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I recently read The Green Collar Economy, by Van Jones (with a forward by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.). I think President Obama must have read it too, since the ideas he’s been talking about lately for fixing the economy are basically the same as what Jones sets out in his book. This is a good thing, in my opinion. Here are the main points from this book:

• The US is spending about $1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion dollars by the US definition of “trillion”, or 1 billion by the British definition of “billion” — 1 million million either way) per year to subsidize the coal and oil industries. The book doesn’t give any documentation on how it got this number, but if it’s true, I can only ask: Why?
• Given that burning oil, natural gas, and coal contributes to global warming and other pollution problems, that the supplies of these resources is finite, and that dependence on foreign oil is a major security issue, we need to move towards not burning these fuels at all.
• We can replace the energy coming from coal and oil with geothermal, wind, and solar energy (see my previous post on energy for more on that idea), in conjunction with a move towards better efficiency and sustainable food production.
• The following public policy shifts are needed, in order to make this happen:
  • Stop subsidizing oil and coal
  • Introduce a “cap and trade” system that will cap carbon emissions in the US at current levels, decreasing the cap every year on a pre-determined schedule (so that industry can plan ahead), and set up a system for companies to trade their carbon cap credits.
  • Streamline electricity transmission rules, so that any electricity producer is guaranteed access to the local grid everywhere, while owners of transmission lines and local grids are compensated for their use (similar to the access to local telephone lines from the Telecommunications Act of 1996).
  • Modernize the electric grid, adding high-voltage long-distance trunk DC transmission lines, better control software, and battery storage facilities, so that solar and wind-generated electricity can be effectively generated when and where the sun and wind hit, and used when and where it is most needed. The estimated cost of this modernization is about the same as the 1-year oil and coal subsidy mentioned above, and as with the telecommunications modernization that led to our current Internet backbones, if access is guaranteed, private investment may pay for a significant portion of this cost.
  • Subsidize efficiency and sustainability, ranging from home and building lighting/heating/insulation improvements to mass transit to organic food production.
• Jones and Kennedy believe this will not only improve the environment, but also significantly improve the economy. They cite examples of Sweden and Iceland, which have both significantly reduced their use of oil and coal, and whose economies are booming as a result. Jones also points out that many of the “green collar” jobs generated by these programs would pay a decent wage, be attainable by people with a high-school education (with a little training), and be impossible to outsource (things like installing solar panels and weatherizing buildings have to be done here in the US).
• Jones also advocates for an approach that is based on principles of equal protection and equal opportunity: making sure that this environmental movement includes, protects, and creates jobs in lower-income areas as well as among the more affluent.

President Obama apparently wants something very much like this plan to be put into effect, and the economic stimulus plan being signed today contains at least some of these ideas. I’ll be interested to see what comes next.

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World leaders are finally realizing that we’re facing a food crisis: they’re currently having a meeting in Rome to discuss it, and UN chief Ban Ki-moon recently stated that we need to grow 50% more food by 2030 to satisfy needs (I believe this is a conservative estimate). This is not much of a surprise to me — I mentioned the upcoming food crisis in my earlier article on biofuels, and it’s also related to the energy situation I discussed before that . Both the energy and food crises-to-be are largely due to a combination of a world population that is growing quite fast (expected to double by 2050), and a rise in the standard of living in some parts of the world (people with higher standards of living tend to use more energy and consume more food). This growth is not sustainable, as far as I can tell.

It has been suggested that to make our way of life more sustainable, we ought to shop locally (see my previous blog entry for discussion). But yesterday I read an article in Science news, based on a study published in Environmental Science and Technology, that I thought made an interesting point: the type of food we eat has a much greater environmental impact than how far it has traveled to reach us, at least in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. The study authors looked carefully at all parts of the process by which we obtain food, and found that the bulk of the greenhouse gases (83%) came from food production, with only 7% from farm-to-store transportation. Therefore, switching to buying only locally-produced food doesn’t really address the bulk of the problem. Instead, we need to think about the production phase: we can get about the same reduction in greenhouse gases by replacing red meat and dairy products with chicken, fish, eggs, grains, or vegetables just one day per week, as we can by buying all of our food locally. This has other benefits as well, in terms of the food crisis: a lot of the grain we grow is fed to animals to produce a much smaller amount of meat and dairy products, so shifting to eating the grains directly can also help alleviate the food crisis. Maybe we’ll all need to become vegetarians soon?

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I have been thinking a lot lately about economic growth. It seems like the news media, and practically everyone else, assumes that if the economy is growing, it’s a good thing, and if it isn’t, something terrible is occurring. This assumption has been bothering me for a while, and I recently read a book that put my vague uneasiness into words: Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben. In this book, McKibben makes the following points:

• When you measure the economy, only things that cost money count. So, for instance, increases in things like hospital stays, divorces, and burning coal in out-dated power plants count towards economic growth, whereas things like volunteer work, walking rather than driving, and spending time reading a library book with your child don’t.
• Economic growth in recent decades has not actually increased most Americans’ real earnings or standard of living.
• We are already facing food and energy crises, which will get worse if we keep “growing” the way we have been, and we can’t afford the global warming that would result. (See my previous articles on The Energy Future and Biofuels for more information.)
• Economic growth that raises individuals’ income up to the point where their basic needs are reliably met (roughly $10,000 per person per year) certainly makes them happier, but after most people have reached that point, economic growth does not increase people’s happiness.

So the problem is clear: economic growth is not improving the world or our happiness, and it isn’t sustainable. Unfortunately, the solutions are not easy. Here are McKibben’s key ideas:

• In the area of measuring the economy: When we measure the the value of economic activities, put a value on the natural resources they use up, as well as the pollution they produce, and count that against their economic benefit. Also, rather than only measuring things that cost money, attach an economic value to happiness and to beneficial activities like teaching, volunteer work, and child raising.
• In the area of sustainability: Work on making our economy more localized instead of more globalized, letting each local community come together to figure out how to make itself better. McKibben is convinced that if we all try to make more of our economic activities local, we will both solve our larger economic problems and make ourselves happier, as we get more of a sense of being involved in a community. His ideas include using building materials that come from nearby; eating food that is grown on nearby, small organic farms; adding small wind turbines and solar panels to our cities; and building sidewalks, bike lanes, and bus rapid transit. It’s hard to argue that any of those would be a bad idea.

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Lately, I have been hearing a lot of politicians promoting biofuels, mainly biodiesel and bioethanol. They seem to believe that biofuels are going to play a major role in solving our upcoming energy crisis, but logic and science do not support that idea. I gave a few reasons in my earlier article on the coming energy crisis, and an article I just read in Science News adds even more. Here are some thoughts:

• We need to generate more energy. The world’s population is growing, and per capita energy use is increasing as the developing world raises its average standard of living. Experts estimate we will need to approximately double the world’s energy production by 2050.
• Biofuels are really a means of transferring energy, not generating energy. Scientists who carefully calculate the energy used in planting, fertilizing, harvesting, transporting, and refining biofuels find that it takes nearly as much (or in some cases more) energy to create the biofuels as the biofuels contain. So, we can use biofuels as a means of transferring energy from one form to another, but we cannot really use them as a means of generating energy.
• We need to grow more food. As the world’s population grows, we will clearly need to produce more food in order to feed the population (unless we all convert to vegetarianism, which would allow us to eat food currently being used to feed farm animals).
• Biofuel crops are grown on agricultural land. If we want to produce biofuels, we will need to either convert food-crop land to fuel-crop land, or convert non-agricultural land to fuel-crop land.
• Biofuels use a large amount of land. For instance, if we converted an entire year’s U.S. corn production to bioethanol, we could only replace only 6% of the year’s U.S. gasoline consumption.
• 35% of the earth’s ice-free land is already used for agriculture. Converting more land to agriculture means cutting down forests. This is already happening in Brazil, which is converting Amazon rain forest to sugar cane production for bioethanol.

Given the above, I cannot see any reason to devote resources to developing biofuels. We cannot afford to use land for growing biofuel crops, and biofuels are not a significant net generator of energy anyway. How can we bring this to the attention of the public and our politicians?

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We hear a lot about global warming, technology, and energy in the news, but it’s hard to get an overall picture of our energy situation. So, I decided it was time to do some research, and I’ve collected below some information about the present and projected future of energy production and usage by the world’s people. But before I present the supporting facts, let me present my conclusions:

• Over the next few decades, if we do not drastically change our energy usage habits, we will need to find a way to generate large amounts of energy from sources other than fossil fuels, because the fossil fuels are not an infinite resource, and because using fossil fuels contributes to global warming.
• Taking into account capacity and the energy cost of producing more energy, the best potential for developing significant new energy sources lies in solar and wind power. Biofuels such as ethanol, in spite of current hype, have essentially zero potential for contributing in a positive way; other mechanisms, such as nuclear and hydropower, can contribute some, but are unlikely to make much of a difference.
• I think we need to give some serious thought to making drastic changes to our energy usage habits, especially given that the world’s population is increasing, and that as the developing world develops, the people there will tend to catch up to our levels of energy use. The transportation sector has a lot of potential for efficiency increases, which could include trip reduction, trip consolidation (mass transit for people as well as goods transport), and more efficient vehicles. The main potential for efficiency in the industrial sector is probably for people to consume and purchase less, which would also lead to a decreased need for commercial transportation. Pursuing home and commercial building efficiency is worthwhile, but since these sectors are smaller parts of the world’s energy consumption, efficiency increases in these areas are less likely to make a huge difference.
• Although technology can certainly help, major reductions in energy use in the transportation and industrial sectors will require lifestyle changes, which are difficult to promote. And while no one likes to think about it much, population control is probably one of the best means for limiting growth in energy consumption.
• Public policy can provide incentives for needed changes in both production and consumption of energy. One thing we could do is shift the focus of our energy policies: add funding for solar and wind technology, stop funding subsidies and research for biofuels, and abandon the legal hassles of trying to build more nuclear and hydroelectric plants. We could also change our tax structures to add economic costs to activities that consume energy, produce greenhouse gases, and add to the world’s population; or conversely, we could give economic benefits, through our tax structure, to energy conservation activities. And we could also replace subsidies for inefficient transportation modes (such as highways) in our government budgets with subsidies for more efficient modes (such as railroads).

So, here are the facts and reasoning behind the above conclusions. A quick note on units: In this article, energy consumption and generation are given in terms of instantaneous rate (power), in watts (W) — by “power” I don’t mean just electric power, but energy use/production in any form. 1 kW (kilowatt) = 1,000 watts. 1 MW (megawatt) = 1,000,000 watts. 1 GW (gigawatt) = 1,000,000,000 watts. 1 TW (terawatt) = 1,000,000,000,000 watts.

World Energy Usage and Projections

• According to a recent article I read in Science News (”Reaching For Rays”, only available with subscription), and the Wikipedia article “World Energy Resources and Consumption” global energy consumption happens at a rate (i.e. power) of about 13-15 TW.
• Given a world population of something over 6 gigapeople, the average person on earth is consuming roughly 2.2 kW, either directly or indirectly. However, the distribution is not equal: the United States consumes about 11 kW per person, while in the developing world, consumption is about 0.5 kW per person, according to the Wikipedia energy article cited above. China is currently using about 2.2 kW per person, but I imagine a significant fraction of that amount is used by industry that makes goods for other nations.
• The Science News article cited above projects that world energy use will double by 2050, due to population growth and development. The world’s population is expected to approximately double by that time.
• We use energy for many purposes. The US Department of Energy divides energy consumption into four sectors, and according to its Energy Outlook 2007 report, worldwide:
  • 37% of the energy we produce is for industrial uses, including agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and construction.
  • 20% is for transportation uses, including personal and commercial transportation.
  • 11% is for residential uses, including home heating, lighting, and appliances.
  • 5% is for commercial uses, including lighting, heating and cooling of commercial buildings, and water and sewer services.
  • The remaining 27% (wow!) of the energy the world produces is lost in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity.

Current Energy Sources and Future Potential

• According to both the Science News and Wikipedia energy articles cited above, fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) currently provide 86% of the energy we consume, amounting to about 13 TW of power. The earth contains finite amounts of these fuels: according to the World Coal Institute, the world’s coal reserves are equivalent to 155 years at current usage levels, our petroleum reserves are equivalent to 41 years of current usage, and our natural gas reserves are equivalent to 65 years of current usage. Using fossil fuels also leads to greenhouse gas production and global warming, so we will probably have to reduce their use in the future. In any case, if energy use grows as projected, or even if it stays at today’s level, over the next several decades we will need to come up with other sources to replace fossil fuel energy.
• We currently generate about 900 GW of nuclear power in 435 nuclear power plants, according to the Wikipedia energy article cited above. Building a new plant adds 1-2 GW of power production, which means we would have to build about 1000 new nuclear power plants worldwide to begin to generate power that would make a significant contribution to our future needs… and deal with the hassles of finding places to put them, and store the waste. The energy cost to build, operate, and de-commission a nuclear power plant (including costs to mine and dispose of the fuel) is about 1-5% of the energy the plant can expect to produce, according to this nuclear power web site, which appears to have done a fairly careful analysis, and this comparison of energy paybacks.
• Biomass (including wood, ethanol, biodiesel, etc.) is currently supplying about 260 GW of the word’s power, including fuel used for heating, but not including fuel used for cooking, according to the Wikipedia energy article. Consuming biofuels produces greenhouse gases — actually, even more than generating the same amount of energy from fossil fuels, because biofuels have lower energy content. The potential for developing more biomass power production is limited, in spite of the current hype about biodiesel and ethanol. For instance, according to this editorial by Tad Patzek, if we converted all of the US annual corn production into ethanol, we could only replace about 6% of the US annual consumption of gasoline. Of course, it also costs a significant amount of energy to produce corn and refine it into ethanol (all the analysis I have seen indicates that producing ethanol from corn costs more energy than you get out, which means it is clearly a no-win proposition). Some biofuels may actually do slightly better than break-even on energy cost, but even this is not clear. Furthermore, as the world’s population grows, we will need to use more land for food production, not convert agricultural land into biofuel production; converting more currently wild land into such uses is not an appealing possibility. So, the end result (see this video presentation for more details) is that the potential of future net biomass energy production in the world is minimal, compared to our future needs.
• The Wikipedia energy article cited above states that we currently have about 826 GW of hydropower in production. According to the Science News article cited above, there is about 500 GW of new hydroelectric power that could be developed in the world. This is fairly insignificant compared to our future needs.
• The Wikipedia energy article states that we are generating about 100 GW of geothermal power, including electric generation, direct heating, and more passive methods. I’m not sure what the future potential of geothermal power is.
• We are currently generating about 93 GW of solar power, according to the Wikipedia energy article cited above, which is mostly solar heating, and a small amount of electricity generation. The potential is much larger: according to the Science News article cited above, the total power of sunlight hitting the earth is approximately 120,000 TW. Of course, we can’t really expect to use all that energy. One reason is that solar cells are not 100% efficient at converting sunlight to usable energy (e.g. electricity) — the Science News article says the best cells today are only about 20% efficient. Also, we cannot cover the entire surface of the earth in solar cells: 75% of the earth’s surface is covered by water, and about 48% of the land area is currently being used for agricultural or forestry purposes (see this Nova web page), which we probably cannot afford to reduce, as discussed above. We probably also need to preserve some or most of the un-developed land on the planet (about half of the land total), and remote areas may not be practical locations for generating power either. So perhaps an area comparable to the 2-3% of the earth’s land currently being used for housing, industry, and roads could be devoted to solar cells, and maybe the existing buildings could have solar cells on their roofs, giving a total of about 5% coverage. That would mean a potential of about 300 TW of power, taking into account efficiency, which is certainly significant. To generate 1 TW of power (i.e. to start making a difference when compared to our current energy usage), we would need about 3700 square kilometers of solar cells. According to this article on solar-cell “payback”, with current technology, the cells have an up-front energy cost of about 20% of their eventual energy generation (which is spread over 20-40 years).
• We currently have about 58 GW being generated by wind, according to the Wikipedia energy article. The worldwide potential for wind energy is about 72 TW, according to this analysis of wind power potential, which analyzes wind speeds in comparison to those needed to run actual, available wind turbines. A typical turbine generates about 1.5 MW of power, so it we’re talking about roughly 1 million turbines before the generation becomes significant, when compared to our energy needs. The energy cost to build and operate a wind turbine is about 5% of the energy generated over its lifetime, according to this comparison of energy paybacks.

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