fewer than 100 years.

Last week, I had a reunion of sorts with several colleagues whom I met during graduate school.  Among the pleasant conversations about family and work, we got onto the topic of fossil fuel energy and its place in our world.  As we all met working on "green energy" projects, we all agreed on the need to get away from fossil fuels, but disagreed on the timeframe.  One friend noted it would be one hundred years before we were able to eliminate them from the bulk of our economy, and challenged me to come up with the actions I would take if I had all the capital and power in the world to make them happen.  I considered the question for most of the week, and came up with the following:

1.  Buy up all leases for fossil fuel deposits, all American public utilities, and all the aging fossil fuel reliant infrastructure and capital.
Sunk costs for electricity-generating assets and infrastructure, as well as the expected profits associated with future development of fossil fuels weigh heavily on the economics of switching to an efficient and renewable future for energy.  The next great financial bubble will come from the over-valuation of the carbon resources in the earth, resulting in another potential - and perhaps even more devastating - market correction.  The need to recover sunk costs puts a cyclical burden on the transition to a green energy future.  First, we prolong the use of the infrastructure in order to allow the utility to make back its investment with a guaranteed return, then we make complementary investments in infrastructure that works with the existing in order to meet growth.  We need to break both of these cycles in order to move forward at a rapid enough pace.  In addition, I would buy up all the used parts and pieces I could, disassemble them into their constituent parts, and repurpose the raw materials for green energy development.

2.  Reissue the resource and utility leases as a package deal, with a twist.
In order to continue the services that the utilities facilitate, but with a minimum of damage to human health, I would auction off the leases to fossil fuels, but link them (by energy content) to management of a utility.  This would link production and performance.  Then, I would restructure the utility in two ways.  One, the utility would provide the end service (i.e. heat, light, access to entertainment) instead of energy.  Customers would pay for the service instead of the units of energy, and thus reward those who provide the best end result, not the ones whom they are forced to pay.  Then, at the end of each year, these new utilities would receive a bonus payment based upon the amount of resource remaining in the ground.  They would not only increase profitability by using fewer resources in efficiently delivering services, they would receive incentive payments for leaving more of the carbon resources in the earth.

3.  Carbon tax to meet the real cost of using the energy and eliminate all subsidies.
The mining, transporting, processing, transferring, and eventual releasing of energy associated with fossil fuels has myriad negative impacts, and currently receive almost $700 billion in worldwide subsidies.  Currently, the fossil fuel industry only pays direct costs (transportation, storage, processing) but does not pay for ecological restoration of mined areas, healthcare costs for those located near combustion sites, property damage associated with polluted air, or other similar indirect costs.  To start with, we would end any subsidy to a fossil-fuel based company, using the money to subsidize a transition for those who cannot immediately afford the increased costs that might result from the end of that subsidy.  Then, each year, the insurance industry would determine the tax level based upon the reinsurance costs for each of the indirect impacts.  Governments would collect the tax to continue to provide the services they do to make up for the slight from industry, and would offset the new tax collected by lowering the overall income tax to balance.  Companies could lower their tax burden by including some of the indirect costs into their direct costs.  They can do this by taking over ecological restoration of mined areas, implementing complete carbon capture and repurposing (the act of preparing the carbon or carbon dioxide for benign storage and reuse in a specific industry...this means no sequestration without a plan for reuse), completely scrubbing exhaust streams for particulates of all size, and reducing waste heat to benign levels.

Tar sands mining area

4.  Require 99.99999% reliability from fossil fuel infrastructure and complete restoration of ecological services.
Currently, we tolerate too many oil spills, coal ash pollution incidents, and mine collapses as "the cost of doing business".  Industries know what they need to do in order to ensure near perfect performance records.  We need, as a society, to expect that they deliver.  In addition, when they complete mining activities or do have an environmental issue, we need to expect the complete restoration of ecological services.

5.  Immediately implement ecological valuation into the world economy.
Perhaps the best way to make sure capital flows to poorer regions of the world without the extractive growth that fueled southeast Asia and continued our damaging ways comes from the concept of ecological valuation.  Scientists and economists working together determine the real-time value of watersheds, forest systems, plains, species, etc., then include that value in a nation's asset sheet.  This would provide incentive for investment and restoration, while providing a mechanism for richer countries to offset their activities by investing in the preservation of existing ecosystems.  This provides the resources for developing economies to increase quality of life without the health sacrifices we had to make.

6.  Capitalize a series of building and loans in each 50-75,000 person community whose investment portfolio carries only energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in that community.
These nearly 5,000 banks would provide the needed capital to drive the shift from extractive energy reliance to neighborhood energy reliance.  The development of local businesses, and the expansion of local manufacturing to meet this demand would build a more resilient economy while improving the quality of life.  The banks would remain independent entities, beholden to shareholders like any bank, with the only restriction being the boundary of their investment region.  They could link their risk through insurance products, or state/regional-government based loan guarantee programs, in order to minimize their exposure.

7.  Provide free college tuition to top students entering the field of clean energy research and development.
Currently, the top students go into the financial sector or into fields associated with the extractive economy.  Fewer enter the fields of medicine or engineering associated with life-supporting activities.  We want the best ideas to prepare us for a future without fossil fuel energy, and need to provide the incentive to get them into those fields.

8.  Place clean-energy-based restrictions on the not-for-profit status of university endowments.
University endowments represent a significant portion of the nations held wealth, and as such, they wield great power.  For the significant benefit they receive from their tax-exempt status, the universities can bear a certain level of restriction over what they can do with those assets.  First, all of them must divest from all fossil-fuel investments.  Second, they must commit one-third of their asset portfolio to clean energy or energy efficiency projects; they choose the ones that maximize their return.  Third, they must make all buildings on all properties that they own net zero impact buildings within a decade; this includes all existing buildings as well as new and recently constructed.  The knowledge base and technology exist to make this happen, and institutions that have a forty to one-hundred year horizon for building ownership have the ability to recoup their investment easily.

9.  Change the current way we discount future life value.
We need to make all energy and quality of life decisions providing equal value to a life seven generations from now as we do to a current life.  We conveniently employ a discount rate that makes positive impacts on the future have to save ten lives to have equal value to saving one life today.  For non-life threatening activities, discounting the future has merit, for it favors conservative allocation of resources.  For activities that damage human health, however, this practice amounts to a death sentence for the future.

10.  Manage a smart transition for developing economies.
In addition to the economic development incentives offered by ecological valuation, we need to provide reasonable support and incentives for the developing world.  Unlike the developed world, these economies cannot easily remove fossil fuels from their quality of life systems.  People in these parts of the world still have underdeveloped fresh water systems, little or no electrification, and must travel great distances for basic needs.  We do not need to enable reliance on fossil fuels for new development, but cannot pull the rug out from under their current way of life.  Pursuing the above strategies will free resources to help manage this process, and ensure that developing economies avoid our pitfalls while raising the quality of life for nearly half of the world's population.  People are resourceful, and right now they are finding the simplest way they can to develop with the most readily available technology.  If we put the right technologies in front of people, they will innovate and find the right solution with the best outcomes.  We do not need to do things for them, but we need to make the right pieces available to them.

The challenge presented to me gave me no limit on my power or wealth, so I have not concerned myself with the economic impact of these activities.  Over the coming months, I will investigate them further and evaluate the costs and benefits of them.  We need to pursue these, and all other ideas for realizing a clean energy future, with a great sense of urgency.  We do not have the one-hundred years my friend conjectures we need to fully transition.  From this point forward, we need to stop enabling our dependence on fossil fuels merely because it is hard to do otherwise.  We need to expect more of ourselves; we have the knowledge, resources, and ability...now all we need is the will.

Friday Five: March 28, 2014

We hold onto a shaky hope that the use of fossil fuels to power our lives has little to no consequence on our quality of life. The truth is far more certain: our reliance on fossil fuels harms our lives, albeit unequally. For those with the means to live far from threatened areas near mines, power plants, and waste facilities, life goes along without complaint. For those not so lucky, they at best lead a life that is less healthy, and at worst die younger than those more fortunate.
When the rivers run black
"The result is that the exhaust that emerges today is far cleaner than it was decades ago. But cleaning up the airborne emissions means that the solids remaining after the burn are far dirtier than before. In fact, coal ash is often loaded with arsenic, mercury, lead, and other contaminating elements. A 2012 study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that cleaner air emissions are traded for 'significant enrichments of contaminants in solid wastes and wastewater discharged from power plants.'"

The anti-regulation economist believes that in the absence of regulation, business will always do what is best for quality of life because its customers will demand it do so and business always responds to its customers. Except, that what its customers don't know....
Activists catch power plant on hidden camera
"...a hidden camera set up by the Sierra Club ... shows a power plant regularly discharging coal ash pond water into the Ohio River, apparently permitted via a very liberal interpretation of the meaning of 'occasional.'"

The coal industry requires subsidies to stay profitable. An industry over a century old still needs government help to remain afloat. If you think that to be a bunch of environmentalist lies, here is but one example of the over $650 billion in worldwide subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.
Why are we hauling Pennsylvania coal all the way to Germany?
"'The industry was struggling, and the Pennsylvania delegation wanted to do something to help it,' says Jim Dyer, who today is a lobbyist with the Podesta Group, but began his career four decades ago in the office of Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Joseph McDade. 'The one way it could help it was ... to get the federal government interested in buying some of it.'"

Even with these subsidies, we know that the coal industry - without a game changing technology breakthrough that addresses the myriad health and environmental issues - cannot survive economically. This is not conjecture, but a fact of the marketplace.
Pacific Power's reliance on coal sends Oregonians' electricity bills soaring
"The OPUC hearing comes in light of Sierra Club’s analysis of reports from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) showing that Oregon Pacific Power customers have seen their electricity bills increase by 61% since 2006, the year after Warren Buffet started operating the utility. Pacific Power customers saw a greater rate increase than customers of any other major utility in the six states that Pacific Power serves. The costs of continuing to operate old, outdated coal plants continue to rise, and Pacific Power’s parent company, PacifiCorp, will seek rate recovery from Oregon customers for its $4.2 billion coal fleet expenditures. PacifiCorp owns the largest number of coal plants in the West, and Pacific Power customers in Oregon get 63% of their energy from out-of-state coal plants."
Goldman Sachs declares solar energy will soon be cheaper than fossil fuels, and Elon Musk is a genius
"'…our Clean Energy team believes the number of households hitting grid parity will continue to grow as the cost of the systems comes down … SolarCity has seen a 40% decline in the per watt cost of PV panels since the second quarter of 2013 driven by improved scale which is expected to continue,' state clean tech analysts Brian Lee and Thomas Daniels. 'This has been true for Tesla’s battery costs as well, which have declined from of $500/KWh in 2008 to $250/KWh for the Model S to potentially $125/KWh at the gigafactory. As a result we should note that the quantitative grid parity and return calculations we show above are arrived at without any Federal or state credits.'"

This past winter showed us that fossil fuel electricity generation has intermittency issues on par with those of wind and solar. That does not mean that we should trade one intermittency for another (although the environmental costs should force that decision on us), but we should solve the issue regardless of energy source chosen. Batteries will not solve the problem, and although hydro and flywheels have promise, I like simple solutions. This one is "in the book" as Paul Erdos might say.
Energy storage hits the rails out west
"Compared to the mechanics of chemical batteries, the idea behind rail storage is simple. During periods of low electricity demand, power is dispatched from the nearby grid to pull a chain of weighted train cars uphill. And there they will sit—losing no power to degradation—until the grid has a period of high power demand. Then they are sent rolling downhill. Their momentum sends electrons back to the grid through a system of regenerative braking that uses the turning power of the wheels to generate electricity."

Happy Friday!

Developers, contractors, and designers should lose their license if buildings do not perform to energy code

We are running out of fuel.

There is no politics behind that statement, it is a matter of fact.  On a per person basis, which is really the only accurate measure, we are depleting resources at a rate faster than we discover new ones.  At our current rate - and even with the addition of newly found natural gas resources through fracking - we will run out of fossil fuels sometime this century.

Although a large portion of this draw-down will result from increased usage in developing countries, we in the developed world still hold the lion's share of responsibility and opportunity.  As the majority of the world's population uses energy to improve their quality of life, how high they have to go depends entirely on us.  We can keep the bar where we have currently set it, or we can drastically lower it to a point where the available resources can support a high quality of life for everyone.

In order to make some level of improvement on this performance, over the last decade, we have made great progress in addressing energy use in our building codes.  Part of this success comes from industry, where product manufacturers and systems designers have found economic opportunity in driving down the energy use of buildings.  Part of this success comes from environmental advocates who have made the social and economic case for continuing to challenge the marketplace.  Over the past decade, the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) has increased in stature and has drastically dropped the amount of energy a new building can consume.  IECC follows closely on the heels of the tri-annual update to the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air conditioning Engineers' (ASHRAE) standard for commercial building energy efficiency, ASHRAE 90.1.  ASHRAE gets input from all areas of the marketplace, and as such, the standard represents the "state of the shelf", and not a leading edge.  This has helped move IECC from a separate standard in the industry to a part of the International Building Code: the standard of care for the industry.  Anyone who designs a building and does not meet the most modern version of IBC risks litigation if problems arise.

The rapid adoption of IECC into state and municipal building codes has moved the needle on improving energy use in buildings.  In just the past decade, we have essentially cut in half the amount of energy that a building can consume and meet code.  The figure below highlights this for a multi-family residential building.  In 2004, that building could use 43 kBtu/square foot/year; that same building starting design today would have to use about 22 kBtu/square foot/year.  There is evidence to suggest that within another decade, all new buildings will have to manage their entire energy use through resources available only on their site.

This raises an interesting question: how do we know during design whether a building will use the right amount of energy when fully constructed and operated?  The answer relies on a practice called energy modeling.  Using the building data (materials in construction, geometry, etc.) and the planned operation (occupancy type, number of people, hours open, etc.), engineers and designers can use any number of computer modeling programs to project how much energy the building will use.  The modeling software has improved significantly over the past twenty years, to the point where we have some reasonable certainty that if the input parameters are right, we have a good idea of how much energy the building requires.

The problem with these modeling tools comes from accountability.  Right now, enforcement of these codes relies on either government employees with little to no training on the product, or consultants hired by the authorities to review.  In the former case, enforcement is almost impossible, and while better in the latter, the limited resources in most municipalities restricts even an expert's ability to do an adequate review.  This creates a nebulous enforcement environment that shrewd business people use to their advantage.  If a designer can tweak a model to create the perception of compliance, but not have to worry about whether the building actually meets that level, then developers that can skimp on elements necessary to meet code will do so and wait to see if they get any enforcement.  I wish I could say this was a small risk, or infrequent occurrence, but it is not.

The answer to these issues comes in the simplest form: hold those who own, develop, build, and design the building accountable.  For a first offense, all parties must make all the necessary adjustments to bring the building up to the most recent code, not just the code at the point when they started design.  For a second offense, each entity associated with the project: owner, developer, designer, contractor, loses their business license.  The risk that comes with each of these penalties would not only drive the market to develop even better modeling tools, but it would add responsibility to a marketplace that currently does not have any.  Many major cities now have energy benchmarking ordinances that require large users to report their energy use.  Combine this with a target energy use to comply with code, and it takes almost no resources to enforce in this manner.  Instead of trying to beef up code review infrastructure, place the responsibility on the professionals, and enforce the penalties.  Good designers and ethical developers will welcome both the clarity and flexibility, and the system should weed out those only looking to take advantage.

Within a decade, the marketplace will deliver new buildings that use no imported energy, and probably will deliver many renovation projects with the same level of performance.  There is no question that this is the way the market is heading.  Given the concerns about how much energy we use, it will have to move there in order for us to survive.  We can help this along, and perhaps even make it happen quicker, if we restore personal responsibility to the process and expect more of those who develop and design our buildings.