Clean Energy
Over a Dozen Senators Working to Strengthen Climate Bill
Published August 25, 2009 @ 07:31PM PT
Related post: Citizenship 101: How to contact Congress
Although four senators recently floated the idea that climate legislation was dead in the Senate, over a dozen of their colleagues are working on measures to make it stronger.
According to the progressive political blog Wonk Room,
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has introduced the IMPACT Act, "Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology Act of 2009," which would create a $30 million revolving loan fund to "help small and medium-sized manufacturers finance retooling, shift design, and improve energy efficiency.” The act has been added to the Senate legislation, and over 150 businesses around the country have endorsed it.
Sen. Brown has been joined by nine other Democratic senators in urging President Obama to be sure the legislation includes strong support for American manufacturing. They include Russ Feingold (D-WI), Carl Levin (D-MI), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Robert Casey (D-PA), Arlen Specter (D-PA), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Robert Byrd (D-VW), Al Franken (D-MN), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).
Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Tom Carper (D-DE) are working on adding language to the bill to “regulate power plant emissions of mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide.”
Sen. Carper is also seeking to improve the bill's funding for cleaner transportation. His Clean, Low-Emission, Affordable, New Transportation Efficiency Act (S. 575 / H.R. 1329) would allocate a share of the proceeds from carbon cap-and-trade "to transit, bike paths, and other green modes of transport.” Co-sponsoring the bill are Senators Arlen Specter (D-PA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Ben Cardin (D-MD) have co-sponsored the legislation.
Life on Waterpod: Barge-borne home shows off sustainable living
Published August 15, 2009 @ 10:44AM PT
The Waterpod is a floating home-sculpture-adventure in sustainable living.
“It’s about getting people to talk about how we can sustain ourselves in the future,” said artist Mary Mattingly to The Brooklyn Paper earlier this year. Mattingly worked to realize the project for three years, and is living on Waterpod herself May through October.
The recycled, 240-foot long, 3,000 square foot art barge, which has been docking at various points around New York Harbor this summer, features a geodesic "Buckyball" dome as a living space, a flock of four egg-laying hens (Gilly, Rizzo, Marble and Bonzai), a hydroponic garden, a greywater recycling system and human-powered water pumping, energy generated primarily from four rooftop solar panels (along with a bicycle power generating station and a "picohydro" energy system for brief bursts of extra energy when needed), composting toilets, and a space where the public can come on board for performances.
New York Times reporter Melena Ryzik has lived abord Waterpod intermittently. She reports being "surprised at how easy it was to adapt to the Pod’s eco-conscious systems (reuse everything, don’t mind the ever-present flies, and compost, compost, compost)..."
...and how quickly the rhythms and routines of urban life melted away. Even though the Pod was docked only blocks away, a brief visit to the farmer’s market in Dumbo one Sunday felt like a trip into “town” – and into civilization. Ooh, look! A flushing toilet!
It's an experiment in ecologically sensitive living that evokes memories of "Biosphere 2" (the Earth is Biosphere 1, natch), the troubled 1990s project that sought to prove the viability of closed-system, grow-your-own living.
But the artists living on board Waterpod and managing its systems have learned (consciously or no) from that semi-fiasco. Although they grow greens and veggies on the barge, and of course get eggs from the hens, they're accepting food donations as well. They get fresh water from rainfall and the river. And they're regularly welcoming the public aboard: check the docking schedule to find out where to meet the barge.
I imagine that some will see this as a wholly unrealistic way to live. But none of the systems are radical: stationary bikes are already being used to generate energy, for instance; places like Vermont Law School are saving water and chemicals by using composting toilets; city gardening is making a big comeback for both economic and food safety reasons; and of course solar power generation is a proven technology that's getting better all the time.
Even the thing that seems most unusual about Waterpod -- living on the water -- is actually common all around the world.
Perhaps Waterpod is actually the leading edge on restoring ourselves to a way of life that can really endure: one that values clean water and uses it wisely, relies on local food supplies to a much greater extent, takes advantage of clean energy sources to the fullest, and both depends upon and gives back to the local community.
Look at it this way: If they'd called it "Extreme Houseboating," then everyone would want to do it.
Five Videos to Watch This Week: From Climate Denial to Keen Electric Sportscar
Published August 11, 2009 @ 07:41PM PT
Okay, I know it's summer. But look away for just a few minutes from Darth Vader dancing to Hammer and Mean Kitty vs FlippyCat and check out this week's haul of nifty and informative videos about global warming:
1. Climate Denial Crock of the Week
Peter Sinclair's "Climate Denial Crock of the Week" is an ongoing and very enjoyable video series that debunks global warming myths. This installment, which mentions Anthony Watts of the prominent global warming denial blog wattsupwiththat.com, was temporarily taken down by YouTube after Mr. Watts complained it had violated some copyright rules.
Live Senate Hearing: Climate Change and Ensuring that America Leads the Clean Energy Transformation
Published August 06, 2009 @ 08:09AM PT
The full Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is meeting today to discuss how to implement successful, and largely market-driven, clean energy policies.
12:30: Hearing adjourned!
12:15: Sen. Whitehouse, to Krupp: You've said in your testimony that CCS is ready to roll? Can you elaborate on that?
Krupp: I was quoting an official at British Petroleum, noting that in Norway there are enormous amts of CCS going on. Because there's a price on carbon in Norway, so they're avoiding that cost by keeping it out of the atmosphere.
Until there's a driver, there's no reason to capture carbon.
Our nation does burn a lot of coal -- half our electricity generated from burning coal. We should leave a path open to cleaning up the carbon dioxide from that, the same as we have a path to cleaning out the sulfur dioxide.
12:12: Sen. Whitehouse: Saying technologies aren't ready is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
12:00 noon: Sen. Boxer: Specuation issue. As former stockbroker, I understand what happens with speculation, there's cause for concern. In ACES, there's a floor of $11 on price. Some utilities have said to me, what about a collar?
Fehrman: Collar would help protect ratepayers, would still impose a second cost on customers however.
Sen Boxer: Some utilities, like Duke, which is heavily dependent on coal, support ACES. Supreme Court says carbon emissions are covered by the Clean Air Act. So it's unusual that a business person would rather choose a hard cap, with no ability to get allocations, offsets. Won't that put costs thru roof?
Krupp: Mid-America is in unique position. Made some decisions that were in retrospect bad: big new coal-fired plant online in 2007. Wholesale a lot of their energy. Under Waxman-Markey, the allocations follow the electrons.
Certainly the proposition, a cap but no trade, would be extraordinarily expensive to consumers. Trading promotes lowest-cost options, allows utilities and customers to switch energy generation sources.
Price collar: Just another world for a safety valve, which busts the integrity of the cap. Wont' guarantee emissions reductions, we won't be able to say to other nations, we're reducing emissions, we want you to as well.
Many things in ACES control costs -- cap and trade mechanism; allocation directly to consumers. In terms of market manipulation, whatever comes out of this committee has to have jail time for those who game the maket.
Sen. Boxer: Look at a collar in slightly different way. If we know that $11 is the floor, and that's sending a price signal, not sure why we can't use this to create regulatory certainty.
Sen. Inhofe: I read a whole long list of House Democrats, as well as James Hansen, who oppose cap and trade, in my opening statement. Ralph Nader opposes it. You have stated that "make polluters pay" slogan is wrong; that consumers will pay.
Fehrman: At Mid-American, we haven't had a base rate increase since 1975, and are a leader in renewable energy generation. This bill creates unreasonable costs for our customers, fees for allowances. We'd be better off taking those dollars and investing in renewables and nuclear, actually reducing our emissions to meet those caps.
Inhofe: How will purchasing allowances not reduce GHGs?
Fehrman: Waxman-Markey takes 2005 emissions and applies sliding cap to that level. There's cost of compliance -- driving emissions down -- and there's buying allowances from first emission of CO2 up to the cap. That latter cost doesn't reduce CO2 emissions.
Sen Inhofe: Your view on carbon capture and storage? When would be be commercially scalable?
Fehrman: We find that there is execptional work going on in industry, pilot projects, in a number of years, be it five or ten years, there will be CCS tech available. We will say that sequestration of carbon hasn't been studied, don't know all the issues involved. Need more study to fully understand the impacts.
Inhofe: "Majority of people believe" that tech isn't here on renewables and all sorts of these things. If we have these resources, and are only country that doesn't develop them, we need to use them as a bridge to the future.
11:50 ET: Second panel is introduced: Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund; and Bill Fehrman, President and CEO, MidAmerican Energy Company.
Krupp: My message is simple: We can achieve strong emissions targets by 2020, at low cost, and create millions of new jobs in the process. Begins to cite a number of non-partisan studies on both costs and technologies -- see his formal statement to the committee for the details.
Fehrman: We oppose trade part of cap and trade: Customers will pay for emissions, plus the structures to reduce those emissions. Free allowances based on retail sales will favor utilities that rely largely on hydro and nuclear power, not allow coal-dependent utilities to receive enough allowances. Shortfall of 11 million allowances in just the first compliance year; and ratepayers will foot the bill.
Under acid rain program, allowances went to emitters who needed them to comply with new regs. Under Waxman-Markey as currently written, will be huge windfall to utilities that don't need them; also, penalizes utilities that have already made big investments in renewables.
11:49: Sen. Whitehouse to Sandalow: Over time, a lot of objection has risen to nuclear power, primarily around safety. But US Navy and European power agencies have demonstrated that it can be used safely. Around cost -- it appears that as we move toward modular systems, can better control costs. And disposal: we don't have a means for getting rid of horribly dangeous waste.
Traveling wave technologies: Create power off current stocks of waste. Are you following that?
Sandalow: I'm not personally following that; we'll get back to you, Senator.
11: 43: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: Wildlife adapation amendments related to climate legislation are gathering broad, bipartisan and multi-regional support. Is that true?
Strickland: True. Adaptation challenges with public lands, protecting wildlife, and dealing with real world impacts of climate change are vitally important.
11:39: Sen. Benjamin Cardin: Where are we at on using public lands to develop renewables?
Strickland: We're at the very early stages. Regulations are being put in place to develop offshore wind. We're moving quickly to put infrastructure in place with solar also; now we have a huge backlog of private sector interest in dev. solar on public lands. We've used some of Recovery Act dollars to create four offices in the West to deal with that backlog. We're in early stages, but there's huge potential.
Wants Boxer to organize committee letter to get documentation on how much public land is available to use for generation of renewable energy vs. extraction of mineral resources.
Sen. John Barasso says that 138,000 acres of land would be needed to build a wind farm with capacity to replace one coal-fired power plant. That's three times the size of the District of Colombia. Are we willing to set aside enough land to replace hundreds of coal-fired power plants?
Wellinghoff: Starts by countering some misquotes on his positions that Barasso has just read into the record, to the overall point that he does not believe that renewables will completely replace fossil energy sources, but that there is enormous capacity for different kinds of renewables, combined with energy efficiency and nat'l gas. Spurred by a market-based carbon control system, says all this could allow nation to transition successfully (and implication is with minimal pain and gnashing of teeth) to low-carbon energy economy. "There's plenty of land out there in the ocean" to create millions of gigawatts of wind power.
11:24: Sen. George Voinovich brings up energy security. Concerned we have not harmonized energy, environment, economic, national security policies. "If nation knew how vulnerable we were today in terms of oil, they'd be shaking in their boots." Cites billions of dollars sent overseas for oil, with no idea of environmental impacts that it's having.
Tells Strickland we should take advantage of all resources we have, including domestic oil, but be the most aggressive in reducing use of oil as well (such as upgrading the energy grid to enable growth of EV use.) Wishes the president would talk about using less oil and also going after more domestic oil production.
11:21: Sandalow says the $2.4 billion being allocated to next-gen electric vehicle battery development, announced yesterday by President Obama, has the potential to be transformational in cutting the nation's dependency on foreign oil.
Rediscovering the Forgotten History of Clean Energy Innovation
Published August 05, 2009 @ 08:12PM PT
A home entirely off the grid, heated with solar power. Another made to resemble a park, with a green roof and daylighting. An apartment building in NYC with solar collectors and a wind-powered generator on the roof, which generate enough energy to power all the building's public areas.
We're talking about 2009, right? Nope: 1973.
Over at We Make Money Not Art, Regine De Batty reviews Sorry, Out of Gas: Architecture's Response to the 1973 Oil Crisis, a catalog produced to document an eponymous exhibition last year at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. The show's curators make the case that the oil embargo by Arab oil-producing nations in 1973, which caused an enormous price shock that sent gas and other energy prices soaring worldwide, spurred a parallel burst of creativity among designers, architects, engineers, and others interested in solutions to oil dependency.
Sorry, Out of Gas includes "a chapter dedicated to oil, from the embargo to the games that were created at the time to educate or even sometimes dedramatize the issue," says Regine.
I was particularly fascinated by a series of discourses pronounced in the 70s by world leaders. They were much bolder and more undisguised than the ones voiced by today's politicians. It feels like our leaders prefer to tread much more carefully and are afraid of causing us any discomfort.
The rest of the book is divided in chapters that correspond to alternative sources of energy and their use in architecture: Sun, Earth, Wind and Integrated Systems.
"Today, it seems that much of their work (at the notable exception of Buckminster Fuller) and ideas have sunk into oblivion," writes Regine.
(A symptom, perhaps, of the "shock to trance" syndrome that then President-elect Obama talked about in a mid-November interview last year: "You know, oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it's not important, and we start, you know, filling up our S.U.V.'s again. And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It's part of the addiction, all right. That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it.")
As the oil embargo ended and energy prices began to fall, apparently these architectural experiments ended. It's frustrating to contemplate that we've let decades slip by with little progress on reducing our heavy reliance on oil. But it's also fascinating to consider that the "green architecture" innovators of today have an unexpected legacy to draw upon as they make up for lost time.
This book sounds so interesting that I didn't want to wait until I could get a copy myself before mentioning it here. Digging around for some other reviews verifies that it's worth nabbing a copy:
"Though the book/exhibit brings together some interesting and relevant architectural examples, graphics and publications, like the journals of the pioneering Underground Space Center at the University of Minnesota, it is most effective at conveying the sense of the enthusiasm and creativity of those times, which dissipated as the years went on...until we find ourselves there again now, in a sense, picking up where we left off." (Center for Land Use Interpretation)
"Using everything from architectural drawings, photography, archival television footage, and historical artifacts such as board games and ephemera from popular culture of the day, the catalogue is divided into four central themes--Sun, Earth, Wind, and Integrated Systems. Sorry, Out of Gas examines everything from passive and active solar heating, underground architecture, recycled materials and experiments in wind technology to reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy. Illustrated by British author and illustrator Harriet Russell, a magnificently and specially commissioned children's story entitled "An Endangered Species" opens the book's various discussions, exploring non-renewable energy and the ways in which children can conserve our planet's valuable resources." (Canadian Architect)
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Image: "Gas stations abandoned during the fuel crisis in the winter of 1973-74 were sometimes used for other purposes. This station at Potlatch, Washington, west of Olympia was turned into a religious meeting hall. April 1974." By David Falconer. Source: U.S. EPA, via Wikimedia Commons
China, U.S. Pledge Cooperation on Climate, Energy Initiatives
Published July 28, 2009 @ 05:25PM PT
"Is it possible that the long performance of the “You first, sir,” vaudeville routine by the Alphonse and Gaston of the global greenhouse is drawing toward a close?" asks New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin.
Could be: In a public ceremony today at the State Department, China and the U.S. -- the world's two greatest greenhouse gas polluters -- signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on climate and energy projects. [Here's a PDF of the original signed document, in Chinese and English.]
In the memo the two nations pledge to:
...strengthen and coordinate our respective efforts to combat global climate change, promote clean and efficient energy, protect the environment and natural resources, and support environmentally sustainable and low-carbon economic growth.
Both countries commit to respond vigorously to the challenges of energy security, climate change and environmental protection through ambitious domestic action and international cooperation.
Toward this end, both countries intend to transition to a low-carbon economy, carry out policy dialogue and cooperate on capacity building and research, development and deployment of climate-friendly technology.
Both countries resolve to pursue areas of cooperation where joint expertise, resources, research capacity and combined market size can accelerate progress towards mutual goals. These include, but are not limited to:
1) Energy conservation and energy efficiency
2) Renewable energy
3) Cleaner uses of coal, and carbon capture and storage
4) Sustainable transportation, including electric vehicles
5) Modernization of the electrical grid
6) Joint research and development of clean energy technologies
7) Clean air
8) Clean water
9) Natural resource conservation, e.g. protection of wetlands and nature reserves
10) Combating climate change and promoting low-carbon economic growth
It's a framework document, lacking specifics on funding, as well as trade issues dear to both nations, such as protection of intellectual property, and loosening up technology transfer.
But for all that, it's a significant move that's likely to have an impact in the hallways during international climate meetings in advance of December's "Son of Kyoto" talks in Copenhagen. Are the U.S. and China moving out of the way of a stronger international global warming accord? Are they getting on board? Or are they breaking away from the UN treaty process, to forge their own agreement? Hard to tell at this point.
Closer to home, the joint understanding may finally suck the air out of a classic justification of Congressional climate foot-draggers: that the U.S. dare not take action on greenhouse gas emissions while China, our major global economic rival, holds back.
Today the two nations took one small step, side by side.
Climate Solutions from Solar Forests and Artificial Leaves
Published July 28, 2009 @ 10:45AM PT
Biomimicry is a rich source of inspiration for designers, engineers and scientists. They look at how evolutionary biology has solved problems, and then use artificial materials to recreate these solutions found in nature.
Many clean energy and climate solutions are turning to trees and other plants for design cues:
The Solar Forest concept, reported at Inhabitat, is racing around the blogs this week. It's designer Neville Mars' idea for an electric vehicle (EV) charging port powered by gracefully branching trees covered in solar panel "leaves." The leaves track the sun to generate power with maximum efficiency. Certainly the concept has a lot more aesthetic and pragmatic appeal than leaving acres of parking lots to bake in the sun.
Google, meanwhile, installed a "grove" of pole-mounted solar panels in the parking lot of its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters in 2006. It's the solar forest concept taken live, although lacking the sylvan look and feel.
And then there's "solar ivy" -- a concept product by a Brooklyn design group called SMIT (Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology) that seems to be on its way to market. Composed of netting covered in "leaves" made of flexible solar cells, the "Grow" system can be draped down the side of a building. In addition to converting light to energy, each solar leaf has piezoelectric generators on the underside as well -- so that as they flutter in the wind, that movement is harvested as energy as well.
"Artificial forests at nano scale" are another compelling avenue of research and development. The idea here is to create materials that mimic the leaf's ability to convert sunlight into energy, and then capture that energy for human uses. Another grail of this research is to find a synthetic way to emulate a leaf's ability to capture carbon out of the atmosphere and store it -- technology that could help us in re-stabilizing the climate.
The big news so far this year in artificial forests at nano scale is that a team of European researchers recently announced that they've succeeded in modifying chlorophyll from an alga so that it resembled the light antennae of bacteria, nature's most efficient photosynthesizers.
They then figured out the structure of these light antennae -- opening the way to creating an artificial leaf.
This isn't the first time there's been a wave of excitement on the synthetic photosynthesis front. In March of this year, researchers at the Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced that nano-sized crystals of cobalt oxide can split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, the central part of the photosynthesis process.
In 2002, at the height of the "nanotech bubble," a team of scientists published research on using cadmium-laden nanocrystals to fix carbon dioxide (that is, transform it into other organic molecules, which is how plants store carbon absorbed from the atmosphere).
(And these are just two examples of what I'm sure are tens or dozens more.)
Why at the nano scale? In part because of the promise nano materials hold: when substances are created at these incredibly small scales, they often have properties that they don't exhibit at larger scales. For instance, they can have much more net surface area (to soak up sun) than the same materials at conventional macro scales.
Another reason is that nano-scale materials could potentially be incorporated into many relatively cheap substances we already use to cover big areas outdoors, like asphalt, concrete, rubber, paint, and vinyl. Imagine millions of homes sheathed in siding that incorporates nano-scale solar collectors, sitting in the sun all day and converting light into electricity.
So while nano materials research and development are often slow and expensive, the return on the time and money invested could be enormous in three ways: energy generated, carbon sequestered out of the atmosphere, and dollars earned.
