Organic Matter - Energy

Divorce is the New Global Warming?

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:32:11 -0800

How do you not click on this headline?

WANT TO GO GREEN? STAY MARRIED
Divorced Households Have Negative Impact on Environment, Study Finds

[…]

The reason is simple — it's all about efficiency, says Jianguo Liu, lead author of the study who has the Rachel Carson chair in ecological sustainability at the university's department of fisheries and wildlife.

"In the divorced households, the number of people is smaller than in married households," Liu told ABCNEWS.com. "The resource efficiency used per person is much lower than in married households."

Users and Abusers

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:34:45 -0700

Via Worldchanging, here is some really interesting data compiled by the Dept. of Energy on gasoline use per capita on a state-by-state basis. Trust me, the numbers are not what you’d expect. Jamais issues a call for additional analysis, which I think would be very interesting.

The state-by-state listing just begs for further analysis: the corresponding per capita rates of hybrid ownership and light truck/SUV ownership; average population density; portion of the populace living in "high density" environments; gasoline prices; telecommuting rates; availability of public transit; even "red" vs. "blue." Anyone up for a bit of number crunching?

I would totally take him up on this if I had time in my life right now to look up some of these numbers. Perhaps late next week, if someone hasn’t taken the initiative already.

Green Energy Resources

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:09:43 -0700

I’ve mentioned this nifty carbon mitigation tool called the Terrapass before, but I only recently did these similar/supplementary products come to my attention:

Certified Clean Car is a program pretty similar to the Terrapass program, with the added benefit that a graduate from my academic program works there.

PV USA Solar allows you to calculate the amount of CO₂ produced by your home, your business, your commute, or your travel, and then purchase renewable energy certificates to offset those emissions. PV USA Solar is run by Renewable Ventures LLC, the same folks that are in charge of Certified Clean Car, listed above.

Green-e certifies energy-related products across America, and provides information on local sources of electricity from renewable sources, as well as providers of the renewable energy certificates mentioned above.

Remember ANWR?

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 17:19:29 -0700

There’s a fun set of posts up at the Environmental Economics blog that I highly recommend checking out. In the first post John Whitehead constructs a fantastic little model for relating trigger price (the price of oil at which it becomes economically viable to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) to household willingness to pay (or existence value) for lost profits due to environmental concerns. In the second post he builds in a ten year gap between the decision to drill and the commencement of drilling and explores the effect of different discount rates. At the very end John also offers a link to the spreadsheet that he used to make his calculations, so if you’re inclined to tinker, you can play with the model yourself.

Happy drilling!

A Tale of Two Bills

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 01:42:22 -0700

...or at least some links to info about them...

I’ve really let things go lately; sorry about that. The big news has obviously been legislation being pushed through Congress, namely the energy bill and the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development, an “alternative” to the Kyoto Protocol. Both of these bills have been covered to death by more thoughtful authors than myself, so rather than weighing in on them with pounds measured in redundancy, I’ll simply offer links (below the fold) to the one or two readers out there who haven’t already read up.

Nuclear Economics

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 12:45:12 -0700

Months ago I begged readers to track down or write and publish a clear, concise, cradle-to-grave overview of nuclear power, an issue that is incredibly important right now, and yet one that I must admit I find terrifically boring and thus difficult to research. Basically I was looking for a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis to determine whether nuclear ought to be a major part of the toolbox for reducing carbon emissions.

No one took the bait back then, but finally the Economist has come to the rescue:

...most studies reckon that even a moderate carbon tax would not make nuclear power generation competitive in a free energy market. Europe's emissions-trading system (ETS) is, in effect, that sort of a tax. And according to Oxera, a British consultancy, even with that implicit tax on carbon-based power generation, new nuclear plants would not be economic without government help.

But if the implicit tax rose, that might change. The point of a carbon tax is to reflect the cost to society of damage that using carbon does. Setting a price on those social costs is difficult. Europe's ETS implies that the social costs of carbon dioxide are €20 per tonne; but a British government study in 2002 estimated them at £70 (€112). Such estimates are necessarily vague; but if that higher figure is fed into Oxera's model, new nuclear plants begin to look economically viable.

We’re not given any sweeping conclusions about whether or not going nuclear is the right thing to do, but the article does close with the clear sentiment that, in America at least, nuclear expansion will occur.

This conclusion, however, seems to be largely based on the premise that the nuclear option is one that is supported by environmental interests, which I’m not sure is true. Certainly, most of the invested and educated environmentalists I know (by way mostly of the environmental blogosphere) seem to feel that the risks strongly outweigh the benefits. I wonder whether their views are shared by the greater environmental voting bloc, or whether most self-proclaimed environmentalists feel that the need for action on climate change exceeds any concerns over a return to nuclear power.

Comedy Dump

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:28:44 -0700

There are some excellent predictions in the Onion’s recent issue circa 2056. The first of two environmentally-relevant future-article deals with overcrowding at Yellowstone National Parking Lot, and as for the second, well, you’ve already heard about peak oil, but have you wondered about the possibility of peak solar?

Last (but certainly not least) a piece that a friend stumbled across while doing some Internet research on threatened beach birds: F*** Snowy Plovers and Their Hippie Protectors.

I promise to go back to real science blogging soon.

238 Caliber

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 08:07:58 -0700

As I’ve said before, I’m something of a fence-sitter with respect to replacing carbon-emitting sources of power with nuclear power. As a disclaimer to those who would decry my willingness to consider this purportedly evil technology, I’m becoming more and more skeptical that it’s really a good idea, which is why this morning’s Times article makes me nervous:

Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds [of plutonium 238] over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling site outside Idaho Falls some 100 miles to the west and upwind of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Officials say the program could cost $1.5 billion and generate more than 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste.

Project managers say that most if not all of the new plutonium is intended for secret missions and they declined to divulge any details. But in the past, it has powered espionage devices.

"The real reason we're starting production is for national security," Timothy A. Frazier, head of radioisotope power systems at the Energy Department, said in a recent interview.

You’ll note that the article doesn’t say a word about using plutonium 238 as a source of power for more “menial” tasks, such as putting electricity into people’s homes, and indeed I don’t know if it’s even practical for such a task. But I also think that public reaction to a case like this will be indicative of people’s willingness to accept nuclear solutions to energy problems in general versus searching for safer, more economically viable sources of power.

Oil Rigs to Reefs

Thu, 19 May 2005 13:03:25 -0700

From the “more complicated than you probably thought” file, I found this gem of an article about how marine ecosystems develop around artificial structures, such as oil rigs. When these rigs become obsolete, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act requires their removal within one year, yet almost everyone seems to agree that leaving them is in beneficial as well as more cost-effective. What people disagree on is exactly what to do with them:

Under the Rigs to Reefs program, the platforms are either towed elsewhere and sunk, tipped on their sides or cut down well below the water's surface so they would no longer be hazards to navigation.

[...]

In the previous Congress, then-Rep. David Vitter (R-La.), now a senator, introduced a bill to authorize the use of obsolete oil platforms for culturing marine species, scientific research and as artificial reefs.

[...]

The fate of the oil rigs has also attracted the attention of fishermen such as Dan Leonard, who raises clams at his Bull Bay Clam Farm, near here. He thinks the platforms could be the foundation for an offshore ocean farming business.

[...]

For differing reasons, aquaculture farmers, biotechnology companies, fishermen, scientists and oil executives agree that a new life could await the rigs once they are no longer needed for drilling.

This particular article is about oil rigs off the Gulf Coast, but we’re facing the same issues in Southern California as well. I didn’t run across any timely local articles, but I did find something far more interesting – underwater photos from local rigs. I would love to have used one of these photos in this post, but the photographer seems to prefer that interested parties view the pictures on her site, so I encourage you to check 'em out.

Devil's Advocate: Coal

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 18:13:27 -0700

I suppose I’m not helping my karma situation by referring people to an article that the author claims could cost him his job (in the title even!), but I’m gonna do it anyway. Devilstower, a lifelong employee of the coal industry, has posted a magnificent assessment of the evolution of the modern coal industry at DailyKos.

For practically every minute of my life, I've been involved in coal. I grew up in a part of Western Kentucky that was then the biggest coal producing area in the country. When I was small, my home town held a "Strawberry Festival," because the country produced a good part of the nation's strawberries. By the time I was a teenager, the festival was renamed as the "Coal Festival." Those strawberry fields were long gone.

The Nuclear Option

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 23:38:56 -0700

New posts have been slow in coming, and for that I apologize - pete and I have both been rather busy this weekend. The worst part is that this post is unlikely to sate your voracious hunger for environmental news and commentary since it is nothing more than a challenge to readers to produce environmental commentary of their own...

I've been thinking for a while now about writing on nuclear power as a possible part of the solution to the carbon emission problem. A recent discussion (argument?) on the Gristmill dealt with this topic as well, and it appears that everybody has an opinion. Except me.

Bring Back the Milkman

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 10:08:25 -0700

A retired banker from my city is advocating that Maine legislate a ban on disposable/recyclable bottles and cans and instead return to refillable beverage bottles.

Every new plastic soda bottle - including recycled plastic - relies on new petroleum, most frequently from oil wells in the Middle East, said [retired Bangor banker Jay] Dresser.

Maine is one of only ten states that currently have bottle deposit laws.

"To destroy a bottle after using it just once seems illogical to me," Dresser said. "As the cost of oil goes up, the cost of containers goes up, and that makes [reuse] more feasible."

Dresser has spent 13 years studying the issue and believes the nation could realize $1.7 billion in savings annually if energy and raw materials were conserved by using refillable containers just five times apiece.

This proposal isn't going to be taken seriously any time soon. According to the article, several legislators that Dresser spoke with suggested that he wait until oil prices climbed still higher thus making industry more receptive to the idea. However, the opposition almost certainly has less to do with economics than it does with culture. Mandating refillable bottles would be seen as "un-American" (even though "un-American" in this case is a VERY VERY good thing). Other countries have had great success with refillable bottling:

Biomass Burning

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 09:41:16 -0800

The Georgia-Pacific mill up the river from me in Old Town is scheduled to begin using their new biomass boiler to generate electricity (Bangor Daily News).

"Basically the steam that we've been making reduces the fuel oil that we've been burning," [G-P spokeswoman Kelli] Manigault said. "We've already started saving money through that process."

I'm all for the reduction in oil burning, and I'm all for making use of construction debris and waste wood chips, but burning something is the single crudest way to extract energy from it. While perhaps unsuited to small operations like a single mill, processes such as pyrolysis and gasification are vastly more efficient ways of obtaining energy from organic matter. Simple combustion of organic materials is on the order of 5-10-15% efficient, while the efficiency of advanced gasification/pyrolysis is more on the order of 85-90%.

The Oil Spill You Didn't Hear About

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:34:58 -0800

Mark at the Biomes Blog was right - I do get most of my news from corporate media, and I wasn't aware that there was a very large oil spill in Alaska last weekend.

Cleanup workers continued efforts Tuesday to mop up a large oily water spill in the Kuparuk oil field, but the cause of a pipeline leak remained undetermined.

State pollution officials as well as a spokesman for oil company Conoco Phillips, which runs Kuparuk, said the estimated size of the spill remains at 111,300 gallons. That ranks as the third largest industrial spill ever recorded in the North Slope oil fields.

But don't worry, Gale Norton says that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is going to be totally safe (the article is a few years old, but I don't get the impression that she's changed her mind since then).

Oil production has not been interrupted, [Conoco spokeswoman Dawn Patience] said.

Pardon me while I breath a sigh of relief.

The American Serengeti

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 01:41:26 -0800

I’ve been on vacation for a few days, but when I returned last night I stopped by and found a harsh reminder of what I was talking about a little over a week ago – people need to understand not just what environmentalists believe, but why they believe it.

For obvious reasons the hot environmental topic of the moment is the potential for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We’ve already talked about the fact that the oil under the Refuge will not make a significant dent in the U.S. energy supply, but I haven’t seen much examination of the ecology of the Alaskan coastal plain and why drilling would have tragic consequences.