All Aboard to the American Astronomical Society Meeting!

2 January 201513 January 2015 / raminskibba / 1 Comment

I’m on a train adventure, going through California, Oregon, and Washington to the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Seattle. This post is a modified version of one I wrote for the AAS
Sustainability Committee.

For those of you astronomers and journalists at the meeting, you’re welcome to join us for our Special Session next Wednesday (7th January) at 12:30-14:00 in Room 4C-3. We’ll be starting the new year with ideas and plans for addressing climate change issues in class and with the media.

We encourage anyone who is interested in the Sustainability Committee to contact us and get involved. We will post resources on this website for teaching and discussing climate change with journalists.

It’s important for astronomers to try to make observatories, telescopes, university department buildings, and computer centers as energy efficient as possible, but our largest environmental impact and carbon footprint comes from airplane flights to meetings, conferences, workshops, etc. According to a New York Times article, air travel emissions account for about five percent of global warming, and that fraction is projected to rise significantly as the volume of air travel is increasing much faster than gains in flight fuel efficiency.

It would help this situation to develop better resources and technologies for videoconferencing and remote observing, and these are areas where we should continue to make improvements. In addition, long-distance travel can be difficult for some people, such as for those with families and those in relatively remote locations, and videoconferencing and webcasts can make conferences more accessible to more people.

Nonetheless, long-distance travel is sometimes necessary, including for early-career scientists who need to advertise their work and network at conferences. I joined the Sustainability Committee in 2014, and one thing I am trying to do and trying to encourage others to do is to take more trains. In the US, long-distance trains can be very useful depending on where one wants to travel. They are not always the fastest mode of transportation, but they are comfortable, convenient, have great views, and usually have wireless access if you need to work. And importantly, they save energy.

I work at the University of California, San Diego, and I’m taking the train up the Pacific coast to Seattle via Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, which we just passed, the Bay Area, Sacramento, and Portland. (It makes me think of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”) I’m traveling nearly 1500 miles (2400 km)—nearly the entire distance from the southern to northern border of the US. As I wrote in a blog post last summer, Amtrak trains expend about 1,600 BTUs of energy per passenger per mile, while planes use 2,500 and cars use 3,900. Trains are much more energy efficient than planes, cars, and buses, and by not flying to Seattle, I’m saving tons of carbon dioxide emissions. This is just a start, but I am trying to view flying as a luxury or necessary evil that I will avoid and reduce when possible.

In any case, I’m excited to be part of the new and improved Sustainability Committee, and if you’re interested, join us at the AAS meeting! More importantly, make a resolution in 2015 to reduce your and your institution’s carbon footprint.

Innovating Regulatory and Business Models in the Electric Industry (because climate change)

15 November 2014 / raminskibba / Leave a comment

At a Climate and Energy Law Symposium at the University of San Diego on Friday (7th November), scientists, policy experts, lawyers, and business leaders gathered to discuss trends driving changes in the electric industry and regulatory and business responses to them. It was a rather sunny and hot day for southern California in November, perhaps highlighting ongoing climate change and the need to adapt the regulatory framework, market rules, and interactions between electric utilities and customers. The symposium was titled, “Innovative Regulatory and Business Models in a Changing Electric Industry.”

The symposium seemed to lean more on the business and legal side of things rather than the policy and science side, so I was out of my element, but I’ll try to write about some of the interesting things I learned there. USD also publishes the San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law, if you’d like to read more about related topics.

In one of the morning sessions, Jamie van Nostrand from West Virginia University spoke about drivers of electric industry innovations including climate change mitigation and adaptation—for example following the experience of Superstorm Sandy. The electric industry is adapting to the rapid expansion of photovoltaics and solar panels in recent years and is preparing for the growth of “distributed energy” stored in small, decentralized grid-connected devices. (These images of rooftop solar and smart-grid technology are courtesy of NREL and DOE.)

These were common themes throughout the day, especially the growth of solar and the proliferation of distributed energy resources. Although Sky Stanfield (at Keyes, Fox, & Wiedman LLP) stated that the increasing number of grid-connected solar installations has been mostly in the residential sector, as you can see from this recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, solar PV is growing exponentially in residential as well as commercial and large-scale sectors in the US.

Of course, some countries, such as Germany, have surpassed these levels. Germany now generates as much as ~30% of its electricity from renewables, mostly from solar and wind power. The government’s goal is to double that amount by 2035, and they’re on track to successfully do so. However, in the meantime, they need to address issues of adapting the electrical grid and constructing new grid-storage capacity—issues also faced by the US electric industry.

Distributed energy, such as with rooftop solar panels, has the potential to allow individuals and communities to have more power (no pun intended) and influence with respect to utilities. Distributed generation could not just decentralize but also even democratize electricity systems, although that seems a little overoptimistic to me (see this article in Grist). Some states have witnessed opposition to distributed generation and to “net metering,” in which an electricity consumer who generates on-site electric energy (such as with solar panels) can offset part of their electricity bill. Some people have portrayed that as “free riding,” and Troy Rule (Arizona State Law School) showed this anti-net metering advert, which is ridiculous and funny as propaganda.

So what’s next? Kevin Jones (Vermont Law School) talked about five environmental pathways for an improved electric grid in his book, “A Smarter, Greener Grid,” including things like distributed energy technologies and optimization, electric vehicles, and areas to improve energy efficiency. Dian Grueneich, a former Public Utilities Commissioner, outlined proposals for “California’s Electricity Policy Future: Beyond 2020.” This included updated net-metering policies so that individuals and communities could more easily share a solar project’s electricity output. More importantly, she argued for a inter-agency policymaking structure that integrates electricity with climate, water, air quality, and transportation goals.

For all their talk of “innovation” (or even “disruptive innovation”!), I can’t say I left feeling like these people are transforming the electric industry in a fundamental way; they’re just gradually adapting to worsening climate change, which means more people with solar panels and making grids less vulnerable to Sandy-like storms. They’ll have to adapt to much more than that, judging from the conclusions of the newest IPCC report.

But what do Californians, industries, and policy-makers really need to do to mitigate, and not just adapt to, climate change? The symposium, which included speakers from and was sponsored by San Diego Gas & Electric, made inroads but only touched the surface of this question. The final person to ask a question during the final Q&A period referred to this issue, but her question remained unanswered and was postponed to the reception, where alcohol would be served.

For Traveling Scientists: Praise for Trains

23 July 2014 / raminskibba / 4 Comments

And now for something completely different! I’d like to make the case that we should take intra-city and inter-city trains more often. (I mean this especially for Americans, since trains are already more popular and more advanced in many other countries.) As some of you know, I like riding trains, and I even thought of writing an “ode to trains,” but though I enjoy poetry—which is virtually required of me as a half-Persian—I don’t think I write it particularly well. One of my first memories as a boy was riding a train in Colorado and sticking my head out the window, only to get a face full of smoke. I’m a fan of blues, folk, and jazz music too, and many musicians (such as Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez) have sung train songs. This post is also partly inspired by an interesting and entertaining article by Kevin Baker in the July 2014 issue of Harper’s magazine.

I’m motivated by the fact that many people, and especially scientists, frequently travel long distances. Many astronomers and astrophysicists travel to conferences, workshops, and meetings as well as to telescopes. Occasionally it’s possible to interact or participate in meetings by videoconferencing and to use telescopes with “remote observing,” but it’s often the case that travel can’t be avoided, and as I’ve written here before, it’s important for junior scientists to present their work and engage in networking in person to help to advance their careers. Although most telescopes and observatories are constructed to be environmentally friendly, it is long-distance travel that results in very large “carbon footprints.”

My carbon footprint has been particularly large this year, and I hope to do better next year. I plan to begin by considering taking a train from southern California to Seattle for the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in early January. Long-distance travel is also an issue being taken up by the AAS Sustainability Committee.

If you’re wondering, this trip would take most of a weekend, but it would offer nice views of the Pacific coast and the trains have free wireless internet too. It looks like the Coast Starlight line takes about 34 hours to travel from Los Angeles’s historic Union Station (pictured below) to Seattle’s King Street Station, but it covers a distance of 1377 miles (2216 km)—nearly the distance between the borders of Mexico and Canada.

We should keep in mind that, after walking and biking, trains are the most efficient way to travel. Amtrak, the US’s publicly funded railroad service, expends an estimated 1,600 BTUs of energy per passenger per mile, while buses use 3,300, planes use 2,500, and cars use 3,900! If we seriously want to use less energy and substantially reduce carbon emissions, we should travel by train much more often. From the perspective of climate change, although “carbon offset” programs have been attempted (with very limited success so far), nothing beats not emitting greenhouse gases in the first place.

Americans used to travel all the time by train, but with the triumph of the auto and aviation industries and the increased popularity of cars (with subsidized gas prices) and planes for long-distance travel, Amtrak ridership dropped to 16 million in 1972. Fortunately, ridership has doubled since then, and President Obama in 2011 committed his administration to a vision of giving “eighty percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within twenty-five years.”

The US needs to upgrade and expand its train lines and cars. Europe and China have trains that are at least twice as fast as ours, and Japan’s new Shinkansen bullet train goes 200 mph! Americans sometimes complain that the country is too big for trains, but China shows that it’s certainly possible. I think we need to push for high-speed trains, especially in California and the East Coast but also within the country, such as the California Zephyr line that links the Bay Area, Denver, and Chicago. This will take a lot of investment and time, but it will be worth it. Although the US auto industry has suffered in recent years, improving and expanding the rail system certainly would help the “green economy” and create many “green jobs”. And we should keep in mind that annual federal highway and aviation subsidies are currently gigantic ($41.5 and $16 billion in 2013, respectively) compared to Amtrak subsidies ($1.6 billion). The planned California high-speed rail will cost an estimated $68 billion to construct, but it will be built over many years.

Water Policy Issues, with a Focus on the US Southwest

15 April 2014 / raminskibba / 5 Comments

Water policy issues are very important, but we haven’t discussed them much on this blog yet. Much of my information here comes from Ellen Hanak and other analysts of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), analysts from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a recent article by Christopher Ketchum in Harper’s, a book by Robert Glennon (Unquenchable), and other sources. I’m not an expert on water policy, and any errors are my own. As usual, please let me know if you notice any errors, and I’m happy to hear any comments. I’ll focus on the southwestern US (mainly because I grew up in Colorado and now live in California), but many of these issues apply elsewhere as well. And while the Southwest is dealing with drought and water scarcity, other places, such as the UK and the Midwest US, are dealing with flooding.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, already some 1.2 billion people live in areas of physical water scarcity, while another 1.6 billion face “economic water shortage”. By 2025, almost half of the world will be living in conditions of water stress. Some analysts predict that water wars (see Vandana Shiva’s book) and conflicts will increase in the future. Considering that we need water to live, it’s not surprising that the United Nations General Assembly voted in a resolution declaring that access to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right.

At least conditions on Earth are not as bad as Mars, which has experienced 600 million years of drought and which probably hasn’t supported life, at least on its surface. But water scarcity is an extremely important problem that we’re probably not taking seriously enough; as Stephen Colbert put it, “if the human body is 60 percent water, why am I only two percent interested?”

The Southwest and California in particular are experiencing their worst recorded drought (for example, see the NASA satellite images below). In response, the California state legislature and Gov. Brown passed a drought relief package last month, while Sen. Feinstein and others are seeking to pass a bill in Congress to aid drought-stricken states.

Now here’s some historical and legal context. The Colorado River Compact of 1922 was negotiated by members of the upper-basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming) and the lower-basin states (Arizona, California, Nevada), and it was an agreement for hydraulic management of the Southwest. According to the US system of water rights, however, the person who first made “beneficial use” of a stream or river had first right to it. Under this doctrine, the earliest users of the Colorado River (California) could legally establish a monopoly over regional water supply, even though most of that water came from another state (Colorado). A major problem was that because 1922 happened to occur during an unusually wet period, people assumed that the Colorado held more water than it really did: its annual water flow as estimated to be 17-18 million acre feet, though it was later more accurately estimated at 14 million acre-feet (17 billion cubic-meters) on average. It was therefore already overallocated from the start. The lower basin (including southern CA) is now overusing its share of the Colorado River, and it’s not a sustainable situation. A court case (Arizona v. California) that was decided by the Supreme Court in 1963 affirmed that Arizona was owed 2.8 million acre feet of water annually, but under the doctrine of prior appropriation, Arizona’s rights would remain secondary to California’s.

For water use, it’s useful to distinguish between water withdrawal (from surface or ground sources) and the consumption of water already withdrawn. Consequently, as argued by Ellen Hanak at a recent PPIC event in Sacramento, we need to consider not just water supplies but also water management and (in)efficient water consumption. Although one usually thinks of water for drinking, washing, cleaning, and other residential uses, much more water is used for irrigation (agriculture), industry, and power plants; according to the UCS, power plants account for 41% of freshwater withdrawals in the US. It’s also useful to distinguish between direct and indirect water use, and I’ll get into that more below.

Water shortages, already a critical issue in the Southwest, are likely to become far worse with climate change (although the extent to which it’s due to climate change is still debated). Rivers such as the Colorado, which is primarily supplied by snowmelt and is already overallocated, are particularly vulnerable. For the past fourteen years, the Colorado River has been at its lowest level since the ninth century. According to Tim Barnett from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), with climate change, currently scheduled water deliveries from the Colorado River are unlikely to be met by mid-century. Rising air temperatures due to global warming will result in reduced snowfall: by the end of this century, California’s ski season could disappear with a 80% loss of Sierra snowpack, and Washington and Oregon would experience reduced snowfall as well. In addition, although per capita water use has been gradually decreasing, population growth in the Southwest is likely to increase urban water demand in some regions. In a high carbon emissions scenario, annual losses to agriculture, forestry, and fisheries could reach $4.3B in California alone, and the prices of fresh fruit, vegetables, dairy, and fish, will rise. There will be more competition between human water use and water needed to support fish and other wildlife, and potential solutions will involve difficult trade-offs. (The following figure from the EPA summarizes climate impacts on the hydrologic cycle.)

In the studies mentioned above by SIO scientists, the Colorado River’s average annual flow could decline by as much as 30% by 2050. As a result, without massively reducing water usage, Lake Mead has a 50% chance of declining to “dead pool” by 2036. At that level, water deliveries to millions of people in California and Arizona and to millions of acres of farmland will cease, and hydroelectric production at the dam will already have stopped. It is incredible to consider that this could happen in our lifetime, as the Colorado is the same river that carved the Grand Canyon over tens of millions of years, and it is one of the rivers on which the Ancient Puebloan depended until around 1300, when drought, decreased rainfall, and a drop in water table levels appeared to drive the people away from their civilization. (See also this article in National Geographic about ancient “megadroughts” in human history.)

The largest fraction of water consumption is due to agriculture, power plants, and industry. Considering the fact that we indirectly need water because of our need for energy, this points to the issue of the “water-energy nexus.” The average U.S. family of four directly uses 400 gallons of freshwater per day, while indirectly using 600-1800 gallons through power plant water withdrawals. We need energy for water production and distribution (and the desalination plant being constructed near San Diego will require quite a bit), and we also need water for energy-related infrastructure. Coal and nuclear power plants use large amounts of freshwater to cool the plants: for example, a typical 600-MW coal-fired plant consumes more than 2 billion gallons of water per year from nearby lakes, rivers, aquifers, or oceans. In addition, as we discussed in my previous blog post, fracking techniques for extracting shale gas require millions of gallons of water to be injected into a well, and they can contaminate groundwater as well. Fortunately, wind turbines and solar photovoltaic modules require essentially no water at all, but other renewable energies, like hydroelectric, bioenergy, and geothermal, can be water intensive. As argued by Laura Wisland, since we expect climate change to increase the frequency and severity of droughts in California, it will be important to hedge our electricity supplies with predictable, renewable resources, especially wind and solar.

What can be done? As a “silver lining” of the current situation, the ongoing drought in the Southwest provides a window for reform, and here are a few ideas. We should shift toward less water-intensive sources of energy such as wind and solar. Water should cost more: we should modernize water measurement and pricing with better estimates of water use and prices that reflect water’s economic value. We could learn from cities in dry places elsewhere (such as Australia) about how to make urban areas more water efficient, and we could have tiered water rates with higher prices for greater use. In agriculture, crops that cannot be grown without subsidies should not be grown. We need improvements to local groundwater management. Since surveys show that most Californians believe that there are environmental inequities between more and less affluent communities in the state, it’s also important to consider environmental justice issues while developing new water policy programs (see this article, for example). We need to develop more reliable funding (through state bonds or local ratepayers), especially for environmental management, flood protection, and statewide data collection and analysis. Finally, as argued in this PPIC report, water management agencies at all levels should aim to develop more coordinated, integrated approaches to management and regulatory oversight, drawing on scientific and technical analysis to support sound and balanced decisions.

The Physics of Sustainable Energy

11 March 20141 December 2014 / raminskibba / 1 Comment

I attended a conference this weekend called “The Physics of Sustainable Energy” at the University of California, Berkeley. It was organized by people affiliated with the American Physical Society, Energy Resources Group, and a couple other organizations. Most of the speakers and attendees (including me) seemed to be Californians. I had some interesting conversations with people and attended some great talks by experts in their fields, and here I’ll just give you a few highlights.

First though, I want to make two general comments. I did notice that only ~20% of the speakers were women, which is worse than astrophysics conferences, and it’s too bad the organizers weren’t able to make the conference more diverse. (There were a few people of color speaking though.) Secondly, I think it’s excellent that people (and not just in California) are actively involved working on solutions and innovations, but I think we should be careful about an technophilic or technocratic emphasis. This was a conference for physicists and engineers though, and energy policy and communication with the media and policy-makers, for example, were mostly beyond the scope of it. I was struck by the apparently close ties with industry some speakers had (such as Amory Lovins and Jonathan Koomey); to some extent that’s necessary, but I was a little concerned about potential conflicts of interest.

…On to the conference. Ken Caldeira spoke about the global carbon balance. When accounting for CO₂ emission per capita from fossil fuel use and cement production: the US is worst (50kg CO₂/person/day), followed by Russia, China and the EU. California emits half as much as the rest of this country, but 2/3 of the difference is due to a fortunate climate (it doesn’t get very cold); according to an audience member (Art Rosenfeld?), “we’re mostly blessed with good luck as well as some brains.” Daniel Kammen (one of the organizers) then talked about developing a framework for energy access for all. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4 in 2007): “warming will most strongly and quickly impact the global poor.” Kammen described the concept of “energy poverty”: 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity today, and that will still be the case for a similar number in 2030, with more having unreliable/intermittent access. There appears to be a strong correlation between electricity access and human development index.

It seems that many people are working on interesting research & development on renewable energy sources. Jennifer Dionne spoke about the “upconversion” of solar cells, which includes thermodynamic, electronic, and photonic design considerations. The upconversion process improves cell efficiency by at least 1.5× (see Atre & Dionne 2011), and it often works well at optical near-infrared wavelengths. (She pointed out that of energy from the sun, 5% is in the UV, 43% in optical, and 52% in infrared. And if you’re interested in what those proportions are like for different types of galaxies, check out my recent paper.) Then Chris Somerville spoke about the status and prospects of biofuels, the production of which is currently dominated by the US and Brazil. The combustion of biomass has challenges for providing low-carbon energy: depends on tilling of soil, land conversion, fertilizer, transportation, and processing. I’m concerned about deforestation and effects on ecosystems as well as the effects on food/crop prices (remember the food riots in 2007-2008 and the rising cost of corn/maize?). In my opinion, Somerville didn’t sufficiently address this, though he did argue in favor of miscanthus and other biomass rather than the use of corn. John Dabiri spoke about the advantages of vertical-axis wind turbines (called VAWTs, see the figure above), in addition to the ubiquitous horizontal-axis variety. VAWTs have a smaller structure size and cost, simpler installation logistics, and are safer for birds and bats as well. Currently only four countries get >10% of their electricity from wind (Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, followed by Germany with 9%), but this can be easily improved.

This flow diagram is pretty nice, and it describes current energy use in the US (presented by Valerie Thomas). And Daniel Kammen, in a paper on the relation between energy use, population density, and suburbanization, shows the spatial distribution of carbon footprints (where the units are tCO2e, or total carbon dioxide equivalent per household).

Tilman Santarius give a nice talk about energy efficiency rebound effects, which is closely related to my previous post, where you can find more information. He discussed the interactions between energy efficiency, labor productivity, human behavior, and economic growth, and he distinguished between rebounds due to an income effect vs a substitution effect. In any case, average direct rebound effects appear to be around 20-30% (Greening et al. 2000; Sorell 2007), in addition to a 5-10% of indirect rebound. In other words, around 1/3 of income savings due to energy efficiency is lost because of an increase in energy demand. He also talked about the psychology of rebounds, including moral licensing (such as Prius drivers who drive more) and moral leakage (people feel less responsible). It will be a difficult task to try to separate energy demand from economic growth.

There were many other interesting talks, but I’ll end with the issue of climate adaptation and geoengineering. Ann Kinzig described how the combined risk of a phenomenon is the sum Σ p (event) × impact (event). Mitigation seeks to reduce the probability p while adaptation seeks to reduce the impact. Climate change will have impacts on food, water, ecosystems, and weather events, and decision-makers in urban areas can try to prepare for these (see this website). Kinzig also spoke about historical case studies of failed adaptations by people in the Hohokam (Arizona), Mesa Verde (Colorado), and Mimbres (New Mexico) regions, and the dependence on societal hierarchy and conformity. Alan Robock spoke about the risks and benefits of “geoengineering”, which involves gigantic projects in the future to address climate change, such as space-based reflectors, stratospheric aerosols, and cloud brightening (seeding clouds), and basically involve using the Earth as a science experiment with a huge cost of failure. In particular, he studies the many problems of injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the planet. (Some people have supported this idea because of the supposedly benign effects of volcanic eruptions in the past.) He discussed the potential benefits of stratospheric geoengineering but compiled a list of 17 risks, including drought in Africa and Asia, continued ocean acidification, ozone depletion, no more blue skies, military use of technology, ruining terrestial optical astronomy, moral issues, and unexpected consequences. For more on Robock’s research and for other useful references, go here.

Jevons paradox: a problem for energy efficiency?

11 February 2014 / raminskibba / 5 Comments

I’d like to discuss an issue that probably isn’t sufficiently studied or addressed. If the Jevons paradox is relevant for today’s energy consumption and efficiency problems (or to other resources), then it is certainly worth further investigation.

The “Jevons paradox” (which I briefly mentioned in a previous post) is the idea that improved energy (and other material-resource) efficiency ultimately tends to lead not to conservation but to increased consumption. It’s named after the English economist William Stanley Jevons, who in his book The Coal Question (1865) observed that the coal-powered steam engine made coal a more cost-effective power source, leading to the increased use of the steam engine in a wide range of industries. This in turn increased total coal consumption and depleted reserves, even as the amount of coal required for any particular application fell. He argued that increased efficiency in the use of coal as an energy source only generated increased demand for that resource, not decreased demand, as one might expect. This was because improvement in efficiency led to further economic expansion.

Jevons was wrong about a few points: he failed to foresee the development of energy substitutes for coal, such as petroleum and hydroelectric power, or that coal supplies would take a long time to be exhausted. But the “Jevons paradox” appears to be a very important insight that has lately become a popular issue again (see for example, this New Yorker piece). In addition, some consider it an extreme version of the “rebound effect”, in which there is a rebound of more than 100% of “engineering savings,” resulting in an increase rather than decrease in the consumption of a given resource. In other words, savings from efficiency are used for additional consumption, thus cancelling the savings. In light of recent efforts to improve energy efficiency, the significance of Jevons paradox effects has understandably generated considerable debate (such as here and here).

If the Jevons paradox and rebound effect are real, then this has important policy implications. It does not mean that efforts for improving efficiency in homes, businesses, and vehicles are wasted, but it does mean that those efforts by themselves won’t reduce energy consumption and carbon emission. Major environmental problems like climate change cannot be solved by purely technological methods in a “free market”. In addition, cap-and-trade systems might not be as successful as hoped in terms of reducing emissions (for example, see this critique of California’s cap-and-trade program, which allows carbon offsets). There is no simple solution, but energy efficiency goals should be combined with other strategies and policies for reducing demand for fossil fuels, such as a carbon tax, requiring utilities to generate a higher fraction of their electricity from renewables, requiring automakers to increase fuel economy standards, etc. Some of these would be less popular with particular industries because it would be a bigger break from business-as-usual, but business-as-usual is clearly worsening climate change (and other resource-related environmental problems, such as involving water resources and pollution). Any effective strategy must cut carbon emissions deeply enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change, which means at least 80% below 2000 levels by 2050. The transition to a low-carbon economy will be a difficult one.

US Energy Policy (part 2)

28 January 2014 / raminskibba / 1 Comment

Since President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday, I’d like to write a bit more about energy policy, which may come up during the address in the context of the Climate Action Plan that was initiated last summer (when the picture below was taken). In addition, some new energy policies that are being advocated would create new jobs, especially in manufacturing and government sectors, whose employment rates haven’t improved much yet during the recovery from the economic recession.

The president can call on Congress to do its part to pass laws that will complement his Climate Action Plan. Some of the recommendations below would be difficult to achieve in the current political climate, but it’s important to at least demonstrate the political will and public commitment to improve energy and climate policies.

1. President Obama could urge Congress to extend tax incentives for renewable energy technologies, in particular for solar electricity and wind power, which have already expired for the latter. These could at least be extended to 2020. This may be politically feasible, considering that some conservatives are now in support of renewable energy. This is also popular: wind and solar power increased nearly four-fold in the US over the past five years, and nine states currently generate 10% or more of their electricity from wind and solar power. The technology already exists to have dynamic electricity grids that are designed to handle variability in supply (such as due to unexpected weather) and demand, making it possible to transition to an increasing reliance on renewables and less on fossil fuels. (See this report for more info.)

2. President Obama could lay the ground for eventually rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline (see also our earlier post). He said last year that it would be approved “only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” We have to wait for a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement before a final decision will be made.

3. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a carbon pollution standard for new power plants. These limits, which are required under the Clean Air Act, could be applied to existing plants as well. In order to meet the carbon pollution reductions outlined in the Climate Action Plan, 25% cuts in carbon pollution will be required.

4. The president could outline new energy efficiency policies for homes, automobiles, businesses, and industries. For example, the industrial sector is responsible for about 1/3 of all U.S. energy use. Energy-efficient building designs and investment in high-efficiency combined heat and power systems can reduce these energy demands. For cars and trucks, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards should be enforced by the EPA and Department of Transportation. In addition, a June 2012 study by the Blue Green Alliance finds that the new round of CAFE standards will create an estimated 570,000 full-time jobs throughout the US economy by 2030. The president could also urge Congress to expand investment in public transportation infrastructure that was begun in the The Recovery Act; this too would create thousands of new jobs.

US Energy Policy (part 1)

21 January 2014 / raminskibba / 2 Comments

After traveling for a few weeks, I’m back in San Diego, and I’d like to discuss US energy policies.

Currently, about 85% of our energy in the US comes from fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas; a similar proportion of energy comes from fossil fuels worldwide. Most of the rest of the energy in the US comes from nuclear power, while only a negligible contribution is drawn from renewable sources. Energy consumption is continuing to grow (though not as rapidly during the economic recession), and this growing demand is primarily being supplied by fossil fuel production.

While we’ve talked about the relation between energy policy and climate change in previous posts, note that it’s also related to water policy. With the current drought in the US, it’s critically important to reduce water consumption. However, conventional coal power plants consume massive amounts of water, while natural gas and nuclear power also require significant amounts. The best are wind turbines and solar panels, which require almost no water at all.

There has been some opposition to US energy policies. For example, environmental groups (including the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and Natural Resources Defense Council) announced in a letter a few days ago that is breaking with President Obama and opposes his “all of the above” energy policy: “With record-high atmospheric carbon concentrations and the rising threat of extreme heat, drought, wildfires and super storms, America’s energy policies must reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, not simply reduce our dependence on foreign oil…[A]n ‘all of the above’ approach that places virtually no limits on whether, when, where or how fossil fuels are extracted ignores the impacts of carbon-intense fuels and is wrong for America’s future.”

Current fossil fuel-focused energy policies involve many contentious issues. For example, hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” technologies have made it possible to extract oil and gas from shale and other tight rock formations, but they involve blasting large amounts of water and chemicals into the ground and they create more environmental degradation, especially water and air pollution, than other energy sources. The extraction of oil from tar sands in Canada has also been criticized, and the Keystone pipeline, which would transport this oil through the US, has faced massive protests. In addition, the coal industry has advocated for so-called “clean coal” technologies, but these do not appear to be as clean or viable as they’re touted to be.

Perhaps most importantly, it is clear that we need to focus on demand, not just supply, and to increase energy efficiency. Many strides can be made to improve energy efficiency in industry, power plants, homes, and automobiles (and more investment in public transportation infrastructure would help too). With expanding economies, rising standards of living, and population growth, it will become increasingly important to reduce energy consumption whenever possible. For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists has a list of energy efficiency policies that are being or can be implemented. (However, energy efficiency also raises the issue of the Jevons paradox, but we can discuss that later.)

In the future, for energy policies to be more sustainable, we will have to
decrease reliance on oil and gas and shift to cleaner renewable energy sources, especially wind and solar power. However, we also want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible (with larger reductions in the future) so as to minimize the effects of climate change. In order to build renewable energy infrastructure, energy will be required, raising questions about how we can achieve sustainable energy policies nationally and internationally without consuming too many fossil fuels in the process. These questions don’t have easy answers, but it does seem clear that in the short term, we should focus on energy efficient technologies and on making wind and solar energy economically competitive with fossil fuels.

Ramin Skibba

Science Writer and Freelance Journalist

Energy efficiency