PhotographyTravel

I visited Iceland and Paris in 2010. I’m finally ready to share what happened.

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It’s been almost twelve years since I visited Iceland and Paris in winter. I brought my now-ancient Nikon D40 with me, and captured images all along the way. Our flight was technically a one-stop from the U.S. to Paris, but we managed to secure a multi-day layover in Iceland. It provided a great, but limited opportunity to explore the capital of Reykjavik and the southern coast. Click on the button below to see what transpired.

I do want to share one story from the trip that didn’t make it into the photo collection. We had driven east out of Reykjavik with the goal of traversing the southern coast, then turning north at the edge of the island. We didn’t make the turn north until after the sun had set, and the instructions we had received regarding the location of a town we could spend the night were vague. We didn’t have GPS capability, and the deep December cold was settling in.

We saw an isolated house at the end of a long driveway off the main road. We pulled off, approached the home, and knocked on the door. A graying Icelandic man answered the door. Behind him, dark wood paneling and furntiure colored in deep orange and pea green was illuminated by some incadescent lamps. It looked straight out of the 1970s.

We asked the man for directions to the nearest town with lodging. He looked confused, and replied to us in Icelandic, a language we had not heard since our arrival two days earlier. We pointed at our rudimentary map and pantomimed the best we could, but the best we got from him was a gesticulation over the next hill. We thanked him the best we could and headed blindly in that direction.

The advice was good enough, because lo and behold, over that next hill was a sizable hotel, with what looked to be close to 40 rooms. There were no lights on inside and the front door was locked. Closed for the winter season, we thought.

We approached a trailer on the outskirts of the hotel property to see if we could obtain more information. We knocked, and a woman in her nightgown opened the door. She was not expecting visitors, but she did speak English. After we explained our situation, she instructed us to wait where we were, then shut the door. A few moments later she reemerged and led us towards the hotel. She produced a set of keys and opened the door for us. She flipped a couple of breakers, turning a subset of common area lights on. We could see a large, but dimly lit reception area in front of us disappearing into the darkness. To our left and right, long hallways shot off the entrance, leading 40 yards in either direction.

She instructed us that we should just pick any room that we liked, then departed. As we gained our bearings, we couldn’t help but feel like we were in The Shining. An isolated hotel at the edge of the country, surrounded by snow, completely empty…well, except for us. We decided to try out the piano, sending full, rich sounds echoing throughout the vacated premises.

The next day, I drove our stick shift vehicle back to the airport and we departed for Paris. This was my first time visiting France in any capacity, and the city blew away my expectations. I had adopted the popular image of a culturally rich city overflowing with green spaces, romantic boulevards, and people bustling about. But this was winter. And what we found instead was a cold, wet city drenched in artificial light. The photos I captured in the gallery below reflect the spirit of the place as we experienced it at the time.

BuildingsClimateEnergyResearch

Energy Efficiency Can Save Lives

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In 2017 during Hurricane Irma, a tree branch hit a transformer and knocked out the main air conditioning system for a nursing home in Hollywood, Florida. There were portable air conditioners onsite, but they proved insufficient as indoor temperatures rose to a sweltering 100°F over the course of a three-day outage. Ultimately, 12 residents tragically lost their lives to the extreme heat.

Sadly, the conditions that precipitated this disaster are all too common, and are poised to become more so. Both the number of heatwaves in American cities and their duration have been increasing for decades due to climate change. In New York City alone, extreme heat claims 120 lives annually, and 80% of those deaths occur in people’s own homes.

To examine this issue, I co-authored a study in the journal Building and Environment with Drs. Kaiyu Sun and Tianzhen Hong, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Amidst the variety of options buildings have to improve thermal survivability during heat waves, power outages, and associated events, could energy efficiency play a role in keeping occupants safe? According to our results, the answer is yes.

It is well established that energy efficient buildings can save customers money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve health and well-being, and make occupants more productive. Yet the extent to which efficiency impacts our ability to adapt to, withstand, and rapidly recover from heat-related disasters – i.e., to become more resilient – has been less well studied. And many that do look at the issue largely consider only hypothetical buildings.

However, in the case of the Hollywood nursing home, we had a real-world example of a failed building. Weather data during the outage were available, as was a measured indoor temperature. Dr. Sun gathered the actual building data (e.g., floor plans, building components, renovation history) through publicly available records and recreated the nursing home in EnergyPlus modeling software.

3D model of the The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills
Detailed floor plans of the first (upper) and second (lower) floors. Patient rooms are colored based on the number of occupant.

We introduced a variety of energy conservation measures like higher insulation, shielding windows and the roof with aluminum foil, applying a cool roof coating, reducing air infiltration, adding exterior shading, turning off miscellaneous electrical loads (e.g., lighting), and adding natural ventilation.

We discovered that most measures would have reduced the indoor heat index, a metric that accounts for both temperature and humidity, thereby enhancing thermal survivability. In addition, we found the most effective measure – simply opening the windows – would have cost nothing at all. However, some efficiency improvements were less beneficial than others, and one actually would have had a negative impact on resilience. Moreover, if we placed the same nursing home in a heat wave in a different city, the set of most effective measures would have changed.

Temperature comparison between one of the hottest patient rooms (solid line) and the outdoor environment (dotted line). Vertical lines represent the onset and end of the cooling outage incident.
Box plot containing the temperatures of all patient rooms over the course of the outage. Heat hazard classification is presented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Occupants in rooms in the “danger” zone would likely experience “heat cramps and heat exhaustion” with “heatstroke probable with continued activity”.

I’ll quote the paper itself:

Our analysis generated three high-level takeaways. First, energy efficiency is not uniformly beneficial for resilience, as different efficiency characteristics convey different resilience impacts. In particular, we found that reduced air infiltration—a staple of modern energy efficiency practices—actually made it more difficult for the nursing home to expel excess heat when indoor air temperature was higher than it was outdoors. And it would have, on its own, increased the heat index beyond the status quo. Second, the effectiveness of specific energy efficiency measures varied as a function of circumstance. By transplanting the Florida nursing home to Chicago and San Francisco during real heatwaves, we found that the value of individual measures varied as a function of multiple parameters, including climate zone, outdoor temperature, length of air conditioning outage, insolation, and local building codes. Third, the most effective efficiency measures were also the least expensive to implement. This encouraging result indicates that low-to no-cost measures could potentially be deployed in buildings in near-real time to enhance passive survivability by allowing residents to shelter-in-place.

The vertical axis represents the percentage of all room-hours with temperatures falling within each hazard classification zone. Our best estimate for what actually happened inside the nursing home is shown in the left column. The most successful individual measure, natural ventilation, reduced the percentage of room-hours in the “danger” zone from 32.3% down to 1.2%. Tightening the buidling envelope (right column) increased it to 36.4%.

I should caution that while many of these efficiency measures reduced the danger for occupants, they did not on their own make the building safe. Some additional form of energy storage was needed for that, but even 8 hours of chilled water cooling capacity would have been sufficient to keep most room-hours within the “safe” zone for the majority of the outage.

I encourage those interested in expanding the value of energy efficiency, and those eager for new pathways to enhance resilience to refer to this study. It not only demonstrates a real connection between energy efficient buildings and thermal survivability, but also that this nexus is nuanced and ripe for further exploration.

Energy

An Interview with FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee

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FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee sat down for a public interview at a Resources for the Future event on September 4, 2019 in Washington, D.C. The head of our nation’s top energy regulatory agency discussed a number of topics including his definition of success at FERC, pathways to decarbonization, and the growing sense that FERC has become politicized. I have attached a rough transcription of the conversation preceded by some of the highlights of the interview:

  • Success at FERC means the creation of a regulatory ecosystem that enables new technologies to flourish and broadens their participation in the market. And we need to do that in a way that maintains market efficiencies, reduces carbon emissions, and passes legal scrutiny.
  • Market-based solutions enabled by fair and fuel-agnostic regulations are the most effective way to reduce carbon emissions.
  • I don’t like the idea that FERC has been politicized, and you shouldn’t read too much into 2-1 decisions. I welcome a speedy process to fill the vacant commissioner slots, but I’m confident we can continue to do our job effectively as is.
  • We are concerned about and looking into grid resilience, cyberattacks, the interdependence of gas with rest of the power sector, the utility of capacity markets, and the balancing of state-level energy and environmental priorities with the integrity of markets.
  • Congress should be setting national energy policy, not FERC.
  • I wish FERC would go back to being a boring agency.

Q: How did working with Senator Mitch McConnell influence you?

It informs my work. I can’t quantify how much I learned from him through his work ethic, discipline, leadership, and bipartisanship. When I worked with him, our policies were passing with 80 votes in the Senate. These were consequential energy bills. He bridged the interests of Kentuckians with those in the Senate. We had to make sure the legislation could clear President Obama’s desk.

But today I have a different job. At FERC it’s incumbent that we view issues in a nonpartisan way. It took me a while to make that transition to being an independent regulator. I used to advocate for Kentucky. That’s a land of coal-fired generation. When I first came to FERC one of the issues on our desk was a proposal from the U.S. Department of Energy regarding a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) to compensate coal and nuclear. I wanted to help the coal industry, but I take seriously my new role whereby we need to abide by the record before us and the evidence. It was tough to not be able to help them, but the record did not justify the action they were asking us to take. That experience, while challenging, was a good one for throwing me in the deep end and showing me that I had to transition quickly.

Q: You also opened a docket on grid resilience. Where does that stand? What are the greatest risks the grid faces and what’s FERC’s role?

The NOPR did not support the action. But the notion of grid resilience – identifying the attributes of resilience and the potential threats we face – is important. We have been carefully poring through the record we have today, which is better than when NOPR was proposed. First, we need to determine the definition of resilience. Then we need to identify any short- or long-term threats to the grid. Then figure out what steps to take. It’s taking a long time, but hopefully we’ll be able to proceed soon. We’ll do it thoughtfully.

Q: Can you offer any insight regarding what some of the biggest risk factors are?

The energy transition has been remarkable for consumers and the environment. We need to understand the implications of these changes. There’s increased interdependence of gas and the power sector. If twenty years ago there’s a natural gas pipeline outage, power plants don’t flinch. That’s not the case today. We need to understand these connections. I’m pleased that the RTO/ISOs are doing in-depth fuel security analyses of their own systems. This isn’t putting the thumb on the scale for any fuel.

Q: What about cybersecurity?

We all need to contend with cyber risks more seriously than before. There are big benefits to technology innovation. But that increases this risk. We are vulnerable to cyberattacks. We’ve taken steps. We’ve looked at supply chain risk. Attempted intrusions are reported. But we can do more. Our offices work with our state and federal partners to stay ahead of these evolving threats. We have the responsibility to certificate natural gas pipelines. But security falls to the TSA. We have engaged in aggressive dialogue with them to ensure that they are taking the appropriate steps and focusing on the threat of a physical or cyberattack.

Q: FERC works with states. That can lead to challenges since many states have different energy and environmental policies that intersect with the power markets. We can talk about capacity markets too. What is FERC’s role in ensuring the integrity of markets while simultaneously incorporating state level desires?

It’s challenging. I believe in states’ rights to make their own decisions, but I also want these markets to succeed. When states make public policy regarding their own resource mix that impacts other states with different goals, it creates market challenges. For example, in 2018 ISO-NE proposed a Competitive Auctions with Sponsored Resources (CASPR) project where they looked at ways to balance state public policies with the competitive wholesale electricity market structures in the region. FERC was able to accept what ISO-NE wanted, and that that was great.

Take a look at the energy imbalance market out West. They have diverse energy portfolios. But the states worked together collectively, demonstrated leadership, and are working towards decarbonization goals. There are complex challenges when you deal with diverse states with different governmental dynamics. It’s important that these markets function.

Q: Certain states with capacity markets may remove those markets and take over the resource adequacy at the state level with the public utility commissions. Do you have thoughts or advice?

People have been questioning the utility of capacity markets. Are they delivering what was envisioned and intended? We’re coming to a point where different states are taking actions for different reasons. We are struggling with that.

Q: The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) considered the notion of a “carbon adder” where you incorporate the externalities of CO2 emissions into the power price. Do you have a view on how New York or other states might reconcile how clean power works in the marketplace?

I don’t want to prejudge anything that would come before FERC.

Q: You are on the record about being concerned about climate change. What’s FERC’s role?

We’re not an environmental regulator. We’re a market regulator. But I believe market-based solutions are the key to achieving those carbon reductions. Look at all the policies that weren’t passed by Congress – cap-and-trade, carbon tax, the Clean Power Plan. Yet power sector emissions are on the decline because of the market. There’s a business case to be made for renewable energy. It’s competitive on its own without the need for government subsidies, partially because there are no fuel costs.

The role that FERC can play is breaking down barriers and creating a regulatory environment that allows them to flourish. In last year we issued FERC Order 841 regarding how battery storage could be compensated for all the attributes they provide to the system. That might be a seminal moment for mitigating carbon emissions. Batteries can alter our energy landscape and deal with key reliability questions. It’s a perfect example of how a market regulator like FERC can play a role. The same holds for aggregated distributed energy resources (DERs).

We have also seen that the increased deployment of natural gas and renewable energy has replaced more carbon intensive fuels, which has reduced emissions. China and India are still carbon intensive. The United States does its environmental landscape better and cleaner than anyone. I believe that the U.S. being a net exporter for the first time in 60 years has economic benefits and geopolitical implications. If U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) can displace more carbon intensive energy in other parts of the world, that will be a big deal.

Q:  You say pipelines are taking too long to get going. What’s up with that?

We will review the way we evaluate our certification policy statements. I’m hopeful this review will let us take significant steps to address the concerns of land owners. We need better transparency and communication with them. We don’t expect them to track FERC dockets. There are things we can do internally that can help land owners. A recent FERC project was upheld in DC Circuit Court, but they said that we can put landowners in regulatory purgatory. I want to address those considerations.

Q: Do you see a role for Congress there?

I’ve been vocal about this. I believe in Congress’s role in setting energy policy. Almost all energy policy action in recent years has been through an omnibus rider or the tax code. FERC is constrained by the laws that it, yet some pivotal decisions are falling to us regardless. I may temporarily benefit from that, but it’s not good for the country. Congress has the tools to affect the direction the country should go. FERC shouldn’t be setting national energy policy.

Q: Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur is now done with FERC. Having one less commissioner allows you to take action more quickly. But there’s a question about the intentions of the remaining commissioners, and whether that decision making is actually a good thing for the commission. Should decision making be constrained in any way? How should we think about decisions in the future?

We need at least three commissioners to have a quorum. I don’t like this sense of politicization at the agency. When Cheryl came in, no one talked about the politics of the commissioners. When Commissioner Kevin McIntyre became ill, he stopped voting. For the past 11 months every order has been bipartisan since we’re split 2-2. I push back on the idea that it’s been political. I’m confident that we can continue to do our work. People shouldn’t read too much into 2-1 votes. I do think that there are some real differences in our interpretations of the law. Losing Cheryl was tough because she was willing to negotiate and compromise. Without her there, if we fall on 2-1 divides, it will be perceived as political. The ultimate arbiter is the courts about whether our orders are legally durable. My success or failure metric is whether we pass legal scrutiny.

Q: How quickly do you want two more commissioners?

I understand it takes a long time. We have so much important work. We welcome a speedy process. We have so much on our plate. We have a great team with great counsel. I’m confident we can address these questions with who we have now.

Q: What do you think about the way the public views FERC’s work?

I think it matters. At first I didn’t appreciate the significance of electricity writ large. We take it for granted. FERC has always been a significant agency, but it just flew under the radar. In the last decade for various reasons, FERC’s profile has been enhanced. There’s more scrutiny now. I don’t think the work is any more consequential work than it has been, but there’s more attention now. In absence of federal legislation, more falls on us. Energy policy was boring when I came to Congress. As issues around climate change and the energy transition gained more attention, FERC’s visibility has risen too. Because FERC is highly technical, my colleagues and I have tried to communicate with the public about the key matters before us.

Q: You talked about the role of FERC in breaking down market barriers. Are there other types of analyses that we should do that go beyond that? For example, demand response has been enabled by data, IT, etc.

In addition to breaking down barriers, we’ve been making iterative changes. Innovation drives changes in the market. We do a good job at FERC of not just reacting to changes but looking forward. I give a lot of credit to Former FERC Chairman Norman Bay for a lot of this stuff. I believe in markets to the extent that I do because of the innovation they’ve created in areas like transmission, new power sources, and storage. Competition drives innovation and cost discipline.

Q: When you look back at your work at FERC, what does success mean to you?

A regulatory ecosystem that enables new technologies to flourish and broadens participation in our markets. And making sure we’ve done our work in such a way that we maintain market efficiencies while reducing carbon emissions.

AUDIENCE QUESTIONS

Q: If you decide a new technology was mature enough to replace natural gas, can you actually make that happen? Can you require that plants convert to a renewable energy source?

We were created in 1978. We’re governed by two acts. Our first responsibility is the reliability of the electric grid. We are technology and fuel neutral. In your hypothetical, our role would be to ensure the market structures allow the technology to compete and be compensated without artificial barriers, while also ensuring that the reliability of the grid wasn’t impacted.

Q: What role do you see for Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) reform?

PURPA was passed in late 1970s out of concern regarding our natural gas supply. But energy markets have changed tremendously since then. Congress should modernize the Act, but FERC can do stuff too. I think there’s a business case for renewable energy, as do many investors. I think they can stand on their own. It’s good for markets and innovation.

Q: Has FERC started thinking about vehicles-to-grid?

It’s a little outside our purview. But given vehicle electrification we have to look at its impact on demand and electricity reliability. Electric vehicles (EVs) raise fascinating new questions. I met with some petroleum retailers that were paying to retrofit charging stations, but also eating the charging costs. They wanted to know whether they could pass the charging costs onto consumers. It seems like an easy problem, but if they resold electricity it could trigger FERC jurisdiction. The energy transition has so much potential, but there are complex legal and policy questions. This is one example of that. We need more conversations between all these sectors.

Q: What are your views about climate change mitigation, and how do your thoughts intersect with the administration?

I believe in climate change. Market efficiencies are having a positive effect in lowering power sector emissions. I tend to talk about it in terms of the business case for renewable energy. Those arguments are all well-received by my peers.

Q: You serve in a polarizing moment. Can you speak to the value of public service? Is it worth it?

It’s so important. The same holds for stakeholders and advocates. Everyone needs to be part of the conversation. I can say that all the staff at FERC are genuine public servants. They might come in with a worldview, but not with an agenda. They want to do good. I’m the Chairman by circumstance following the death of Kevin McIntyre. I want to follow his model of being a public servant who wanted to do right by the public.

Q: If you could ask Congress for clarifications or to enhance your jurisdiction, what would ask?

I’d ask them for solutions that would make energy policy boring again. Leave it to the engineers and lawyers. That will get things done.

BuildingsClimateEnergy

What To Prioritize – Retrofits or New Construction?

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Buildings in the United States consume about 40% of all energy and 75% of all electricity. Attempts to decarbonize our economy necessarily run through buildings. However, we have limited resources and what to prioritize is not always obvious. We could try to retrofit existing, inefficient homes. Or we could focus on new construction that is built efficient from the ground up. To explore this issue further, I recently moderated a debate on the following resolution:

When the two come into conflict, the federal government ought to prioritize resources for retrofit programs over new construction programs.

While debaters on both sides of the resolution agreed on the importance of improving the energy efficiency of both existing and new buildings, the competition of ideas led to a lively discussion about our nation’s research priorities and relationship with industry. The question is, undoubtedly, a complicated and multifaceted one. Therefore, we invited a representative from each side to share abridged versions of their arguments. Rhett will advocate for retrofits, and Newton for new construction.

If we could only choose one, should we focus on retrofit programs or new construction programs?

Rhett:The answer is retrofits. There are 118 million existing homes in the U.S., plus another 5-6 million commercial buildings. Over half those buildings are at least 40 years old, and they are generally very inefficient. You can save 20-30% of energy usage through simple interventions, and well beyond 50% if you improve the envelope. They represent a significantly larger opportunity for energy savings.
Newton:I hate to disagree, but the answer is new construction. We acknowledge that there are many, many more existing buildings than new buildings. However, there are about 1 million new homes built each year. And 33% of all existing homes in 2060 have yet to be built. If we do everything we can to make new construction more efficient, we will have addressed 33% of the entire market right there.

But we’re talking 124 million existing buildings compared to only 1 million new buildings per year. The opportunity presented by retrofit programs seems pretty overwhelming, no?

Newton:It’s not just about the number of buildings. We have to consider which type of buildings we can most effectively impact. Getting energy efficiency into new construction is far easier than existing homes.
Rhett:I agree that getting into existing homes is more difficult, but that doesn’t diminish the opportunity. Much more funding is still put into remodeling and simple energy equipment replacements each year, and we can build on that.
Newton:But the real question is where will those solutions come from? Where will they be developed, honed, and readied for the existing home market? That is much more challenging, and I would submit that all the innovations that spill into the retrofit market are coming from progress in new construction.

Why do you think the majority of innovations are being developed in new construction?

Newton:There are two reasons. The first is customer demand. New efficient buildings have energy bills that are a fraction of those in existing. They are also 2-3 times more comfortable and provide greater health benefits. Once people experience that contrast, it drives demand. The second is economies of scale. It’s easier to get innovations into new construction, so this is what drives the market for energy efficient technologies. Afterwards they work their way downstream into the retrofit market.
Rhett:Except we generally still see insufficient innovation in new construction. The sector has so many actors like architects, builders, manufacturers and others, and they are just not well-integrated. Where there is room for improvement – and where we are further ahead right now in other industries – is automation and prefabrication. This can be done either on-site or off-site. These innovations haven’t taken off in new construction, and we shouldn’t have to wait until they do.
Newton:I couldn’t agree more about the benefits of automation, but let’s look at a great example of where it works. In Sweden 85% of new homes are constructed off-site. This market helped improve the plans, machinery, digitized technology, and automation expertise that makes their new construction so effective. This automation infrastructure then transferred to retrofits through a program called Energiesprong, which is now a world influencer in the mass improvement of existing homes. But it wouldn’t be where it is if not for new construction.

How do health and equity fit in?

Rhett:It’s incumbent on the government to make sure these retrofit opportunities are available to everyone and easy to install at a reasonable cost. A greater percentage of the older, draftier homes have higher energy bills and, unfortunately, are occupied by individuals with lower incomes who don’t always have the ability to pay for improvements. Or they might be in a tenant-based situation where the owner is just not paying for them.
Newton:I fully agree on that. I’m just making a point that the solutions to achieve better health and equity will exist because the new home market enables the scale and the technology development. Then, the improvements you need are there faster than if you started with existing homes.
Rhett:But there’s an immediacy to this issue. If you only focus on new construction, you’re going to have either really high energy bills or you’re going to have people who are really suffering because they can’t afford to turn on their heat or their air conditioning. It’s on the government to come up with ideas and options that are there for everyone and not just for those who can afford a new home.
Newton:I don’t disagree with any of that. It’s only when they come into conflict and you have to make choices that you should opt for the infrastructure, the skills, and the installation expertise that you’ll get in the new home industry and then you can translate it over to existing buildings.

Where can the federal government have the greater impact?

Newton:To echo a point Rhett made earlier, we have about 100,000 contractors in the U.S. who work on new and existing buildings. That level of fragmentation makes it impossible to innovate and develop new solutions for industry. We have found that publicly-owned builders only invest less than 0.1% in innovation R&D, as compared to 4% for non-agricultural corporations. The only way we get innovation is through high-performance product manufacturers. The Department of Energy’s Building America program fills a huge gap in developing innovations, validating them in the field, and building consumer interest. Given the absence of investment in a fragmented industry, what we do in our nation’s new construction programs is vitally important.
Rhett:As Newton alluded to, industry does to some degree put money into product manufacturing because they want to continue to sell upscale versions of their technologies. But very few, if any, are putting money into tackling existing buildings in a wholesale manner. Right now cities are dealing with energy, environmental, and equity challenges. They realize they need to address problems in buildings that people are currently living and working in. The federal government is in a unique position to aggregate the interest in this area. It can push academia, the national labs, and industry to focus their ingenuity into retrofits. Together they can help retrofits be quick, attractive, easy to deploy, and affordable. That’s just not something that will happen on its own.
BuildingsClimateEnergy

Buildings – A New Hope to Solve Climate Change

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Addressing climate change requires two approaches – mitigation of emissions, and adaptation to its impacts. In this PechaKucha presentation presented as part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Visualizing Science Policy 20×20 event, I lay out the case for how buildings are a critical – if sometimes forgotten – part of the solution. I invite you to watch this talk on YouTube, or read the transcript below.

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Last September during Hurricane Irma, a tree branch hit a transformer and knocked out power to the air conditioning system of a nursing home in Hollywood, Florida. There were portable air conditioners on site, but they were insufficient, and temperatures rose to a sweltering 110 degrees Fahrenheit. By time emergency responders realized the scope of the problem, 12 residents had tragically lost their lives.

It was situations like these that compelled me a few years ago to set aside my career as an astrophysicist and devote my attention towards the phenomenon that’s making extreme events like Hurricane Irma more intense – and that’s climate change.

Through this AAAS Fellowship I’ve had the privilege of working with the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office. And when I told people I’d be going to BTO they’d say…”Why? I thought you were concerned about climate change.” And I’d have to tell them that in United States buildings consume about 40% of all energy and 75% of all electricity. So if BTO could achieve its mission of making building technologies more energy efficient, not only could we create jobs and save tens of billions a dollars a year for Americans, we could also cut out a significant chunk of our greenhouse gas emissions, and begin to mitigate this massive problem.

So I’m going to put my salesman’s hat on for a second and sell you on two energy efficiency success stories. Number 1! This [pointing towards slide] is what refrigerators used to look like – bulky, ugly, expensive energy hogs. But through advances in technology refrigerators have more available space, yet only consume 1/4 the energy, cost 1/3 the price, and allow you to watch cable news right on the refrigerator door!

Number 2! Clothes dryers, which consume about 1% of energy in the U.S., largely by heating and evaporating water. But right now researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working on ultrasonic drying technology in which a rapidly vibrating membrane atomizes the water, which can then be siphoned off as a cool mist. If we can bring this to scale you will be able to dry your clothes in half the time with 1/5 the energy. And I’ve already got the slogan: The Ultrasonic Clothes Dryer – Taking your sock drawer, to Mach 4.

But mitigating emissions goes beyond just using less energy. It’s about using the right kind of energy. Every so often I’ll run into a young idealist who will say, “We need to go 100% renewable energy! More wind! More solar!” Our electric grid must balance generation and demand in real time. And while admire the idealism, how do we meet demand when the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing?

There is a new device that’s made its way into about half of all buildings, and that number is rising. That device is the smart electricity meter. And what’s unique about it is that it enables utilities to send signals to buildings.

I want you to imagine the hottest day of the year. People are getting off work, driving home, and what’s one of the first things they do when they walk in the door? They turn on their air conditioners at the same time. These tend to be the highest demand hours of the year, and the grid has to be overbuilt to accommodate them. It would be like building a 100-lane highway just to accommodate Thanksgiving Day traffic. It’s great for a few hours per year, but then we have to pay to build and maintain all that infrastructure that most of the time is being underutilized. And the more lanes of the highway we drive on, the higher the toll – or in this case the price of electricity – gets for everybody.

Now smart meters allow utilities to send signals to buildings that are like, “Hey, we’re about to have a really expensive event on our hands. If you are willing, we will pay you to reduce your demand.” And literally with the instantaneous flip of a switch, buildings help the grid balance, including instances when variable renewable energy like solar and wind suddenly become unavailable. This is known as demand response.

Another way to help the grid balance is by storing excess solar and wind energy, then dispatching it later as needed. Yet going 100% renewable requires a ginormous amount of storage. We can get some of it from grid-scale pumped hydroelectric energy, and some of it from electrochemical batteries.

But there’s another way to store energy – in a building’s thermal mass. So imagine that you take a liquid material and embed it in the bricks that make up the wall of your building. It’s a hot, sunny day, so using available solar energy, the grid instructs your building to turn on its air conditioning at 2pm. The liquid material freezes, and AC shuts off at 5pm. The building then acts like a giant cooler, keeping the occupant comfortable without having to consume electricity at the worst part of the day.

And while all of this is fantastic, even if we could go zero carbon tomorrow, so much inertia has been built up in Earth’s system that global climate conditions would continue to deteriorate for decades to come. That means more extreme weather events, and more prolonged power outages.

Now it would be great if everyone could evacuate to safe locations, but for a variety of reasons that remains impractical or impossible for far too many people. That means we need ways to help people shelter-in-place safely. And if you need buildings to maintain safe thermal conditions longer and with less energy, two of the most valuable assets are high-quality walls and windows. Combine that with network connectivity and smarter controls, buildings will eventually be able to prepare themselves thermally and electrically when adverse conditions can be predicted ahead of time. And unlike centralized power plants or even solar panels, energy efficiency and demand response can be deployed absolutely anywhere.

Now look, I fully acknowledge that there are other resiliency strategies out there. Utilities must continue to harden our electrical distribution system, and communities should have up-to-date climate and disaster preparedness plans. But as long as climate change remains a wicked problem, everyone one of us, in our own capacities, is going to have to do what we can. Then maybe, collectively, we’ll get to the point where tragedies like the one in that Hollywood, Florida nursing home never have to happen again.

Research

Dear Citizen, Would You Like to Be a Scientist?

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One of the great revolutions of the last decade is the democratization of science. Once the territory of highly trained experts, the advent of “citizen science” has opened the door of opportunity for anyone to contribute to scientific discovery. Also referred to as “crowdsourcing,” citizen science utilizes web platforms to allow people from all over the world to analyze images, report events, and even take field measurements. By tapping into the curiosity of thousands of people, conventional scientists are solving problems they (and their computers) would never have been able to alone.
 
For example, the Galaxy Zoo project asks its citizen scientists to look at images of galaxies and classify their shapes. These results can be used to train computers to do the same task automatically, thereby enhancing our understanding of galactic evolution. Snapshot Serengeti shows its citizen scientists photos taken by remote cameras in the Serengeti, then asks them to identify which animals are present. The results can be used to measure populations and migration patterns.
 
Earlier this week I was fortunate to attend a talk on citizen science led by Dr. Sophia Liu. In this article, I relate some of the top crowdsourcing resources available, then describe some of Sophia’s work in using citizen science to aid disaster recovery.
 

***

If you are going to start anywhere with citizen science, start here. SciStarter is the place to find, join, and contribute to science through more than 1600 formal and informal research projects, events, and tools. Their database of citizen science projects enables discovery, organization, and greater participation in science. Citizen scientists can track their conributions, bookmark things they like, and access the tools and instruments needed to get started. If you run a project, the site can help you grow and manage your volunteers.

Citizenscience.gov is an official government website designed to accelerate the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science across the U.S. government. The site provides a portal to three key assets for federal practitioners: a searchable catalog of federally supported citizen science projects, a toolkit to assist with designing and maintaining projects, and a gateway to a federal community of practice to share best practices.

One of my personal favorite projects is OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is an open data platform for mapping things that are both real and current. It includes millions of buildings, roads, trails, cafes, railway stations, parks, and more along with details about those places. You can map whatever real-world features are interesting to you! Built by a community of mappers, OSM emphasizes local knowledge drawn from a diverse community of enthusiasts, GIS professionals, and engineers who gather information using aerial imagery, GPS devices, low-tech field maps, and more. (While not strictly crowdsourcing, I can’t help but mention the project what3words, which has divided the entire world into 3m x 3m squares and assigned each a unique 3 word address.)

Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. It is home to some of the internet’s largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. The organization grew from the original Galaxy Zoo project and now hosts dozens of projects which allow volunteers to participate in crowdsourced scientific research. Projects have been drawn from disciplines including astronomy, ecology, cell biology, humanities, and climate science. It offers a feature to “build a project.”

Crowdcrafting is a web-based service that invites volunteers to contribute to scientific projects developed by citizens, professionals, or institutions that need help to solve problems, analyze data, or complete challenging tasks that can’t be done by machines alone and require human intelligence. The platform is 100% open source and 100% open-science, making scientific research accessible to everyone.

CitSci.org can support your research by providing tools and resources that allow you to customize your scientific procedure – all in one location on the Internet. CitSci.org provides tools for the entire research process including: creating new projects, managing project members, building custom data sheets, analyzing collected data, and gathering participant feedback. It can be a useful platform to gather and analyze crowdsourced data.

And just for a bit of local flavor, Washington DC has Project Sidewalk, which uses crowdsourced image analysis to identify problems with city sidewalks.

***

Dr. Sophia Liu is an Innovation Specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey Science and Decisions Center. Sophia has done all sorts of cool work. She is the Co-Chair of the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Ccience (CCS) and the CCS Coordinator for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Department of Interior. She has worked at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center, the St. Petersburg Coastal Marine Science Center, and the Energy, Minerals, and Environmental Health Programs at the National Center in Virginia.

Most recently Sophia was assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to response to the 2017 hurricanes. She introduced us to a number of crowdsourced maps that were and are being used in Puerto Rico’s recovery effort. One map developed for FEMA by volunteers shows Puerto Rico’s road and hospital status in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Another map shows locations on the island where bridges are out, power is available (or not), cell service is present, food or potable water are available, etc. In the hurricane’s immediate wake, Story Map Series provided an overview of available geospatial information from both government provided sources and crowdsourced data.

Sophia also worked on several USGS projects. One of them was Did You Feel It? (DYFI), which collects information from people who felt an earthquake and creates maps that show what people experienced and the extent of damage. Users answer easy questions about observable phenomena so that community intensity maps can be created, then integrated into other products.

She also worked on Tweet Earthquake Dispatch (TED), a project that maps people’s tweets about earthquakes. These tweets actually made detections faster than automated systems 90% of the time. They were also able to identify earthquakes that were not detected seismically.

Another project she worked on is called iCoast. Although aerial photos are often available before and after storms, researchers and responders are not always able to do much with them. Using citizen science, iCoast asks people to compare photos of coasts before and after events. The results are used for Bayesian predictions of coastal damage.

Sophia and her team at FEMA have worked with a number of volunteer network groups whose members are motivated by knowing that their efforts are leaving a positive impact. She helped FEMA recognize the value of these existing organizations and their established workflows. She and her team adapted to meet the volunteers on the platforms that they used, like Google and Slack. Sometimes hackathons are held to operationalize crowdsourcing for emergency management. Some of that material is available on GitHub.

More can be done to improve this process. To leverage crowdsourcing to better respond to hazards, Sophia recommends making hazard models more open and accessible to the tech crowds that can integrate them with other baseline data and post-storm data sets. Online visualization viewers could be improved. Independent platforms should be developed, and post-storm evaluations should be more immediate. Ultimately she thinks we can combine all of this together to create an improved playbook for emergency management.

 

Featured image: “Citizen Science volunteer” by Mount Rainier National Park is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / image has been cropped and foliage added

AstrophysicsClimatePoliticsResearch

10 Ways You Can Be a Better Advocate for Science

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This Saturday, marches in support of science will be held in hundreds of cities across the globe. The event should be an excellent opportunity to reinject science back into the public consciousness.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society, held an event on April 19 offering advice on how to advocate for science beyond the march. Here I share some of their strategies for interacting with Congress, the media, and the public.


CONGRESS

Despite what many people think, citizens can influence Congress. In fact, a survey of those in positions of authority within Congressional offices reported that when their representative has not already arrived at a firm decision on an issue, contact from a constituent is about five times more persuasive than from a lobbyist.

Being influential, however, is about more than just being right. Congressional offices receive roughly 250 requests per day, so there are a few things you can do to stand out in an office that is essentially a triage unit.

  • Ask for something concrete your representative can realistically deliver on.
  • Explain why it is urgent.
  • Make your pitch concise (< 10 minutes) and develop a one-page handout to leave after the meeting. Keep politics out of it!
  • Be engaging! Tell a real story, preferably about someone who has one foot in your world, and one foot in your representative’s.

While your initial contacts with an office may be met with no response, be persistent. You can get that meeting!

MEDIA

Scientists are considered the most trustworthy spokespersons for science. But communicating effectively with the media requires that you do your homework and know your audience (e.g. business, technical, students).

You will want to have a well-honed, practiced elevator pitch. It should succinctly lay out the research problem, why it matters, and what the take home message is (i.e. what you can say that will lead to a longer conversation). You can always bridge back to it if you get questions you are not ready for, or if the interview otherwise is not going smoothly. Ask the reporter how they plan to frame the article. Use that as an opportunity to correct any inaccuracies.

It’s advantageous to build personal relationships with journalists. Inviting them to visit your laboratory, sending them relevant background information, connecting on social media, and just generally being cordial can help you become a trusted and go-to source.

PUBLIC

Perhaps the most important question to ask yourself when communicating science to the public is, “Why am I doing this?” Perhaps it is to increase interest in science, or to share knowledge. Maybe you want to inspire the next generation to enter the discipline, or increase trust between scientists and the public.

Once you are clear about your purpose, abide by these tenets:

  • Don’t “dumb down” your science or treat your audience like idiots. Disdain is an ineffective communication technique.
  • Ditch the jargon. For example, the public has a different understanding of the phrase “positive feedback” than scientists do. Instead use something more clearly understood, like “vicious cycle.”
  • Create a dialogue so that you know where your audience is at. Let them know they are being heard.
  • Reverse the order of a scientific talk. Start with the conclusions, explain why the issue matters, then finish with the background details.

IN CONCLUSION

Be enthusiastic! Put your own face on science and demonstrate what keeps you motivated. Offer solutions, and sidestep landmines (e.g. focus on clean energy with someone who thinks climate change is a hoax).

Doing all of this on your own can be daunting and time consuming. Know the resources to make your life easier. Contact your university, institute, or relevant scientific society to collect their outreach materials. Find groups in your local community that you can partner with, like those who are already gathering an audience and where you might be permitted to speak.

There are many other available resources. Research!America holds science communication workshops that train people to better communicate medical research. Spectrum Science Communications helps “develop unique stories that create game-changing conversations to influence audiences and differentiate your brand.” AAAS is launching an advocacy toolkit, and many disciplinary organizations, like the Society for Neuroscience and American Physical Society have their own resources.

ClimateEnergyPolitics

Jerry Brown Spits Hot Fire at Meeting of the American Geophysical Union

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California governor Jerry Brown was a guest speaker at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco on December 14, 2016.  A strong supporter and defender of science, Jerry Brown gave an impassioned speech regarding how California was going to stand up to the threats against science posed by the Trump administration.  The governor’s spirit should serve as inspiration to scientists everywhere.

Here are some notable quotes from the address:

Often when you’re moving along at a tepid pace, you’re not going to get there.  When someone [read: Trump] comes along and says, ‘Let’s blow it all up!” sometimes it wakes us up.  Some people need a heart attack to stop smoking.  Well maybe we just got a heart attack!

 

In California we have the scientists; we have the lawyers, and we’re ready to defend.

 

If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellites.  We’re going to collect that data!

 

If they start deleting [climate] databases, we’ve got a lot of databases in California; we can take a few more.

 

Our new Secretary of Energy would come to California and say, ‘Come to Texas because we have all the jobs in Texas.’  Well Rick, I’ve got some news for you.  California’s growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas.  And we’ve got more sun than you have oil!  And we’re going to use it!
AstrophysicsClimateEnergyPolitics

What a Trump Presidency Means for Science

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Donald Trump’s election has worried many Americans for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons – and one that was largely ignored during the campaign – is its impact on science. Given Trump’s lack of firm policy proposals and occasionally contradictory statements, there is much uncertainty in this regard. For that reason, I want to delve into what we can expect from the new Republican establishment in three key areas – science funding, climate change, and the role of science in government.

In all likelihood, the amount that the U.S. spends funding scientific research will be tightly linked to our total discretionary spending (i.e. non-military, non-entitlement).  Trump has promised to dramatically increase military spending, keep entitlements fixed, and lower taxes without increasing the deficit.  Discretionary spending would have to be cut under that scenario. While a budget for the current fiscal year (FY 2016-17) was supposed to be passed by October 1, Congress didn’t get it done in time. When this happens, they will pass a continuing resolution (CR) that continues funding the current year at the previous year’s levels.

That puts us in a position where one of two things is likely to happen. Either the current Congress can attempt to complete its own budget by the end of the year or, if it better serves their priorities, the Republicans can decide to pass another CR and wait to start fresh in 2017.

A continuing resolution may or may not be good news for scientists. The current proposed budget contains funding increases for some scientific agencies that could be lost if it goes unpassed. On the other hand, waiting until next year introduces the risk of significant spending cuts. Some of that money would probably be returned to the states, and could be redistributed to scientists through different channels, though that is far from guaranteed. Either way, scientific grants typically last for three to five years, so expect any funding changes to take years to work their way through the system.

It is important to distinguish between science that is nonideological, like health research, and that which has become ideological, like climate change. On the latter issue, Donald Trump has famously called climate change a “hoax” invented by the Chinese to reduce American competitiveness, a statement that ignores the substantial progress China is making in reducing its own emissions.

Trump has also expressed a desire increase usage of fossil fuels (including “clean coal”) and pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement. While we are bound to this international treaty for at least the next four years, the President could opt to ignore its non-binding emissions targets. Failing to meet our commitments would diminish America’s moral authority and could disincentivize other nations, like India, from meeting their own targets.

America’s emissions pledges were based on a number of Obama-driven policies, like the Clean Power Plan (CPP), which directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.  The CPP will almost certainly be killed (expect legal challenges), but removing the federal requirement will not impede states from proceeding on their own, which many are.  Furthermore, a Trump administration will be largely powerless to undo the economic forces that are leading to coal’s decline, chiefly the low price of natural gas.

Trump has expressed a desire to eliminate the EPA, but the agency will be difficult to do away with altogether, as this requires congressional approval and will be met by extremely strong political resistance.  Heading the agency with noted climate denier Myron Ebell, as has been rumored, will not help matters, though.  Ebell has called for the Senate to prohibit funding for the Paris agreement and the U.N.F.C.C.

However, the federal government is obligated under the 1970 Clean Air Act to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Republicans may choose to defund the agency’s regulation efforts, an action that will almost certainly meet legal resistance from environmental groups and large swaths of the general public. While the Republicans will not be able to ignore the scientific evidence and mounting public pressure forever, any delay in implementation would be especially damaging given how far behind the curve we already are in our mitigation efforts.

Given Trump’s strong pro-fossil fuel statements, it’s possible that the Keystone XL pipeline will be approved by the U.S. State Department.  Financial support for federally funded renewable energy technologies are at risk.  The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has already requested of Trump’s transition team a rollback of the 54.5 miles per gallon fuel efficiency standards for cars and light-duty trucks by 2025.

A more general question is what role science will take within a Trump administration. President Obama nominated his chief science advisor John Holdren on inaugration day, signaling the position’s importance to his administration. Trump’s transition has been far less organized, and he has given little indication who his science advisor will be or what role they will serve. Even a qualified appointee could be effectively neutered if the Office of Science and Technology Policy (the office they would head) was disempowered, or if they were unable to permeate Trump’s inner circle.  This position requires Senate confirmation, so it could potentially go unfilled for some time.

This would clearly be a mistake, as the next administration must be ready for future disasters like Deepwater Horizon or viral outbreaks that require being scientifically literate. It is unclear whether President Trump would prioritize the best scientific evidence over political considerations. The new administration will also have to consider whether the U.S. is to remain an active participant in international scientific enterprises like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and whether there will be free movement of researchers. Trump’s tax proposals will answer whether he intends to incentivize private investment in basic research.

Executive agencies like the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are populated by career civil servants, many of whom are institutionally difficult to fire in order to protect them  against political transitions.  However, Trump has suggested downsizing the federal workforce by instituting a hiring freeze, reducing their job security, and reducing agency funding.

Even though Trump has expressed an interest in cutting the Department of Education, STEM education should largely be safe, especially since only about 10% of education funding comes from the federal government. Even Republicans realize that a highly educated workforce is a prerequisite for our international competitiveness.

Historically, science has been one of the few bipartisan issues. I suspect this will largely continue at the budgetary level, though the priorities may shift. I have reason to worry about federal climate mitigation efforts, but wonder whether Trump’s lack of a fully competent transition team might lead some lesser-known scientific programs to experience a kind of benign neglect. Either way, we must remain vigilant to ensure science is being represented as it should be.

 

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