New Energy Strategy for Minnesota Evaluates Renewables

A new article in the RMI Outlet looks at a comprehensive evaluation in Minnesota to assess the value and potential of renewable energy resources to replace the infrastructure heavily dependent on fossil fuels. The move has elicited some corresponding excitement from businesses in the state.

And it is not just Minnesota’s government building momentum around an alternative energy future. The state’s Fortune 100 companies, such as Target and Best Buy, have set significant GHG reduction goals. Its power companies continue to expand renewable generation, including both solar and wind. And Minnesota’s civil society, pillared by organizations such as Great Plains Institute and Center for Energy and Environment, helps facilitate change and drive innovation in the energy and efficiency sector. That is why RMI was excited to support the Minnesota Department of Commerce in the development of a comprehensive guide to conducting an energy future study for Minnesota.

You can imagine that somewhere in the faraway, fictional land of Lake Wobegon, solar panels are appearing atop barn roofs and wind turbines are gracing ridge lines.

NASA Study Points to Collapse of Civilization

A new study funded by NASA suggests that we're facing the collapse of industrial civilization within decades due to a combination of factors evaluated using a cross-disciplinary model, HANDY (Human And Nature DYnamical). Factors that were weighed in the study include: population, climate, water, agriculture, and Energy. Rather than being a rare occurrence, the study points to earlier historical precedents that show that "precipitous collapse" has been common in human history and the results often last centuries. The study has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics. 

In evaluating the factors using the HANDY methodology, the study noted:

These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."

Will technology save us? The authors were skeptical:

"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."

The conclusion: our "business as usual" approach cannot be sustained and governments, corporations, and consumers need to adapt and change to keep our worldwide civilization intact and functioning.

Energy Solutions—Amory Lovins Speaks at Bioneers

The annual Bioneers conference is often a revelation to attendees, offering fresh, pragmatic, sustainable solutions to the social, cultural, and environmental problems of our age. The last conference included a keynote address from Amory Lovins, the cofounder, chief scientist, and chairman emeritus of the Rocky Mountain Institute. It's worth viewing—the talk summarizes many of the key ideas of Reinventing Fire, Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era.



Watch for a YouTube posting of Lovins' talk at TED2014: The Next Chapter, to be held in Vancouver, BC, Canada this next week.

Brighter Streetlights, Less Energy

As reported by the Earth Island Journal, a shift from traditional streetlights to light-emitting diodes bulbs is being instituted by cities in locales around the country, from San Antonio to San Francisco. 

Energy savings from this conversion are already showing benefits. Quoting from the article:

In terms of the environment, LEDs definitely bring some benefits, the biggest of which is energy savings. The Oakland Streetlight Conversion Project will save the city nearly $20,000 per year in energy costs, and will reduce city greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 40 percent (or 80,000 pounds) per year. “The overall goal of this whole project was to have better light in our city streets,” says Kristine Shaff, a public information officer with the City of Oakland. “And the energy savings are tremendous.”

One catch, noted in the article, blue-rich LEDs have the potential to disrupt circadian rhythms in animals and humans, so municipalities are encouraged to install yellow-rich LEDs to eliminate the concern.

Streetlight photo by flickr user meltedplastic 

Storing Energy from Intermittent Power Sources

One of the enduring canards that is trotted out on a regular basis by those who disparage renewable energy (usually in favor of fossil fuels or nuclear) is that because the wind and sun produce energy intermittently, they have no value in the world's long-term energy strategies.

In truth, there are multiple methods of storing energy from daytime sunlight or windy days. One particularly good example is the Bath Country Hydro Pumped Storage Facility, operated by Dominion Power on the Virginia-West Virginia border. Energy stored as hydropower in one of the largest engineering projects ever implemented helps serve the energy needs of some 60-million people across 13 states.

A Think Progress article on the topic included this quote:

When Sean Fridley, the facility’s Station Manager, looks at the Upper Reservoir perched a thousand feet above his office, he doesn’t see drops of water. He sees a thousands-of-megawatts-deep block of power, a huge amount of stored potential energy — with more output than the Hoover Dam — that he can turn on with a flick of a switch.

Other innovative storage methods have been suggested, all based on proven technologies. A promising plan was presented in Scientific American in 2007 involving collection of solar energy in the US southwest desert, with distribution over high-voltage DC transmission lines  to compressed-air storage facilities around the country. The current cost of compressed-air storage is roughly half that of lead-acid batteries.

This video gives a nice overview of the storage facility in Bath County:
 



The next time someone tells you that intermittent energy sources can't solve our energy needs,   the evidence is abundant that they don't know half the story.

Solar Panels Sound Death Knell for U.S. Utilities

Energy supply and demand has been the dominating mechanism controlling prices in the public utility sector for a century and that model is threatened by the rise in solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies, writes David Roberts in this Grist article. Reducing energy demand and improving energy efficiency are anathema to the utilities, by their own admission, as Roberts explains. 

The "money quote" in the article, taken from an Edison Energy Institute (EEI) report, states: 

The financial implications of these threats are fairly evident. Start with the increased cost of supporting a network capable of managing and integrating distributed generation sources. Next, under most rate structures, add the decline in revenues attributed to revenues lost from sales foregone. These forces lead to increased revenues required from remaining customers … and sought through rate increases. The result of higher electricity prices and competitive threats will encourage a higher rate of DER additions, or will promote greater use of efficiency or demand-side solutions. 

Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector. These competitive and financial risks would likely erode credit quality. The decline in credit quality will lead to a higher cost of capital, putting further pressure on customer rates. Ultimately, capital availability will be reduced, and this will affect future investment plans. The cycle of decline has been previously witnessed in technology-disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines). 

The bottom line is: don't expect the public utilities to be leaders in the shift to renewable energy. It's clearly not in their financial interests to do so. 

Creative Commons photo from USFWS Mountain Prairie. 

Cars now trump bikes in Beijing

Towns and cities that accommodate cyclists have always seemed more human and approachable to me. Davis, California comes to mind. Portland, Oregon is bike friendly and Minneapolis, Minnesota (when it's not bone-chllingly cold) is another good example. To me, it's a hopeful sign when people move outside the norm in our petroleum-fueled society and take transportation issues into their own hands (and industriously pedaling feet). 

As Noah Feldman notes in Bloomberg world, Beijing used to be a cyclist's paradise where bikes dominated the travel landscape. It was a less a case of intelligent city planning than pure necessity, as the economy of the region hadn't reached the explosive growth the prevails today and bicycles, for many, were the only affordable mode of transportation. Sadly, streets packed with bicycles have become a quaint memory as poor air quality and an massive influx of automobiles have transformed Beijing from cyclist paradise to nightmare. 

Of recent experiences in the city, Feldman said:

When I went to rent a bike upon my arrival in Beijing last week, people looked at me as though I were mad. As I tooled around the old neighborhoods near the Forbidden City, I was often the only nonmotorized thing in sight. There were bike lanes, all right, but they were populated only by motorbikers and the occasional fellow intrepid Westerner. On the back streets, I saw a few older Chinese cyclists, wearing expressions of thorough disgust. Meanwhile, Boston, like lots of other U.S. cities, has become a reasonable place to bicycle. I still wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart, but as long as you bike defensively, you feel like a member of a forward-looking tribe of change agents.

Initiatives are being launched in towns and cities around the world to encourage biking, but Beijing offers a clear example of what happens when automobiles trump bikes.

Electric cars slowly become a reality

Often praised for innovative engineering, but also maligned for over promising and and under delivering, Tesla Motors Inc. has realized two-thirds of their original vision with the release of the Model S. A flurry of reviews, including this one in the Los Angeles Times, put the car up on a pedestal with the likes of the Audi A7 or Mercedes-Benz CLS. But, reviewers also note the issue that continues to dampen enthusiasm for electric vehicles: range anxiety. 

Until we reach a consensus in the U.S. over the need for charging stations, we'll continue to lag behind nations that are aggressively deploying charging stations. The European Union is embarking on a plan to deploy 8 million charging stations by 2020. 

Part of the problem is that a large contingent of our society is in total denial about the reality that resource depletion is inevitable and that peak oil is just around the corner. A post from the Peak Oil  news site summed up the prevailing attitude neatly: 

Who cares about how many wells must be drilled almost constantly to maintain some semblance of increasing production? Costs per well? Who cares? Keeping oil prices high to justify all that extra drilling and investment? We’ll figure something out soon enough….Rapid depletion of new wells in the tight oil formations of the Bakken and elsewhere? Can’t be bothered to worry about that! We’ll just drill more! 

Electric vehicles could be part of our future (rather than the 1/10 of 1 percent of auto sales in the U.S., as is now the case) if we have the foresight and will to create the infrastructure that will allow them to flourish.

Impossible Conundrum: Nuclear Waste Storage

There are a multitude of reasons why nuclear fission reactors make no sense as a part of our energy future (without even thinking about it too much, you've got dwindling supplies of uranium ore; the impossibility of building enough reactors fast enough to cope with climate change challenges; the difficulty finding suitable sources of cooling water for new reactors; the demonstrated problems during heat waves, such as in 2003 when France was forced to shut down reactors when cooling water temperatures became too high; the element of human error that frequently complicates safety issues, as demonstrated mightily during the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster; and on and on).

Significantly, however, nuclear proponents have consistently dodged the issue that presents a glaring indictment of the entire technology: devising a long-term solution for the end of the fuel cycle, finding a way to contain and store the byproducts of 70 years of nuclear fission, much of it still residing in spent fuel pools—a storage solution that has always been deemed temporary, but with the lack of industry initiatives to move cooler fuel to dry casks and the absence of any progress toward a permanent repository, some 72,000 tons of nuclear waste exist with no plan for long-term storage.

Writing for Truth-Out.org, Gregg Levine analyzes the situation, tracing the initial enthusiasm of the nuclear industry to the present-day confusion.

As he points out in the article:

The crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi facility was so dangerous, and remains dangerous to this day, in part because of the large amounts of spent fuel stored in pools next to the reactors but outside of containment - a design identical to 35 US nuclear reactors. A number of these GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors - such as Oyster Creek and Vermont Yankee - have more spent fuel packed into their individual pools than all the waste in Fukushima Daiichi Units 1, 2, 3, and 4 combined.

In retrospect, it's completely insane that we've proceeded with nuclear power generation and proponents continue to present the technology as the solution to global warming when the most fundamental concerns—long-term isolation of the radioactive byproducts—have never been suitably addressed.

Unequivocal Evidence that Climate Change is Already Here

The draft summary of a new report, the National Climate Assessment, compiled by a 60-person team of experts, indicates that we're already seeing dire effects from human activities that have led to overall warming of the planet. An article published by Common Dreams asks the question Can US Government's Own Dire and 'Unambiguous' Report on Climate Change Spur Action? 

A raft of studies, predictions, and warnings from the scientific community has failed to produce the actions required to reverse the trend. From the article:

Despite the fact that an unending volume of climate science confirming that dangers of unregulated global carbon emissions has produced a well-observed policy failure, many still cling to the idea that the science will, in the end, play a decisive role in turning the tables on the fossil fuel industry's seemingly iron grip of the legislative process.

The hope is that the report will serve as a wake-up call.

“This could help restart a national conversation about climate change,” said Todd Sanford, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.  “It gives us a road map for climate change. And the road is much bumpier if we continue along a higher emissions pathway.” 

Is anybody listening?

The Greatest Crisis Faced by Humans

As society frets over relatively trivial problems—such as the debt crisis and unemployment—the breakdown of natural systems presents a scenario that could literally bring an end to civilization, says Paul Ehrlich in an article published by the Stanford News Service. But, instead of reacting to the dangers, nations around the world are essentially carrying on as usual. Ehrlich points to the need for a coupling of the human (socio-political-economic) system to the natural world—a relationship that has garnered a great deal of attention in the environmental science community in recent years. 

As Ehrlich describes the situation:

"In the absence of dramatic changes in human behavior relative to Earth's natural systems, gradual population shrinkage, an end to overconsumption by the rich and a redistribution of wealth and opportunity, it is likely the natural system will react in ways that will reduce the scale of the human system in a very unpleasant manner. Debt and employment problems can be solved entirely by negotiation; one cannot negotiate with nature."

Among the groups mentioned in his talk that are attempting to move along a more sustainable path:  Occupy Wall Street, Global Movement to Solve the Climate Crisis, GrowthBusters and MAHB: Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere.

Desalinization Powered by the Sun

Fresh water is scarce worldwide and growing scarcer. This adds even more importance to the achievement of Sundrop Farms, working in South Australia, to accomplish an impressive agricultural feat: using solar desalinization to produce vegetables in the desert. 

As Jonathan Margolis wrote for The Observer: 

A 75m line of motorised parabolic mirrors that follow the sun all day focuses its heat on a pipe containing a sealed-in supply of oil. The hot oil in turn heats nearby tanks of seawater pumped up from a few metres below ground – the shore is only 100m away. The oil brings the seawater up to 160C and steam from this drives turbines providing electricity. Some of the hot water from the process heats the greenhouse through the cold desert nights, while the rest is fed into a desalination plant that produces the 10,000 litres of fresh water a day needed to keep the plants happy. The water the grower gets is pure and ready for the perfect mix of nutrients to be added. The air in the greenhouse is kept humid and cool by trickling water over a wall of honeycombed cardboard evaporative pads through which air is driven by wind and fans. The system is hi-tech all the way; the greenhouse is in a remote spot, but the grower, a hyper-enthusiastic 27-year-old Canadian, Dave Pratt, can rather delightfully control all the growing conditions for his tonnes of crops from an iPhone app if he's out on the town – or even home in Ontario.

 The project is not without controversy. The originator of the process, Charlie Paton, objected to some of the techniques being used by Sundrop and received an undisclosed ex-gratia settlement for cutting ties last February.

The article captures Charlie Paton's parting words:

"We will absolutely keep on at this in our own way," he says, "but I don't really feel that proprietary about it. The heart of the technology is actually a bit of soggy cardboard. You can't patent or protect the idea of evaporative cooling. The idea of using seawater to do that absolutely was a major breakthrough, but again, you can't patent it. The main thing is that it's us that's still picking up the plaudits, and I think that makes Philipp really angry."

In this case, the purely commercial ethic and altruistic ideals operate on entirely different levels. Only by bringing these two viewpoints into closer alignment can the true benefits of this achievement be realized on a global basis.

Realistic Solutions for Combatting Climate Change

Naomi Klein, who is currently in the process of working on a documentary about climate change, is one of the most articulate, well-reasoned spokespersons on the environmental front. Her appearance on Bill Moyer offers a great example of how to address the issue in a persuasive, knowledgeable way.

The Promise of Zero Waste

Some of the most encouraging developments in sustainability arise from citizens concerned about the effects of commonplace activities on their community. In this case, a group of women in Kovalam, India, motivated by a public interest research organization, Thanal, took on the challenge of eliminating the problems associated with incinerating toxic waste. As reported by Truthout, a horiculturist, S. Ushakumari, helped establish a zero waste team and worked to develop alternatives to incineration based on rethinking the materials being used in the region. The movement took root in the community and quickly spread. In her words: 

The idea from Kovalam has gone all over the world now, which I think is the most beautiful part of the project. At least six or seven states are now modeling their zero waste programs after the one in Kovalam. Other countries — like the tourism department in the Philippines — are keen on implementing a zero waste program. 

I think zero waste is what Gandhiji taught us. He didn’t coin the words ‘zero waste’, but what he told us about self-reliance, about non-violence, it’s all the principle of zero waste. The basic philosophy, the basic efforts, the basic understanding, is the same.

 The article concludes with a list of resources for anyone who wants to get involved with similar efforts. Small steps—from the bottom up—often surpass top down efforts.

Solar Flares and Nuclear Safety

Photo by Fernando Reyes Palencia

Power grid failure presents a serious risk to the operation of nuclear reactors, which require electricity to maintain cooling water circulation even when shut down. As demonstrated by the reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima reactor complex, if you lose power lines and suffer backup generators failures at he same time, the loss of cooling capabilities rapidly causes the situation to spiral out of control.

Besides the natural disaster impacts of earthquake and tsunamis, another natural phenomenon—solar flares—poses dangers unlikely to be factored into the accident trees that assess plant operational risks. Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), which peak during regular cycles of the sun, can potentially disrupt the energy grid and render nuclear plants unable to maintain coolant circulation far beyond the week that diesel backup generators are required to function. In Flare-up: How the Sun Could Put an End to Nuclear Power, Gar Smith writes:

A 2011 Oak Ridge National Laboratory report warned of a 33 percent likelihood that a solar flare could lead to “long-term power loss” over a nuclear reactor’s life. With 440 nuclear power plants in 30 countries, and 250 research reactors, there are nearly 700 potential Fukushimas waiting to be unleashed.

Faced with a grid collapse, nuclear plants must rely on backup power to cool reactor cores and spent-fuel ponds. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires only eight hours of battery power and enough fuel to run emergency generators for a week. Restoring outside power to Fukushima’s damaged reactors was a daunting task even when Japan had a functioning grid to fall back on. If the Sun sends a geomagnetic tsunami sweeping across Earth, it could become impossible to provide any form of traditional power.

The failure of the Solar Shield Bill (H.R.668), which included provisions that could protect the grid against the threat of geomagnetic storms, illustrates how woefully unprepared we are to deal with the very likely possibilities of large-scale power blackouts. As Gar points out in his article:

The US could protect its grid by spending around $1 billion to “harden” 350 key EHV transformers and stock blast-proof warehouses with replacement parts. Transformers could be protected with ground resistors. Costing about $40,000 each, they could be installed on 5,000 critical transformers for less than $200 million – about one-tenth the cost of a B-2 bomber.

 

A Community Breaks Away from Coal

Dissatisfied with the direction of the utility company supplying their energy, citizens of Boulder, CO took matters into their own hands and passed ballot measures to create their own municipal power utility. As written in Yes Magazine:

The city’s current electricity supplier, Xcel Energy, is a large corporation that sources more than 60 percent of its power from coal. Colorado climate activists tried for years to persuade Xcel to transition from coal to renewables, arguing that the state’s plains, mountains, and 300 days of annual sunshine give it abundant potential for the development of wind and solar power. But they found Xcel’s take-up of renewables was frustratingly slow. Xcel is investing $400 million in its coal-powered plants, and its plans for renewables stops at just 30 percent in 2020, with no further increase until 2028.

If more communities follow this example, we might even become effective tackling global warming while demonstrating the power of genuine democracy in action.

 

Go fast without gas

Humans have a lot of different ways to get from Point A to Point B on this planet, but only the velomobile lets you travel with the grace and whimsy of a cartoon character. 

As profiled in Grist, the velomobile consists of a reclining bicycle protected by a fiberglass shell that can optionally be assisted by an electric motor. They're fast, fuel free, and worth consideration if you're tired of being a victim of the fossilized proponents of the fossil fuel industry.

Get out there and pedal!

Protecting Life on the Blue Marble

Sometimes we need a little perspective to get our priorities straight. As Bill McKibben points out in "The Great Carbon Bubble: Why the Fossil Fuel Industry Fights So Hard," we experienced the greatest weather extremes in recorded history in 2011, 14 weather disasters in the U.S. alone. And yet we have an entire political party in denial that there are any large-scale dynamics at work in the global weather system that potentially threaten our survival.

Why is the fossil fuel working so hard to spread denial about climate change? As in many things in life, follow the money.

Part of it’s simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can’t stop gorging themselves. ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron’s not far behind. Everyone in the business is swimming in money.

Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they’ve got a deeper problem, one that’s become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won’t be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.

The billions of dollars in profits earned by Chevron and ExxonMobil will build a lot of mansions for their highly paid executives. But, what's the point of a mansion if you don't have a habitable planet to build it on?

Almost as smart as termites

We know that ground-nesting termites can build mounds where the temperature and humidity remain moderate year round (a concept that has drawn the attention of architects in recent years). But, for whatever reason, humans don't typically pay much attention to natural heating and cooling in their building design and construction—a fact that leads to an enormous amount of energy consumption so that building inhabitants don't suffer from the heat or cold.

You can find exceptions to this tendency to ignore trees, shade, hillsides, and sun exposure when constructing buildings, even back in the 19th century. One good example, highlighted in Julia Whitty's Blue Marble blog (the post is a couple of years old, but as relevant today as when it was written), is Lincoln's cottage, where the President escaped the suffocating climate of Washington D.C. in the summer.

Among the passive techniques that characterize the cottage:

The builders relied on smarts not watts. Some of their techniques included:

Orienting the building so a powerful crossbreeze blows when the front door and rear windows are opened

Installing tall windows with two sections, a top half to expel warm air and a bottom half to introduce it

Attaching shutters to block the sun or let light in when necessary
Decorating with lace curtains to minimize bugs not breezes

Some of the simplest techniques available could make an enormous difference in energy consumption in our homes and cities. It's not too late to learn from the termites and the builders of the 19th century.

Inside the Evacuation Zone at Fukushima

Former Shooto heavyweight champion Enson Inoue took a bold journey into the evacuation zone at Fukushima and offered some candid revelations on the state of affairs in and around the disabled nuclear plant. Anyone who thinks the situation is firmly under control should look and listen and perhaps reconsider the situation. MMA Fighting also interviewed Inoue, who offered additional details about his journey into the region.