The End of Fossil Fuels?

According to an article in the Washington Post, fossil fuel emissions must drop near zero by mid-century to prevent catastrophic consequences from global warming (see excerpt below):
The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.
Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.
Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.
"The question is, what if we don't want the Earth to warm anymore?" asked Carnegie Institution senior scientist Ken Caldeira, co-author of a paper published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The answer implies a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about."
Although many nations have been pledging steps to curb emissions for nearly a decade, the world's output of carbon from human activities totals about 10 billion tons a year and has been steadily rising.
For now, at least, a goal of zero emissions appears well beyond the reach of politicians here and abroad. U.S. leaders are just beginning to grapple with setting any mandatory limit on greenhouse gases. The Senate is poised to vote in June on legislation that would reduce U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050; the two Democratic senators running for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), back an 80 percent cut. The Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), supports a 60 percent reduction by mid-century.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is shepherding climate legislation through the Senate as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the new findings "make it clear we must act now to address global warming."
"It won't be easy, given the makeup of the Senate, but the science is compelling," she said. "It is hard for me to see how my colleagues can duck this issue and live with themselves."
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

National Green Energy Surcharge?

An article on the CNN Money Website discusses a proposal by Duke Energy CEO James Rogers to take clean energy surcharges on utility bills national. Here is an excerpt:
"Trying to fund R&D through a cap and trade mechanism is a mistake," said James Rogers, chief executive of Charlotte, N.C-based Duke Energy (Charts, Fortune 500).
Cap-and-trade proposals in Congress - meant to counter global warming - would auction off permits to companies that emit the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and use the money to fund alternative energy.
Under such system, the government would gradually reduce the number of permits available each year. Companies would then either buy those permits or pay to install cleaner equipment.
Rogers, speaking at a lecture sponsored by the energy information company Platts, said he supported a cap-and-trade plan in which the government gives away permits instead of selling them. He said that was fairer to utility customers in states that rely heavily on carbon dioxide-heavy coal to generate electricity.
Instead, he would fund clean technology research through a surcharge on electricity bills nationwide. Rogers didn't propose a specific charge but said it was essential that all Americans pay for a wide range of clean energy technologies - not just cleaner coal but nuclear, natural gas, wind and solar.
Experts project that domestic electricity demand will surge 40 percent over the next two decades. Rogers said the nation needs to mount a massive response - akin to the Apollo space program or the Manhattan nuclear weapons project.
"We need new technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60 or 80 percent," he said. "It's the only way to build a bridge to that world."
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm
Enjoy discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Here Comes the Solution?

The sun is the only viable solution to the world's energy crisis, according to a prominent scientist, but if the world doesn't wake up, realize this, and start investing in solar energy soon, it will be to late, according to this article on ABC News (see excerpt below):

There is a potential solution, and possibly only one, to the global energy crisis. It will require a huge investment, several scientific breakthroughs and a little luck. But unless we give it the very highest priority, it will soon be too late.

That's the message that a highly respected professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology has been delivering for several years now, but it's not clear whether anyone is listening. Nate Lewis isn't your typical prophet of doom. He has won a list of awards as long as the beard he wore years ago as a young scientist when I first met him. And to hear him tell it, the solution to the energy crisis is as clear as the nose on your face, or at least the shadow it casts.
Lewis quips that he belongs to the "Willie Sutton school of energy management." When asked why he robbed banks, Sutton responded "because that's where the money is."
"I believe in that too," Lewis told an energy symposium at Caltech earlier this year.
In his case, however, Lewis is banking on the sun.
"More solar energy hits the earth in one hour than all the energy the world consumes in a year," he told the symposium. So if you want to solve the energy crisis, he argued, go to the bank where the energy is kept — the sun.
None of the other sources of energy, including fossil fuels that threaten our planet, or nuclear energy that has never lived up to its potential, can do the job, Lewis maintains. He isn't arguing in favor of those huge water bladders we are supposed to have atop our houses to capture heat from the sun. Lewis sees an entirely different solution. He sees cheap ways to convert solar energy directly into electricity, which can be used to convert water into fuel, like hydrogen, that can be turned back into electricity on demand.
What we need, he argues, is something as basic as paint that is engineered to capture electrons from the sun and make the electrons march into our utility lines. Go to your local home center, buy a bucket of paint and brush it on your roof to power all those gadgets and heat your domicile and create the fuel to run your scooter. Sounds pretty far out, but Lewis is dead serious.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm

Enjoy discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

More Solutions to An Inconvenient Truth

Sponsored by PACE
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2007
Unitarian Society of Hartford
50 Bloomfield Avenue, Hartford(1/10 mile north from intersection of Rts. 44 & 189)
Admission is free to the public. Donations are welcome.
5:00-7:00 PM EXHIBITS AND DINNER
Solar energy installers (Connecticut Clean Energy Fund)
Environmental Exhibits
City Line Pizza, homemade desserts, coffee 7:00 PM
Annual Meeting - Rep. James O'Rourke, President
7:30 PM AWARDS
Lifetime Achievement: The American Solar Energy Society (ases.org) (represented by Steven and Marilyn Strong)
Legislative: Rep. Steve Fontana; Rep. Vickie Orsini Nardello
Business: Van Zelm, Heywood & Shadford, Inc.
Media: Jennifer Boyd (CPTV "The Warming of Connecticut")
8:00 PM AMAZING POWER POINT PRESENTATION "HEADING TOWARD ZERO ENERGY BUILDINGS" Steven J. Strong - Award Winner & President of Solar Design
INFORMATION:(860) 693-4813 or www.pace-cleanenergy.org
PACE is a non-profit public health organization
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm
Enjoy discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/.

Mirror Power

The BBC reports about how a new power plant in Spain gets it's power from the sun in a novel way:

It is Europe's first commercially operating power station using the Sun's energy this way and at the moment its operator, Solucar, proudly claims that it generates 11 Megawatts (MW) of electricity without emitting a single puff of greenhouse gas. This current figure is enough to power up to 6,000 homes.
But ultimately, the entire plant should generate as much power as is used by the 600,000 people of Seville.
It works by focusing the reflected rays on one location, turning water into steam and then blasting it into turbines to generate power.

IREJN is Connecticut's Light and Power. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Is There a Carbon Tax in Your Future?

A Salon article on a US Congressional hearing on energy reported that,

...if there was a consensus on anything at the hearing, in which testimony was heard on prospects for nuclear, solar, geothermal and wind power, along with biofuels, it was that federal and state governments get by far the most bang for their buck by setting, enforcing and encouraging increased energy efficiency. Changing building codes and requiring ever more efficient performance from new machinery is cheap. As one panelist, energy consultant David Nemtzow, observed, if you treated the energy savings from efficiency as an energy source, you would see that "energy efficiency is the number one energy resource in this country, number one ahead of oil, ahead of gas or coal or nuclear or any of the others."

A second clear imperative to emerge from the hearing was that attacking the nation's energy problems through a myriad of targeted incentives and state and federal programs was likely to be confusing and wasteful. Finding ways to encourage homeowners to install solar powered water heaters, or shifting the U.S. Postal Service fleet to plug-in hybrids is all very well and good, but the best strategy government could take to address both energy security needs and the challenge of climate change would be to impose some kind of carbon tax, perhaps along the lines of California's recently enacted Low Carbon Fuel Initiative. Only when the external costs of climate change and fossil fuel dependency become shared by individuals filling up their gas tanks and utility companies building coal-fired power plants will there be a real market incentive to deploy new technologies.

The article addresses a number of issues dealt with in the hearing, including switchgrass production, US energy demands, and a hint of news to come about peak oil.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

When Fund Managers Attack

According to a column by Brett Arends, Jeremy Grantham, perhaps best know as the investment manager of US Vice President Richard Cheney, asks "What were we thinking?' in a four-page attack on U.S. energy policy mailed last week to all his clients, including the vice president.

Titled "While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, Global Warming, and a Love of Feel-Good Data," Grantham asserts, "Successive U.S. administrations have taken little interest in either oil substitution or climate change," he writes, "and the current one has even seemed to have a vested interest in the idea that the science of climate change is uncertain."

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World Responds to Climate Report

While the Bush Administration endorsed the UN Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change report released February 2, they rejected demands for mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, the administration said President Bush would rely on his plans to develop more renewable fuel and require more efficient vehicles, according to the Mecury News.

Meanwhile, according the Australian publication The Age, Prime Minister John Howard has used the report to push his nuclear plan.

And in France, President Chirac called for "a revolution," according to the Canadian publication The Gazette.
“Faced with this emergency, the time for half measures is finished,” Chirac said at the opening session of an international conference on the environment.
“It is time for a revolution,” the French president added. “A new industrial revolution, that of sustainable development, lies before us.”
Chirac proposed that this revolution would be led by transforming the existing United Nations Environment Program into a new United Nations Environment Organization, with a political mandate to propose common efforts to deal with climate change.
“We must build global governance for the environment,” Chirac said. “Multilateralism is the key to sustainable development.”
Sir Nicolas Stern, a British expert on climate change applauded Chirac's proposal, saying, “a global problem requires a global response.”

According to the Jackson Hole Star Tribune from an AP report,

Officials in Indonesia and the Maldives, two archipelagos threatened by rising sea levels, said they feared for the future of their lands. Others said the threat was not simply to the environment, but to international peace, prosperity and development.South Africa's Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said failure to act would be "indefensible."

India, which along with China is developing rapidly with a quickly-expanding population, faces the challenge of how to develop economically without ruining its environment. A senior ecology official noted that the climate change panel is "a network of scientists" that cannot set policy."This is a group of climate experts attempting to reach a scientific consensus. It doesn't commit governments to any course of action," said the official, Pradipto Ghosh, of India's Ministry of Environment and Forests.

But beyond the responses of world leaders, perhaps the most eloquent response to this report in the AP article came from a mother in Spain.

"I am worried for him more than anything," said Maite Leon, gesturing toward her 6-month-old. "By myself I cannot do anything, but if we each do our little bit, maybe we can change things. We have to do it all together."

On the NPR radio program Talk of the Nation, several segments dealt with energy alternatives.
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Meeting Connecticut's Energy Needs

In an editorial in Sunday's Hartford Courant, John C. Hall, Pastor at First Congregational Church (UCC) in Middletown, argues that "What we need in Connecticut is a comprehensive, long-term energy strategy that considers economic, environmental and security concerns simultaneously. "

Read the rest of his editorial here. (The Hartford Courant requires free registration.)

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Going Green Can Be Profitable

That's the wisdom climate expert Amory Lovins imparted to Vermont state lawmakers.

"It's cheaper to save energy than to buy energy," Lovins said, in a talk outlining the business opportunities created by climate change.

Read the rest of the article in the Rutland Herald.
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