The report, “On the Rise; Solar Thermal Power and the Fight Against Global Warming,” touts the multiple benefits of solar thermal power that the U.S. has barely begun to tap. One, it’s a clean source of energy that could replace other power sources that generate greenhouse gases and worsen climate change. Two, by storing thermal energy, it can generate electricity even when the sun isn’t shining. And ,three, it’s wildly abundant in the U.S., offering way more clean energy than we currently use on a daily basis.

The report notes that a 100-mile-by-100-mile solar thermal installation in the American Southwest could meet the entire country’s energy needs. That area, it further adds, is just a little larger than the amount of land in the U.S. that has been strip-mined for coal.

“If we are going to get serious about fighting global warming and addressing our energy challenges, solar energy must be part of the solution,” said Holly Binns, Environment Florida’s field director.

While the Southwest alone could generate more than 7,000 gigawatts of energy,  other parts of the U.S.  — including Florida — promise a large potential for solar energy development. The Sunshine State has some catching-up to do, but recently improved its clean-energy performance with the opening of the Sunshine Energy Solar Array near Sarasota. The 28,000-square-foot array, Florida’s largest to date, can generate 250 kilowatts of energy, enough to power about 45 typical homes per month.

Clearly, the state will need quite a few more like these to make a serious dent in its fossil-fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Florida officials hope recently approved green-energy legislation will encourage those kinds of developments. The bill includes, among other things, authorization for a cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a renewable fuel standard and renewable portfolio standard that promotes wind and solar energy, and new building standards that call for higher energy efficiency in new homes and businesses.

At the national level, the Environment Florida report is also encouraging. With the right policies, it says, the U.S. could easily generate 80 gigawatts of concentrating solar power by 2030. That would be enough to power 25 million homes, reduce carbon emissions by 6.6 percent and create between 75,000 and 140,000 new jobs.

Good news — for a change — isn’t it? Let’s just hope the right people are listening.

This facility at Waste Management’s Altamont Landfill in Livermore, California will begin operation in 2009. It comes with a price tag of $15.5 million, with grants providing $1.4 million.

Cleaner Fuel

Waste Management is the largest waste management company in North America and operates the largest US fleet of heavy-duty collection trucks. The company has a goal to reduce fleet emissions by 15% by 2020.

The new facility will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30,000 tons per year, according to Linde North America. LNG is a cleaner burning transportation fuel that emits less nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and particulates than diesel-fueled vehicles.

Duane Woods, senior vice president, Western group of Waste Management, said, “This will be the largest plant of its kind and we hope to break new ground by producing commercial quantities. Natural gas is already the cleanest burning fuel available for our collection trucks, and the opportunity to use recovered landfill gas offers enormous environmental benefits to the communities we serve.”

Demand for Low-carbon Fuels

California passed a law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020 and other states may follow. Demand for low-carbon fuels is expected to increase significantly in California as the state starts requiring a decrease in carbon emissions. Waste Management will be ahead of the curve by having plants like this in operation, creating lucrative business opportunities.

Related Posts on Alternative Fuels:

• Landfill Gas Heats and Powers School
• The Cleanest Cars on Earth: Honda Civic GX and Other Natural Gas Vehicles (NGV’s)
• Natural Gas Cars: CNG Fuel Almost Free in Some Parts of the Country

Photo Credit: Waste Management

Your house may not be your biggest contributer to globalwarming. Credit: Jim Gunshinan.

My focus in this blog had been on green homes, but there are other areas of our lives that account for our total carbon footprint–how much carbon we are responsible for adding to the atmosphere–a measure of our contribution to global warming. Our houses and apartments, but also our cars, air travel, and the food we eat all contribute.

Don Fugler, who does research for the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation, estimated the amount each area of our lives contributes to our carbon footprint. He used a hypothetical family of four (two adults, two kids) in Ottawa, with a medium-sized house (2,400 square feet), and two cars (Ford Explorer and Honda Fit) to do the calculations. Both parents work and travel about 20 miles roundtrip to work each weekday. The kids travel a few miles each day back and forth to school. Both parents make a total of five trips to Toronto and five trips to other places each year for business, and the family goes on a yearly ski trip to Whistler by air travel, and back and forth by car to visit relatives in Nova Scotia once a year.

For us Californians, replace Ottawa with Oakland, Whistler with Lake Tahoe, add a trip to Hawaii, and subtract most of the energy used for heating a house, and I think we come close to the Canadian example.

The folks who brought us the movie also gave us a niftycarbon calculator. Use it to measure the size of your carbonfootprint (go to www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction). Credit: www.climatecrisis.net

Our hypothetical family, according to Don’s calculations, emits about 13 tons of CO2 from their house, about 14 tons because of air travel, about 10 tons from their cars, and about 5 tons from the food they eat (including growing, shipping, and waste disposal). Notice that the highest amount is from air travel!

The folks who brought us the movie An Inconvenient Truth also provide an online calculator so that you can more accurately calculate your contribution to global warming–the site also gives good information on how to reduce your carbon footprint. Don recommends that we conduct more and more of our business using the Internet instead of traveling far from our homes, live close to our jobs in dense urban areas with good public transportation, ride our bikes a lot, and all become vegetarians.

Who doesn’t want to be green? But beware of automobile ads claiming environmental benefits from home-grown ethanol. Almost all U.S. ethanol comes from corn and, as a fuel, corn just isn’t as “amaizing” as they say.

“What if we could live green by going yellow?” one TV spot asks. “What if we could lower greenhouse gas emissions,” it continues, promisingly, “with a fuel that grew back every year?” Sounds great doesn’t it? Sorry folks, it’s just not so.

With corn ethanol, we are barking up the wrong stalk. This so-called yellow fuel is not green and the rush to it is misguided. The negatives of turning corn into fuel far outweigh the positives. First a little background.

A short history of ethanol

Ethanol has been around for a long time. Some of the earliest forms of life on Earth — anaerobic bacteria — used fermentation to produce ethanol and in the process extracted energy to drive their metabolic functions. In prehistoric times humans fermented grains and other biomass to make ethanol. Most of you have encountered ethanol in your lives — in beer, or wine, or the harder stuff. Ethanol is simply alcohol.

Using ethanol as a fuel dates back to the nineteenth century. It powered some of the earliest automobiles, including Henry Ford’s first car, the Quadricycle. Interest in reviving and expanding the usage of ethanol in cars today has grown, in part, because of its perceived climate benefit.

When we burn fossil fuel, excess carbon dioxide (CO₂), the chief global warming pollutant, is released to the atmosphere. This, at least in principle, should not be the case for ethanol or other biofuels (fuels produced from plants and wastes). When ethanol is burned, its carbon is converted to CO₂, just as in fossil fuels. But because the carbon in biofuels is pulled directly from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, it would seem that burning ethanol does not, in and of itself, represent a net source of new CO₂ to the atmosphere. (See the Department of Energy’s diagram below.)

As it turns out, it’s not that simple.

Why ethanol is not effective at fighting global warming

To get the whole picture you have to consider ethanol’s entire life cycle — the energy inputs and global warming pollution arising from every step in the production process, such as:

• cultivating and harvesting the crop,
• refining the crop to ethanol, and
• its transportation to market.

Corn is a particularly hungry crop — it requires lots of water and nitrogen fertilizers. The application of fertilizers creates nitrous oxide. Though it’s called laughing gas in the dentist’s office, in the atmosphere it is no laughing matter — nitrous oxide is about 120 times more potent than CO₂ at trapping heat.

As you can start to see, corn ethanol is ineffective at fighting global warming. A research team from Princeton University led by Tim Searchinger pointed out an obvious but little appreciated fact about biofuels in a recent study. Growing crops for fuel requires cropland dedicated to that purpose. That can create a market imbalance.

For example, the seemingly simple decision to grow corn instead of soybeans creates a demand for soybeans that can only be met by someone else adding cropland to grow soybeans. Typically this entails destroying important rainforests or grasslands. This transformation of land spews huge reservoirs of carbon stored in that land into the atmosphere in the form of CO₂, leading to further global warming. It is mind-boggling but probably true: U.S. farmers growing more corn drives the destruction of tropical rainforests in Brazil as more land is converted to soybeans. Now that’s a global economy.

The Searchinger team’s results suggest that when land-use changes are factored into the equation any possible climate benefit from corn ethanol is canceled out. Searchinger’s models stunningly show that it would take 167 years of continuous corn ethanol production before it would begin to switch from a climate loser to a climate helper. That’s way too long to wait with global warming bearing down on us.

So, for the huge environmental price of growing corn for ethanol, what do we get? An increase in the very emissions we need to reduce — the precise opposite of what is needed.

The silver lining of biofuels: Degraded or abandoned land and waste

While ads might encourage you to go green by going yellow, I recommend caution. Given the present source of ethanol in the U.S., it is a bad environmental bet. Going yellow isn’t easy either. Sure you can buy an E85 car (one that runs on a mix of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline). The car companies would love you to because they get a break from the federal government on meeting national fuel economy standards. But try filling your new car with ethanol. As of January 2007, there were only about 1,100 E85 pumps in the U.S. My own take on this is that we could accomplish a lot more, a lot faster by zeroing in on fuel economy.

So that’s the bad news about corn ethanol. But there is a bright spot on the biofuels landscape; it involves using biomass waste and growing feedstocks on land that stores very little carbon. We’ll discuss these solutions in our next post. Stay tuned.

Read more about Dr. Bill Chameides, Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University.

See also:

Green Options: The Big Dark Cloud in the Ethanol Silver Lining

CleanTechnica: First Sustainable Ethanol to Mass Market?

Gas 2.0: First Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Goes Online, Makes Fuel from Wood Waste

Slate.com, tracking the emissions of the torch, reports that… Through Thursday’s stop in Canberra, the relay has traveled an estimated 40,875 miles, burned 220,725 gallons of jet fuel, and released 5,270,913 pounds of CO₂.

Related Post:

Olympic Torch Relay Emits 5,500 Tons of CO2

Green Light New Orleans

Established in 2006 after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Green Light New Orleans is the brainchild of Swiss-born musician Andi Hoffmann, who’s now a resident of the Big Easy. Hoffman started the program first as a way to offset the greenhouse gas pollution he and his band b-goes generated during their tours to Europe. It’s since taken on a greater goal: to reduce New Orleanians’ energy costs and help fight climate change.

As Green Light New Orleans’ Website puts it, ” Global warming is the most significant environmental challenge of the day, and New Orleans is one of the most at risk cities.”

The organization estimates that, since it started installing CFLs across the city, it has (over the life of each bulb) helped residents save $2.7 million in electricity costs and reduced the region’s carbon dioxide emissions by 26 million pounds. It aims to install another 300,000-plus compact fluorescent light bulbs throughout the Crescent City in 2008.

Hoffmann says the effort has grown rapidly, to the point where Green Light New Orleans volunteers are now installing about 15,000 new CFLs each month.

“We currently receive about 40 applications per day and have a waiting list of 1,800 homes, which equals about 55,000 CFLs,” Hoffmann says. “With the help of grants, the business community and the volunteers we should be able to put CFL light bulbs in every home within four years.”

Ahimbisibwe owns a little plot of land on which she grows some of the trees involved in TetraPak’s contract to produce fresh air for all the pollution caused by its production processes. A case study of the carbon sequestration project on EcoSystemMarketplace.com reveals interesting insights into the practices of an emissions offsetting program.

The study reveals that when TetraPak UK started to scour around for options to trade carbons in 2003, the company didn’t get far all by itself. It found outside help at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management (ECCM). The first elemental step in the carbon footprint reduction effort which ECCM consulted TetraPak on was the devision of a computer program calculating the actual damage done. TetraPak’s annual carbon footprint is now monitored, based on real data.

In 2004, TetraPak UK began to actively reduce carbon emissions, which had been determined at 11,780 tons for 2001. This is where Uganda comes in sight. A total of 80%, of TetraPak UK’s carbon program “materializes” from Ugandan projects. The remaining 20% comes from bio-mass and solar energy projects in India and Sri Lanka.

The program was successful. In 2004, a 13% reduction was achieved from the company’s 2001 footprint. There are no legal requirements guiding companies here, so TetraPak’s regime is more or less self-imposed. TetraPak said it would try for a 15% reduction target in 2005.

Ahimbisibwe was approached by ECOTRUST, a Ugandan NGO, to sign a carbon sequestration contract. She was not using one hectare of land that she owns and was interested in planting native species of trees on it for the benefit of the environment. The contract she signed provides her with an amount of $8 per ton of sequestered carbon. She’s expected to generate 57 tons over ten years. Ahimbisibwe is quite happy with this, also because she hasn’t signed away too lenghy a time span. She’s allowed to prune and sell the wood after 15 years.

One of the most common arguments against large-scale use of renewable energy is that it cannot produce a steady, reliable stream of energy, day and night. Ausra Inc. does not agree. They believe that solar thermal technology can supply over 90% of grid power, while reducing carbon emissions.

“The U.S. could nearly eliminate our dependence on coal, oil and gas for electricity and transportation, drastically slashing global warming pollution without increasing costs for energy,” said David Mills, chief scientific officer and founder of Ausra.

You may be wondering, how will we have electricity at night or during cloudy weather?
Will we use large banks of batteries or burn candles?

The ability to utilize solar thermal technology after the sun sets is made possible by a storage system that is up to 93% efficient, according to Ausra’s executive vice president John O’Donnell.

High efficiency is achieved because solar thermal plants do not need to convert energy to another form in order to store it and do not rely on battery technology. Flat moving recflectors or parabolic mirrors focus solar energy to generate heat. This heat generates steam that turns turbines, thus generating an electric current.

If you want to generate electricity-at, say, 3 am-heat from the sun can be stored for later use. This gives solar thermal technology the ability to not just produce peak power, but also generate base load electricity.

Peak Power: The First Wave of Solar Thermal Plants
The maximum amount of electricity demand on the power grid occurs during weekday afternoons and evenings in the summer months in most regions of the United States. This is largely caused by air conditioning loads, which gobble up electricity.

Because the electric grid needs to be able to handle these peak loads, capacity is built to specifically handle these loads. Natural gas and oil typically comes to the rescue to produce this electricity. Although these plants are expensive to operate, they are cheaper to construct than most of the alternatives. They are fast to start, producing power in 30 minutes or less. Additional power plants are constructed just to generate electricity for the times when it is needed most.

This causes peak electricity to be more expensive. A kilowatt hour of electricity at 3 pm and 3 am does not come with the same price tag to the utility company.

“Adding solar plants that reliably generate until 10 pm displaces the highest cost alternative power,” said John O’Donnell. “That is the first wave of solar thermal plants. The daily and seasonal variation in grid load in the United States matches solar availability.”

Base Load: Replacing Coal Power
Base load is the minimum amount of electricity demand placed on the power grid over a 24 hour period. Coal and nuclear plants commonly supply this energy. These plants can take hours or even days to heat up to operating temperatures and are run more continuously than peak power plants.

Due largely to the lower cost of fuel, these plants can produce electricity at a lower cost. If a carbon tax is implemented in the future, this will increase the cost of electricity generated from coal.

Generating electricity around the clock with solar thermal technology relies on storage systems that run turbines long after the sun sets. “Ausra has a very active energy storage R & D group and we will be prototyping a couple of systems this year here in the US,” said John O’Donnell.

Solar Energy Storage
This is not a new technology, having been used for plastic manufacturing and petroleum production for a long time. Solar thermal plants have a cost advantage compared to photovoltaic technology because energy can be stored as heat without being converted to another form or relying on batteries.

“My favorite example in comparing energy storage options is on your desktop,” said John O’Donnell. “If you have a laptop computer and a thermos of coffee on your desk, the battery in your laptop and the thermos store about the same amount of energy. One of them costs about $150 and the other one costs maybe $3 to $5. On the wholesale level, storing electric power is at least 100 times more expensive than storing heat.”

The future certainly looks bright for solar thermal technology as concern over climate change increases. Global demand for electricity is growing rapidly, requiring clean solutions.

Related Posts:
Solar Thermal Electricity: Can it Replace Coal, Gas, and Oil?
Senate Coalition Introduces Clean Energy Tax Package
Solar Panels and the Quest for $1/Watt
Clean Energy Intro: Solar Businesses
4 Things to Consider Before Going Solar

Photo: Ausra’s facility in New South Wales, Australia. Courtesy Ausra.

A theoretical US policy to cut carbon emissions by up to 40% over a 20 year period could still result in increased economic growth; this, according to an interactive website created by the Yale School of Foresty and Environmental Studies.

The website reviews 25 of the leading economic models used to predict economic impacts of reducing emissions, and identifies the seven key assumptions account for most of the major differences in the model predictions.

“As Congress prepares to debate new legislation to address the threat of climate change, opponents claim that the costs of adopting the leading proposals would be ruinous to the U.S. economy. The world’s leading economists who have studied the issue say that’s wrong — and you can find out for yourself,” said Robert Repetto, professor in the practice of economics and sustainable development at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

The interactive website allows visitors to define the truth of one of the seven statements, and then view the prediction of the models.

“The website shows that even under the most unfavorable assumptions regarding costs, the U.S. economy is predicted to continue growing robustly as carbon emissions are reduced,” said Repetto. “Under favorable assumptions, the economy would grow more rapidly if emissions are reduced through national policy measures than if they are allowed to increase as in the past.”

To check out the website click here, and proceed to the calculator via the link at the bottom.

The store, located in Las Vegas, is said to use up to 45 percent less energy than your basic Supercenter. It’s also designed specifically for the Southwest’s typical climate conditions.

Among the store’s features: a system that pumps water through rooftop cooling towers, then uses that water to provide evaporative cooling underneath the floors. The structure also builds upon energy-conserving and emissions-reducing strategies for heating, lighting and refrigeration that were tested in the previous prototypes, HE.1 and HE.2.

Because of the climate-specific nature of the design, the HE.5 store will be built only in areas with similar conditions, Wal-Mart said. By next year, the retailing giant aims to complete design of a “viable store prototype” that is 25 to 30 percent more energy-efficient than regular stores.

Despite its ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and move toward greener construction, Wal-Mart continues to see its overall emissions rise because of its ongoing growth around the globe. At a conference last week, CEO Lee Scott Jr. acknowledged he had no idea when the company could actually meet its professed goals of 100-percent renewable energy and zero waste, and stated, “We are not green.”

US airlines must pay for their carbon dioxide emissions or face a curb on flights to the European Union, the EU transport commissioner warned yesterday.

Read More

Does the town of Holcomb, Kansas sound familiar?

I’m sure it does if you’ve read “In Cold Blood,” or seen the movies based on the book and its author Truman Capote.

In a perverted way that negative association has been somewhat of a godsend. People remember Holcomb; they immediately recall it as the place where a senseless and unspeakable crime was committed.

Unfortunately, it looks like Holcomb may be preparing for a sequel, featuring yet another heinous act. This time it involves the attempts of Sunflower Electric Corp.—along with several lawmakers—to force an expansion of the power company’s Holcomb facilities, which would include two hazardous coal-burning electric plants.

Call it “In Coal Blood,” if you will (sorry…if you hear a churning noise under your feet it’s probably just Mr. Capote spinning in his grave like a rotisserie chicken).

Back in October, Rod Bremby, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, with the support of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, rejected the air permits for the company’s proposed pair of 700-megawatt coal-burning electric plants, citing the devastating impact emissions from carbon dioxide—and other greenhouse gases—would have on the environment.

In other words, it was the first time a proposed power plant had been rejected by using a “global warming” defense. This defense certainly wasn’t far-fetched. After all, the proposed plants would spew some 11 million tons of CO2 annually, making them the largest new source of such emissions in the nation.

But, of course, the battle didn’t end there.

Sunflower Electric and its supporters in the state legislature continue to try and ram this project down our throats. They insist it is needed to meet rising energy demands in western Kansas; they also argue that it will lead to much-needed economic development in one of the poorest regions of the state.

Or as Greg Brady look-alike Sen. Sam Brownback recently put it:

“Expansion of the Sunflower facility would have created 2,000 jobs during construction and an additional 400 permanent jobs and billions of dollars in economic development.”

Two thousand temporary jobs and 400 permanent ones—is that all we get for destroying the planet? Well, heck, throw in 30 pieces of silver and you got yourself a deal!

Then again, I’m sure Brownback’s job estimates are low. After all, several other jobs might be created as a result of this expansion, namely hospital receptionists, pulmonary specialists, insurance claims adjusters…

Moreover, proponents also fail to emphasize that Kansans will only receive about 10 percent of the energy generated from the plants; the remaining 90 percent will be shipped off to Colorado and Texas. They conveniently overlook the fact that all of the waste—namely mercury dumped in the water—will remain right here in Kansas.

Perhaps that, too, will create more jobs: water inspectors, Hazmat workers, not to mention the voluntary citizen soldiers needed to fight off the giant mutant fish that will threaten to take over Kansas by 2011.

Still, even Sammy B. realizes that coal alone is not the answer:

“The new coal plants would be part of an integrated bioenergy center that would have significant benefits for the environment. For example, much of the carbon produced by the coal plants would be captured and used to grow algae, which would be crushed to make biodiesel. Ethanol, another renewable fuel, would be produced onsite by using methane gas from livestock facilities.”

So let me get this straight: we only need 10 percent of the energy a plant like this would generate, and we know that alternative methods (proposed only as supplemental energy) are available, and yet we want to go ahead and produce far more than we need simply so a corporation can cut a deal with two other states, all while destroying our own water. Sounds like a plan to me!

Let’s be honest here, the plant is not about meeting surging energy demands; it’s about making money. We could meet the energy demands with a combination of alternative methods that, while not perfect, would leave a far smaller carbon footprint—I mean, Brownback didn’t even mention wind energy, which capitalizes on one of our state’s greatest natural resources.

But all of that is a hard sell to the folks of western Kansas. Times are hard in rural America.

We can—and should—argue that the coal plants are not in the best interest of the folks out west, but we need to do more than simply shoot down the proposal. We need to offer them something concrete in its place. What that entails exactly is beyond my tiny brain, but I imagine it would require bringing politicians, environmentalists, alternative energy experts, and western Kansans together to show that alternative energy and jobs can be had through far less damaging means—and that the two concepts are anything but mutually exclusive.

I hope that Holcomb eventually shakes off its reputation as the setting for one of the most brutal crimes depicted in American literature. Here’s to hoping it comes to represent the small town of the future—one that simultaneously respects the environment and the needs of its residents.

There. I think I finally made Mr. Capote stop spinning.

Under the plan, all new construction at Princeton will have to use half as much energy as is required under current building codes. The plan also aims to reduce campus car traffic by 10 percent by 2020.

“We feel that we have an obligation as an institution to create an environment where students, faculty and staff can see the institution trying out new technologies … or trying to change behavior,” said Mark Burstein, Princeton’s executive vice president.

Meeting the plan’s goals will require new incentives for biking and walking on campus, replacing standard university vehicles with low-emissions vehicles and testing environmentally friendly strategies such as green roofs.

“Implementing this plan will cost more than it will save,” Burstein said, noting a potential outlay of tens of millions of dollars. However, he added, he expects the university will recoup of its expenses via lower energy costs in the future.

Some of the plan’s costs are also likely to be covered by the High Meadows Foundation, which helps finance green initiatives.

Dr. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic, Jr. have proposed a concept to synthesize gasoline from carbon dioxide emissions, and have dubbed their idea “Green Freedom.” “The idea is simple,” (a sure bet that it’s anything but) says Kenneth Chang in the New York Times:

Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide [which] would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.

The resulting gasoline would not emit carbon dioxide. Developed at Los Alamos, the idea is based on sound physics, though so far it has not been proven at the factory level. The problem with the concept is that it uses an enormous amount of energy — so much so that it can’t be produced economically except by a nuclear power plant. Oh, and thousands of them would need to be built in order to replace petroleum at current levels of use. The scientists are estimating that the process could produce gasoline at a cost of $3.40 a gallon to the consumer.

If this sounds like a contorted process, it may be because the carbon emissions problem remains a hard nut to crack. Electric cars just move the energy use to the power plant, unless those cars are powered by solar-charged batteries. Hydrogen fuel cells take large amounts of energy to create the hydrogen. And biofuels take up valuable farmland or replace rainforests needed to offset carbon emissions. So you can’t blame a scientist for trying. Martin and Kubic will present their idea today at the Alternative Energy Now conference in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

For another take on the “Green Freedom” project, see Steve Verhey’s post on Gas 2.0.

Still, the “simple actions” approach to sustainability also runs the risk of becoming simplistic, and even moralistic. Many of us are probably guilty of looking aghast at someone when we find out they don’t recycle, or buy their produce from the neighborhood farmers’ market. “It’s so simple,” we tell ourselves. We feel justified, then, in judging others, perhaps harshly, for the actions they don’t take.

In the latest issue of The New Yorker (published today), writer Michael Specter takes a look at the “simple” actions not only taken by individuals and families, but also promoted by the business world to consumers. British supermarket chain Tesco, for instance, has announced it will look for an easy method for identifying the carbon footprint of the products it sells. Walkers crisps (potato chips) already carry such a label. These are steps forward, no doubt, in providing information that consumers want. But, as Specter points out, there’s nothing simple about determining the carbon footprint of a product:

In order to develop the label for Walkers, researchers had to calculate the amount of energy required to plant seeds for the ingredients (sunflower oil and potatoes), as well as to make the fertilizers and pesticides used on those potatoes. Next, they factored in the energy required for diesel tractors to collect the potatoes, then the effects of chopping, cleaning, storing, and bagging them. The packaging and printing processes also emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, as does the petroleum used to deliver those crisps to stores. Finally, the research team assessed the impact of throwing the empty bag in the trash, collecting the garbage in a truck, driving to a landfill, and burying them. In the end, the researchers—from the Carbon Trust—found that seventy-five grams of greenhouse gases are expended in the production of every individual-size bag of potato chips.

Potato chips are relatively simple because the list of ingredients is short. Once we move into food products with more ingredients, the process becomes much more complex. Of course, all of this ignores the nutritional content, which can create a real conundrum for a concerned shopper: what if a product has a small carbon footprint, but is high in fat and sodium? On what measurement of “goodness” does a consumer rely then?

Specter’s point isn’t that shoppers shouldn’t feel good about buying products with a small footprint, but, rather, that the criteria by which we make such judgments are often oversimplified. Take “food miles,” for instance (a concept I’ve discussed): does closer to home always mean a smaller footprint? According to Specter, not if we consistently analyze the lifecycle of a product:

The environmental burden imposed by importing apples from New Zealand to Northern Europe or New York can be lower than if the apples were raised fifty miles away. “In New Zealand, they have more sunshine than in the U.K., which helps productivity,” [agricultural researcher Terry] Williams explained. That means the yield of New Zealand apples far exceeds the yield of those grown in northern climates, so the energy required for farmers to grow the crop is correspondingly lower. It also helps that the electricity in New Zealand is mostly generated by renewable sources, none of which emit large amounts of CO₂.

While this doesn’t take into account other benefits of locally-produced food (freshness, lack of preservatives, connections with the sources of our food), the carbon equation is much more complex than “food miles” would have us believe.

Williams further complicates his own argument by noting that, even as we strive to create more transparency about the impact of the products we buy, informed consumption is only one piece of the puzzle: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous, cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” Both government and business have larger roles to play in determining how the costs of carbon emissions figure into the global social and economic picture. While tying a price to carbon emissions is critical, can the private sector do this on its own through institutions like the Chicago Carbon Exchange? Or are government-imposed ceilings on carbon emissions necessary? Doesn’t putting a price on carbon mean that it’s OK to pollute if you can afford to do so? And how does the developing world play into such strategies? Do we run the risk of creating a system of “climate colonialism,” where poor nations must develop along prescribed paths in order to balance the impact of Western-style development? Even if rich nations pay poorer ones to maintain forests and other “carbon sinks,” doesn’t this still amount to a mindset of “we know what’s best for you?”

None of these questions are answered easily, but it’s critical that we engage with them as we step up to the challenges of climate change, water shortages, loss of biodiversity, and other environmental crises. Ecology is a study of complexity, and trying to deal with ecological issues in a simple manner is bound to come back and bite us (just think of all the hubbub over corn-based ethanol as a major weapon in the fight against climate change).

So, do we stop publishing the tips, and praising companies for green labeling strategies? No… again, I think these methods are useful for bringing others on board, at least in terms of their actions and purchasing choices. As we do these things, though, we have to make sure not to fall into simple thinking as we promote simple solutions. Tips, simple actions, and greener purchasing choices can engage and empower others, but we can’t lead either “green newbies” or ourselves to believe that they’ll provide the answers for the complex problems facing us, or that going green doesn’t require some recognition of the intricacy of our footprints.

The only way to stabilize Earth’s climate, according to new research, is to cut carbon emissions to zero … and to do it quick.

Climate scientists Ken Caldeira and Damon Matthews reached that conclusion after taking a new approach to future climate modeling. Rather than analyze what it would take to stabilize carbon dioxide levels, they crunched data to determine how much carbon we could continue pumping into the air without warming the Earth any further.

The answer they got was: none.

“Most scientific and policy discussions about avoiding climate change have centered on what emissions would be needed to stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Caldeira said. “But stabilizing greenhouse gases does not equate to a stable climate.”

In Caldeira’s and Mathews’ model, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations slowly begin dropping only if emissions go to zero. And, even in that case, the Earth remains warm for another 500 years.

On the flip side, any emissions more than zero result in further warming of the planet.

“What if we were to discover tomorrow that a climate catastrophe was imminent if our planet warmed any further?” Caldeira asked.

That might be a question we’ll have to answer soon. Amazingly, though, Caldeira remains hopeful.

“It is just not that hard to solve the technological challenges,” he said. “We can develop and deploy wind turbines, electric cars, and so on, and live well without damaging the environment. The future can be better than the present, but we have to take steps to start kicking the CO2 habit now, so we won’t need to go cold turkey later.”

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Transport is too vast a topic to discuss as a whole. Instead, I want to just look at our behaviour on the roads. Can it ever be possible to curb this behaviour when we seemingly continue to believe that the car is the only way forward?

I don’t drive, yet this piece is in no way the sideswipe of some hypocrite speaking from the pavement. Not at all; my partner drives, and so we as a family are all part of the problem. But can there be a solution?

Regrettably, the environmental impacts of car use go way beyond carbon emissions. We are discussing here a subject that is absolutely inherent to the developed world’s lifestyle and, somewhat inevitably, car use continues to grow. When you consider the eagerness with which Asia and the rest of the developing world play catch up, I’d hope we can begin to set a better example.

Look around you. Urban sprawl catering to the car. Just as an example, take the shopping trip. I know in this family at least we are incredibly reliant on the car – and this involves a trip to the out-of-town supermarket. Purposefully built out of town, it should be noted. It’s convenient, there’s more choice and, damning for the local shopkeeper though what follows is, the trip will invariably work out cheaper.

Local air pollution, noise, the impacts on health, congestion, road traffic casualties, all these negatives seem to be cast aside in favour of the convenience afforded by owning a car.

Furthermore, land take is enormous and as swathes of the countryside become asphalt, yet more car use becomes a necessity. Shopping, along with business and leisure; all require that we travel. And as more roads are built, so our destinations become further and further away.

But as is well known, the main environmental impact from cars is of course those emissions. There is perhaps the rather naïve belief that technology has the answer here. But let’s take the catalytic converter as an example of why it will take more than technology to clean up our act.

Since 1992, it has been mandatory that petrol cars have catalytic converters fitted. And certainly, once fitted, they can indeed reduce the amount of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons emitted. However, they reduce fuel efficiency and therefore to an extent negate the original benefits. Coupled with this, since more fuel is required, more carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere.

Not only is more CO2 being produced, the original reason for these catalytic converters being introduced is being undone by increasing car ownership and travel.

It’s imperative this be understood. Any technological advance, be it in fuel efficiency or a reduction in emissions will always become nigh on negligible because the sheer volume of traffic on our roads continues to rise. No matter how clean the technology, unless we are dealing with zero emission transport, an increase in volume outweighs the advance. So what of our alternatives?

Public transport? Well, why is it still a running joke that buses seem to always turn up in threes? And why does our rail network continue to be the butt of so much satire? The answer to both these questions is simple. It’s because there’s more than an element of truth to them.

When one considers arguments against the use of trains or buses such as the price of fares, overcrowding, the length of time needed to complete the journey, lack of personal safety, lack of reliability, you realise that as things stand, the answer is far from on our doorstep – where, incidentally, you’ll find the car is parked.

But I would suggest that we could at least collectively push for improvements, demand investment, rather than continually wait on the unsubstantiated rhetoric that comes from the mouths of Westminster. These issues do indeed need to be resolved, but I’m sure that with awareness and investment, they can be.

As an example, consider the use of the Metrolink in Manchester. This is no new project. It officially opened in 1992 and according to their website, 52,000 passenger journeys are undertaken each day. Annually, this equates to 18.8m passengers and this has led to research suggesting that at least 2 million car journeys have been taken off the road each year along the route. This is more like it. Especially as light rail transport is considered to be around three times more energy efficient than your average family car.

The Metrolink is of course just one example – but it does highlight that alternatives are out there, and as stated, this was opened 15 years ago. I am not suggesting here a mass exodus to a greener, more sustainable way of life, via a light rail network. But as experts are telling us, an efficient public transport system must be seen as part of the future.

Certainly, technical improvements to cars can also be seen as a candid part of this – consider for example the hybrid cars now on the market, but somewhere along the line, our behaviour and reliance on the car will have to be curtailed as we begin to see the catching of a bus, train or tram as more a part of our daily routine.

This article first appeared in the Western Daily Press © Pem Charnley 2007

Picture Obtained from Flickr here.

The “Cool Earth Partnership” fund pledges $8 billion in assistance and $2 billion in grants, aid, and public assistance for clean energy.  Dispersal of funds will begin this year and is set to expire in 2012.

The Prime Minister of Japan, Yasuo Fukuda also serves as the chairmen of the July G8 summit.  This announcement seems to indicate that climate change will be a major issue for the upcoming summit.

Japan has struggled to decrease emission to meet its Kyoto Protocol goals.  Some aggressive actions have been taken, such as a recent initiative for 30% of Japanese homes to have solar energy systems by 2030.

The actions taken by Japan highlight the lack of action being taken in the United States.   The Japanese enjoy a high standard of living, yet the average person generates half the carbon dioxide emissions compared to the average American.

The United States never ratified the Kyoto Protocol and the EPA may even stop California from having stricter vehicle emissions standards.   While Germany and Japan have world-class government incentives for solar energy, a tax credit in the United States that encourages solar and wind energy is set to expire in 2008.

The good news is that considerable support in the United States for clean technology has been emerging from the private sector through investments in clean technology.  In 2007, several renewable energy mutual funds and exchange traded funds were created, providing simple opportunities for investing in clean energy.